Tag Archives: Bristol - Page 2

A panorama of Bristol

Posted by Jonathan on August 27, 2011 3 comments

Today I went to Stoke Park, on the outskirts of Bristol with the main intention of photographing Dower House. Once I was there I noticed there was a great view of much of east Bristol spread out beneath me. The lighting wasn’t great, but I decided to make a panorama anyhow. I’ll likely go back one day to re-shoot the images with more favourable lighting (morning).

Here is the result, ranging from Dower House on the extreme left, with the M32 in the foreground. Approximately from left to right, you can see the districts of Downend, Fishponds, Frenchay, Kingswood, Speedwell, St George, Barton Hill, Lawrence Hill, and a glimpse of the tall buildings in the centre. On the very far right you can see the BT tower on Purdown Hill in Lockleaze.

Click for a bigger version, and then zoom and scroll at will in your browser.

Bristol panorama

One day I might have to add an annotated version of this panorama that points out some of the distinctive buildings, but for now you’ll have to make do with viewing some of them on a map. My viewpoint was one of the two northernmost markers, and I faced roughly south.

For those interested in how this image was made – I took 8 photos with a Mamiya RB67 on 120-format film – that’s a 6×7cm negative. I chose to use Kodak Ektar 100 film, which is said to be the highest-resolution colour negative film ever made – just what I need for a job like this.

Back at home, I processed the film myself using standard C-41 chemistry. I scanned each frame in on my Epson V500 flatbed at 4800dpi. With the digital scans in hand, I fed them through Hugin to align, blend, merge and stitch them. The end result was a 537-megapixel image over 1GB in size.

The version on this website has been resized down for sensible viewing in a browser, and is just 2.6% of the size of the original. The detail in the original has to be seen to be believed, but if you want to see it you’ll have to come to my house

Trooper’s Hill

Posted by Jonathan on August 14, 2011 No comments

Trooper’s Hill today is a nature reserve near the centre of Bristol, in St George. It is steeply hilly and undulating, with rocky outcrops and mini cliffs as a result of mining for coal, copper, clay and slate at various points over the centuries. It is mostly covered with grass and heather and is an excellent oasis of wilderness in the middle of a bustling city.

At the top of the hill there’s a large chimney which apparently used to be a copper smelter back in the 1700s.

Being one of the highest points in the city, there’s a fantastic view southwards, wrapping round from the east over Kingswood, to the west over Clifton. I didn’t have the right equipment with me to make a panorama, but this view is more-or-less southwards over Hanham.

Infrared photography

Posted by Jonathan on July 2, 2011 1 comment

I got my hands on some Efke IR820 infrared film recently, and put it to good use at various locations around Bristol. See my geek blog for a discussion of metering and exposure in infrared photography, or just read on for the pictures. Foliage is rendered white, while open water and the sky are rendered almost black.

The first two shots are of the footbridge and the weir at Snuff Mills, Bristol.

This derelict building is in Oldbury Court Estate, but I don’t know what it is. Looks pretty cool with a wide-angle lens, though.

Once again, my favourite tree – this time as you’ve never seen it before: in infrared.

Using infrared has rendered these pond plants white, and the water black.

This is the view from Brandon Hill nature reserve, looking south over Bristol. Here, infrared photography demonstrates its ability to cut through haze/smog in a city and give crisp images on the horizon, several miles away.

This shot was taken on the dockside, and includes the SS Great Britain.

These apartments are also on the dockside.

Bristol zoo

Posted by Jonathan on May 2, 2011 1 comment

Today I went to Bristol zoo with Hannah and her parents. The sun was out and it was a lovely day for shooting with my Canon 450D and slightly slow Tamron 70-300mm f/4-5.6 telephoto lens. These photos are all in chronological order.

We started off in the reptile house. I don’t really know what any of these are since I was more interested in admiring the animals than reading the plaques. The second one is a chameleon which appears to be belching and obviously the fourth one is a snake.

I thought that both of these were lemurs but now I study the photos, the second one probably isn’t.

Obviously, these are parrots. Unfortunately, they didn’t say anything funny and eventually the clicking of my camera annoyed them, and they moved away.

Staying on the bird theme, we caught these Magellanic penguins at feeding time. You can just about see the fish flying towards them in the top-right corner of the photo.

After the penguins, we watched the seals beg for their dinner, too. They were very obedient and well trained – they would lift their flippers, jump, spin on the spot and do all sorts of things that the keeper gestured. But I still think the best photos were of the seals sitting on the rocks, being themselves.

Just a short walk away were the gorillas. They didn’t particularly like showing their faces.

In fact, the best thing in the gorilla compound was actually this moorhen chick. Just a ball of fluff!

Since the British public have fallen in love with Aleksandr Orlav, everyone loves meerkats. They are also excellent photographic subjects, since they sit still.

Other cute mammals that sit still: prairie dogs.

And finally, we returned to the lion enclosure. It was the first thing we saw when we entered, but the lions were nowhere to be seen. On the way out, they were ready and waiting. The male was sleeping lazily on the floor, with his big, sad eyes.

Meanwhile, round the corner, the lioness was sharing a rack of ribs with two of the cubs. She seemed very wary of the tourists standing behind the glass.

