Tag: photography

Postcards from the Cotswolds

The Cotswolds is an AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) in the south of England. It’s full of typically English picturesque villages. How picturesque? See for yourself. I took these photos last weekend, when Damjan, Maja, Kreso and I rented a car to go dancing and exploring.

Burford is a beautiful English village, which has been taken over by tourist-loaded cars.

If you can’t get to London to see the real thing, Burford School comes to the rescue! It’s kind of like Microsoft Office: Student Edition.

Burford has a few strange things. There are green crosses like these on many of the walls…

And giant green ‘salt’ boxes on the sidewalks.

A pot plant.

The people living in this house must not have been into pot plants.

Like the good souls that we are, we immediately walked towards the church.

There are a lot of churches in England. They’re often the most beautiful buildings.

I like taking photos in graveyards here in England. There’s lots of moss.


We trespassed on private property. This, in England, is called ‘rambling’. It’s a national past-time.

Rambling is muddy business. Damjan and Kreso found a large stick to scrape off the clods of mud. Can you tell Damjan likes to dance?

An enthusiasm for Cambridge photography


These photos were taken from my window on the first floor (the one above the ground floor) three days ago on Thursday. As you can see, it makes the previous snow day look like primary school homework.

Yesterday, Thara came to visit Cambridge. This was my second stint at being a tour guide. The first time, if you recall, was for Jana. Unfortunately for Thara, the weather was much worse this time around.

This is the Round Church, one of only four in England.

Ah, King’s College. I’ve almost over-photographed it, although you’ve only seen it before on this blog at night time during fog. It wasn’t really this sunny today. I’ve doctored the sky. You just can’t trust me anymore.

The Amnesty International candle is always alight in King’s College Chapel.

When Thara and I came out of King’s, we heard lots of chanting. For a university town, Cambridge doesn’t get as many demonstrations as you might expect. This was the first one I ever saw. What did the protesters want? Divestment of university funds from companies involved in the manufacture of weapons. When did they want it? Now.

The fuzzy black at the edges of the photo were metal fence bars, between which I had to stick my camera lens. The protesters were in front of Senate House, where I will hopefully be graduating after October this year.

We visited Clare College and ran into this gentlemen, who kindly agreed to be photographed. I asked him why he was wearing a kilt. He said that he was coming back from a night at a themed party. It was 1:30 PM when we met him. Must have been a good party.


This is Clare Bridge in Clare College. The first time I saw these bridge balls was on my computer in Melbourne — See Sean McHugh’s gallery. Sean makes use of HDR.


Here’s Thara taking pictures on Clare Bridge.

I would like your help, blog readers. I have two versions of this picture of the Mathematical Bridge. The legend of the bridge is well-known. Supposedly, Isaac Newton designed and built it so that it did not need any bolts or joins. Some curious students took it apart to see how it worked and couldn’t put it back together again. The only way was to bolt it together.

It isn’t true, of course. The bridge was designed by William Ethridge (some guy). I have been told, though, that the bridge members are arranged so that they are in compression (like an arch or vault) and the bridge can support its own weight without bolts. However, the bridge does have bolts to prevent collapse due to shear forces like wind.

Could you tell me if you prefer the closely cropped version of this picture or the original wide angle?

Toxic green

Some people have asked about the green skies in photos that I posted a few days ago. On my laptop screen, the green is a nice mild-mannered diffuse heavenly tinge. I edited the photos using Picasa2. I kind of liked the green reflection of the oval in the sky. However, when I saw the photos on flatscreens, LCDs and CRTs elsewhere, the skies looked toxic green. Wah! If only I could control all the screens in the world!

Here are the originals with their boring white skies.


Why climate change prevents me from doing my homework

I had been at my computer since early morning working on an essay. The desk was littered with an empty coffee mug, muesli-encrusted bowl, lecture notes and books.

Someone tapped my door.

“Morning, Dino,” I said, swinging my computer chair around.

“Look outside,” Dino whispered.

I drew the curtains back.

“Snow!” I squealed.

“That’s right! It’s snow.”

Half an hour later, I had abandoned my essay and was heading out with scarf, gloves, a feather-down coat and camera.

This is a photo of the Fenner’s Cricket Ground and one of my college’s buildings.

