Time for an icecream - # 32/10

What can one do?  At 10.30 the photographer sets off under brilliant, clear blue skies with one or two small, pure white clouds and bright sunshine, intending to get some "Kingston beside the Thames in the sunshine".  By 13.20 this is what you have. A cool, in fact slightly too cool, wind and a sky like a tub of molten lead.  There are in fact about three layers of cloud, from low down stretching to high, all guaranteed to make it really grey!!  By the way, that's Queen Victoria up front of the market hall - no doubt thinking that this is an Indian monsoon developing.

Hog's Mill Blues - # 08/278

What's going on here? Taken at the "Blue Hour" of around sunset, the white balance has been corrected to render true whites in the lamp light but, as a result, it has picked out the high proportion of blue light in the spectrum cast by the sinking sun. Actually the sky looked very dark and overcast, so it was a bit of an "Isaac Newton Moment" to see the result of a simple tweak of the camera. J-W von Goethe would have rushed to write a whole new chapter of Colour Theory.

More important:
..........admire the way the light reflects on the fast flowing Hog's Mill - an ancient, gushing, powerful little stream that runs into the Thames at Kingston. See it flow under the dark arch of the very old "Claterne Bridge" (so called because of the noise of clattering mediaeval merchants' carts passing across).

..........admire the way that the old Thames riverside quay area at Kingston has been redevolped (as usual, these days) into a "leisure area".

..........looming behind is the mass of the 1930s Surrey County Council offices, and around about are the modernised remnants of Kingston's mediaeval past.

It's a pleasant area to inhabit. I hope that the threatening financial crisis, which will hit very hard in the London Area, doesn't lead to acres of empty, unwanted bars and restaurants. In that case I will have to take another even bluer image.

A walk through Time - # 08/272

This late evening scene in the Market Square of Kingston upon Thames (next town, 5 miles along from Richmond) shows us 1,000 years of unbroken history and the activities have not changed.

The buildings show us a 400 year span, just hidden behind the crowd is a spot where 10th Century Saxon Kings were crowned before the Normans arrived in 1066, and the trading has always been there, with river transport and quayside just a few steps away behind the buildings.

As a maritime and trading nation Britain has always been an island where many races are seen and many languages heard.

Townscapes like this fascinate me.

Expressionism let loose in Kingston Market Place - # 08/264

A wet, grey day, a slow shutter speed and a market stall about to close: rust on the bottom edge, and a couple of late shoppers rushing by. Kingston upon Thames market square on the last day of September.

A few tweaks on the "curves" in post - processing, and conversion to "greyscale" produce a n interesting effect. Perhaps you won't like it.

(Kingston is 5 miles up river from Richmond. It's an ancient town where over 1,000 years ago Saxon kings were crowned.)