Tag: vase

Florist

92nd St and Broadway, New York

I returned to my series on people working On Broadway while I was in New York. For this shot I wanted to capture the apple display outside, but the light and reflections weren’t working for me. Eventually I went inside for a portrait which will appear in On Broadway in due course.

A Dark Story

Grayson Perry at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

This ceramic appears to show children happily playing, but look closely and you see the darkness of the background (note, for instance, the house inscribed with swastikas). For more, take a look at Cuddly Toys Caught on Barbed Wire, here.

B and B

I often post a “hotel room view” out the window. In this case we were staying at a lovely Bed and Breakfast, the Kimberley in St Agnes. Here are a few pictures from the room featuring the play of light through the blinds and on the walls. If viewing in email, click the post title to click into the images and see them larger.

Thomas Hardy Cottage

That same afternoon (16 May) we had a tour of the Thomas Hardy cottage. It’s been decades since I read Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d’Urbervilles and I scarcely remember them. The guide told us a lot about Hardy’s life and his family’s history in the area. I took a few pictures – click any of them to see them enlarged to full size.

Daffodils

 

New York

There’s something about flowers that are just past their prime, on the cusp of beauty and decay that’s really attractive to me (is it because I am, myself, in Shakespeare’s words, about to “mellow and drop into the rotten mouth of death?”)

Technical addendum: I shot this with my portrait lens (56mm f1.2). The top image is stopped down to f8, so is mostly in focus. For the bottom image I wanted to focus on just a few of the front flowers and let the rest de-focus a bit so I opened up to f2 – I’m not sure why that had such a pronounced effect on the background color which is more accurate (but less neutral) in the top image.

Madison Avenue

20160317-_DSF5380-Edit
B&W version

93rd St and Madison Avenue, New York
93rd St and Madison Avenue, New York

I can’t decide which of these I prefer. The color one is kind of bi-chromatic with the cool, bluish tones of the silver contrasting nicely against the warmer colors reflected through the window; whereas the B&W simplifies that with a nice tonal range.