My college often rents this building out for conferences. The poorer colleges often rely on funds from conferences to eke out an existence. Other colleges, on the other hand, own major British docks and science parks.

This might be a sundial. It wasn’t working today for some reason.

Ah, Joan. Using that tired old ‘framing with stuff onsite’ composition. This is the stuff of cheesy postcards 🙂

This is the back of the main building at my college. The front is prettier but there are unattractive cars and fences that I can’t Photoshop out.

Some of my college mates live here. This was the first time I stepped into the courtyard. It’s quite a pretty space.

Some smart cookie knew it was going to snow. Either that or their bike seat is too tattered to sit on without wrapping it up with a plastic bag from Sainsbury’s.

Orange in a grocery stack


Somewhere in the £83 of groceries Tesco delivered to the house is one orange. When the driver arrived in the evening, he said, ‘There have been some substitutions. Let me know if there are any problems.’

Well, they substituted the 1 kg of oranges I ordered with a single orange. Tesco must have just run out. I would have been more upset except that I had also ordered (and received) 1.6 kg of mandarins. A girl needs her Vitamin C, you see.

Reality Foto

I used to be happy when I took a photo that looked like what I saw in real life. There is skill in knowing how to use a camera so that the lighting, perspectives and colours are ‘right’. I’m getting better at doing this but I still need to take two, three, four or more photos of the one scene before I am satisfied.

Increasingly, I am interested in creating photos that reflect not the reality I see but an image I have in my mind. It seems to me that photography stops being a memory capture process and becomes ‘art’ when you start heavily post-processing.

I kept about 120 photos from my Yorkshire holiday. Of those 120, there are surprisingly few that I am happy with. Yorkshire at this time of year can be a dreary, grey sort of place. Late last night, I experimented a little on the computer. This is what I came up with.



I just couldn’t take a photo of this scene (Whitby Abbey) with a wide enough contrast. Either the ruins and gravestones were too dark or the sky was bleached out. Using the computer, I was able to boost the fill light and contrast, as well as crop out the empty space. One day, I will get a wider angle lens so that I can make real panoramas.



It was a beautiful sight as we rounded the corner, jumped a gate and realised how wide the River Tees was. My photos of the scene were dull and ordinary, probably because it was a dull and ordinary day. Once again, I didn’t have a wide enough lens to convey the vastness.

On the computer, there was nothing I could do to make this a panorama shot but at least the colour filter allowed me to create an interesting picture. It looks a little like an old-fashioned painting. If I could recompose the photo with my camera, I would have included a bit more grass at the bottom. Unfortunately, this composition suffers a little from the feeling that the observer is about to topple off the cliff.



This photo modification made me the happiest of Joans! The doctored photo was what I had in mind when I took the original (near Steel Rigg, Hadrian’s Wall). Imagine my disappointment at how washed out the colours were! In fact, the original is a pretty good reflection of reality. Reality, in this case, was just not good enough.


Finally, just to prove that I am not completely dependent on post-processing, this photo of York Minster Chapter House is all camera work. Of course, I had to take about eight photos to get this one.

There’s never any Joan

I thought of all places in the world, there would be the greatest chance for name products in England to include ‘Joan’ in their range. Joan is a good English name. It used to be popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

I looked amongst the pea pots in a tourist shop at the seaside town of Whitby. As always, there was no Joan.

A happy new year in Yorkshire

I’ve just come back from a holiday in north Yorkshire. Damo and I stayed in a cottage with four other Aussies and a Kiwi. We did a lot of walking, visited castles and cathedrals, and wandered the towns of Durham, Whitby, York and others. Best (or worst) of all, we ate delicious home-cooked dinners, cakes and desserts, and lots of chocolate.

I now have to write a research paper before Monday. I will write a bit later.

Mart leaps over a stream on our walk along the River Tees.

How foggy is it in Cambridge?

My road, which you’ve seen in the autumn.

Parker’s Piece, a wide expanse of green just south of the town centre.






A pub on Regent Street.

Cambridge Market goes on through rain, hail and fog.

Shops on King’s Parade.

I’m not sure what the BBC is doing at King’s College today.

On Trumpington Road.

On Pembroke Street.

A carpark at a museum on Pembroke Street. I guess ancient sea monsters need a place to park, too.

Joan in the Matrix