City stunner - # 95/2011

Nothing posted for a week.  Naughty.  But a good excuse.  Weather, stuff happening etc.  However, here's a little something I did recently while working up a project based on London and The City (you might have guessed).

It's a detail from a very fine Victorian building in the City.  I'm keeping it anonymous. I'm more interested in the image abstract than the precise reality.

Pregnant pause - # 94/2011

Shouldn't really do this. I said earlier that it was the last Dungeness image. However, I just liked the sense of mystery, anticipation, "what's about to happen?" that I felt when I composed this, and which I still sensed when I was looking at it again last night. So here is "the last Dungeness image" - until I accidentally stumble over another one that I like.

The North Foreland light - # 93/2011

A landscape by the sea.

Essay on colour - # 92/2011

Stay with me a while. I snapped this playing with camera settings to try things out. But I got something unexpected.

I grew up with this scene, and at that time, at low tide the beach would often yield unexploded war-time munitions and patches of fuel oil, some of which had seeped from ships and aircraft sunk in battle.

My memory is happy but the predominant colour in mind is grey. The ships that habitually anchored here to wait for the storm winds to pass had black hulls and white topwork and grey hatch coverers. Life boats on the ships were white and frankly very primitive. Metal marker posts were rusting and one wondered how anyone ever saw them or made use of them. The sea was grey or blue. The concrete was grey. A photo was always black and white.

Today we have a world of colour.  The ships that still anchor for shelter are multicoloured often with blue hulls and red or vermillion cargo hatches, the topwork is still white but brilliant orange breaks out and lifeboats are high-tech and brilliantly visible. The marker posts are multicoloured red and white and clearly in business to be seen. And the sea has acquired unexpected colourfulness, thanks to the polarizing filter on a camera that a mere childish lad of the 1940s/50s never dreamt could ever exist.

This is just a snap, trying something out. But it is in fact much, much more as I stand, watch, and remember. 

On the mud at Margate - # 91/2011

The tide's going out and the fishing boat is resting on the mud at Margate Harbour.  As you can see the usual brisk north-easterly wind is livening things up.  These old seaside towns like Margate once had great charm, but air-travel and sunseeking abroad have brought them to their knees and they now struggle, and cope with dereliction, trying to find a way to revive themselves.

Tough at the seaside - # 90/2011

This is typical for a day out on the English coast facing the North Sea. Bright sun, and a good north-easterly wind to make it nice and fresh (that's code for - "A bit chilly; I think I'll wear a woolly jumper").  However, the wind-sailor at Kingsgate Bay near Margate is having a good time.  But notice the coastal cargo vessel: she's anchored waiting for the strong winds to die down before she dashes across to Rotterdam. It was ever thus, since Dutchmen and Englishmen and Viking Norsemen took to ships.

Dungeness Final - # 89/2011

This will be the last image of Dungeness until my next visit which will have to be in winter.  On a good bright day it is so colourful.

Stress and The City - # 88/2011

You'll recognise the skyline from yesterday's picture. I'm not so sure about coffee and stress relief going together but it makes a good talking point for the photo.

Black Friars' Bridge, St. Paul's and the City - # 87/2011

Another shot of the the City of London under a dramatic cloudscape. Brilliant sunshine, the time of day and the weather came together to produce this and reward my day out hunting for good images of London.

The skeleton - # 86/2011

A somewhat quirky image, and probably not your normal "City Daily Photo", but the shape and startling skeletal form of the broken wheel house on a derelict fishing vessel at Dungeness seemed worth a photo and some B&W treatment.  

Pretty Dungeness - # 85/2011

............and the desert bloomed.

Lurid Dungeness - # 84/2011

I think I overdid the tweak on the polarizing filter, but the startling effect on the sky doesn't spoil the atmosphere. We still get the essence of a typical Dungeness scene, with the derelict and the active, the old and the modern all functioning nicely together, and the wet and the terribly dry being baked under broad skies.

The Lugger - # 83/2011

Let's stay for a while longer on the South Coast admiring the quirks of the English Channel (or, as the French call it, La Manche = The Sleeve - why on earth The Sleeve?).

Here's a lovely traditional lugger sailing safely and well in stiff breeze, just as the old craftsmen who invented the design meant her to do.

Lingering longer on Dungeness - # 82/2011

Typical Dungeness scene - weird.  I'm trying to imagine it on a wet, grey, Novemberish sort of day.  That's a challenge.  I'll have to risk it in November.

Dungeness derelict - # 81/2011

Dungeness: a huge desert of shingle on the south coast of England, so large it's clearly visible from space.  Look it up. It's a site of special scientific interest, a bird sanctuary, a Ministry of Defence live firing range, a strange community of artists and fishermen, the site of a nuclear power station and great for weird photography.  The day I went, the sun was hot, the sea breeze was strong and fresh......