Spring in Royal Fort Gardens

Posted by Jonathan on April 9, 2011 No comments

On Thursday, I went for a lunchtime photo walk with Alex. We headed into Royal Fort Gardens, where there were large numbers of students enjoying the sun.

I was using my “new” RB67 with a wide-angle lens. It’s not exactly a lightweight camera for a walkabout, but I love using it, and the quality of the photos it produces. They’re extremely sharp and detailed, and this particular lens also gives unusual distortions.

We wandered past the chemistry department…

… and then back up St Michael’s Hill to the office.

Bristol dockside

Posted by Jonathan on March 18, 2011 No comments

Now the weather is looking a bit nicer, in the office we’re trying to arrange a weekly photo walk on Thursday. This week, Paul, Alex and I wandered down the hill to the dockside, and back via the Trenchard Street car park. I was shooting film, and these are my favourites from the roll.

Geek info: Canon AE-1 Program with Canon FD 28mm f/2.8 wide-angle lens, Ilford FP4+ 125 film and red filter.

First we started by the @Bristol complex, including Lloyds bank. It’s actually a circular-section building, but standing at the centre of the circle and using a wide lens it actually looks quite flat.

Moving on to the docks themselves…

The fairly crude 1970s lens I was using gives heaps of distortion when you don’t aim it levelly at something. This building was quite distorted so I decided to over-correct it and exaggerate the distortion in the other direction. The sides of the building are actually parallel in my photo, but it looks like it gets wider towards the top. And check out that bus…

Compositionally, I think this is my favourite of the day. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get the shades of grey quite to my liking. When I boosted the contrast of the ground, water and sky the sun disappeared and became invisible. For me, the sun is an important element in this picture, so I had to sacrifice some contrast to keep both it and a little detail on the seated couple.

Once again, the wide-angle lens comes into its own with these views from the top level of the Trenchard Street car park.

All in all, a pleasant day and a fun walk. Lots more of these over Spring and Summer, I hope!

Fishponds Road

Posted by Jonathan on December 9, 2010 No comments

In my mind, I conceived standing in the middle of a road junction at night, and taking a long-exposure shot of passing traffic using a fisheye lens, so the traditional streaky light trails would be curved in interesting ways.

I headed over to the junction between Fishponds Road and Downend Road and stood by the front of the Cross Hands pub.

The idea didn’t quite work out as I had hoped. I think I need to be closer to the traffic (not really possible without being run over), or perhaps higher up. Next time I might try standing on the wall for some extra height.

I was also disappointed by the low volume of traffic – surprising for 7pm on a weeknight in a busy part of Bristol. A longer exposure might have helped, but I couldn’t expose for longer than 30 seconds without overexposing. The usual workaround is to use an ND filter, but sadly that’s not possible with a fisheye lens.

Student day of Action

Posted by Jonathan on November 24, 2010 7 comments

Today, students across the UK protested against cuts to education funding, and an increase in tuition fees. I’ve got mixed opinions on the subject that I won’t go into here, but I decided to follow the rally and the march to see if there were any good photos to be had.

The initial rally was in good spirits. Many students had made amusing banners that had little or nothing to do with the protest.

The rally outside Senate House finished, and the procession of around 2,000 people headed down past the Wills Memorial Building, and down Park Street towards College Green. There was a large police presence to prevent the protest from interfering with major roads and businesses in the centre of the city.

Having bounced off the police, and finding that there was nothing to do, the protest turned back up Park Street and congregated outside the Wills Memorial Building. The tone of the protest changed a little, and a few troublemakers shouted abuse at police, and three or four fireworks were let off in the crowd.

Combining this with the facts that my camera battery had run flat after 450 photos, and that I didn’t really care for the motion of the protest, I went back to my office.

And for those unfamiliar with Bristol, here’s a map to show the three locations I mentioned.

Guess the year

Posted by Jonathan on October 30, 2010 No comments

Oh alright, I’ll tell you the year. It’s not like it was difficult…

These photos were taken in October 2010 on a Kodak Brownie Model I. The primitive camera on its own adds a certain aged effect to the photos, but the thing that really makes these photos look old is the accidental fogging.

While I was loading the film onto the reel for developing, I accidentally left my iPhone on the table, and I received a text. The room lit up like the centre of the sun. I managed to shove the film up my T-shirt and turn the phone face-down, but for a few seconds light was falling on the film, and caused the unevenness you see here.

This is St Paul’s Church, Stockingford, in Nuneaton.

And this is a Clifton villa, near the Suspension Bridge.

And of course, the distinctive view over Brunel’s Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Technically, these are “ruined” photos. But I really like the accidental aged effect. It suits the subjects.

Clifton Suspension Bridge through a fisheye

Posted by Jonathan on October 30, 2010 1 comment

Today the Autumn sunlight was beautiful, especially in the early evening. I decided to head over to Clifton Suspension Bridge to try out my new Samyang fisheye lens.

First I climbed up the cliff to where the Clifton Observatory is, to get these shots of the bridge as a whole. I’ve been here in the past, and sometimes struggled to get the whole bridge in the frame, so it was a pleasant relief to use a lens with a 170-degree field of view!

Then I ventured down onto the bridge itself.

In the next two photos, I think it looks like the bridge piers are monsters with long arms, trying to grab cars. Perhaps that’s just my 6-year-old’s mind