Fisheye Fun – 5

One serious problem with ‘fisheye’ photos is the difficulty of keeping unwanted elements out of the eventual image.  Since I’ve had this lens, I have taken numerous closeup pictures of fingers, thumbs, and camera straps, but I am now getting the hang of it.

The lens is still fun at the moment.  The Lloyd’s Building seemed to be crying out for attention when on a recent walk in London.  The only unwanted element in this one was a car parked in the lower right.  The clone tool fixed this!

I had to decide whether to make this a Monochrome Moment or a bit of Fisheye Fun.  I thought Fisheye ruled for this one.

Monochrome Moments – 1

I’ve been dabbling more and more with B&W conversions of my photos.  I really like the way it can transform shots taken on a gloomy day, but I also find that removal of the distraction of colour can often allow a better appreciation of the picture.  I’m beginning to think that almost any picture can make a good B&W image, although bold shapes, patterns, textures and strong contrast produce the best.

In the future, I will probably post a fair few monochrome images.  This is the first of my Monochrome Moments. It was snapped when walking past 20 Fenchurch street, otherwise known as the Walkie Talkie building, in the City of London.

In this image, we have mainly shapes, lines and texture.  The texture is provided by the ‘sunshade’, introduced since the ‘solar glare’ off the south face of the original building was responsible for melting parts of the bodywork of a number of cars.

Actually, this B&W version is not so different from the original colour shot, which looked pretty monochrome on that day.

Some Spanish Sunshine 2

In an earlier post, I included some photos from the area around the villa that we stayed at in Andalusia, near Frigiliana.  The real reason for choosing this area for our holiday was that we had heard that Frigiliana was a particularly pretty village.  I certainly attracts its fair share of tourists because it is known for its narrow cobbled streets and white houses.  Our visits tended to be during the evening, when we set out in search of good eating places, so we were not troubled by crowds of tourists at all.  I hope that this post does show what a pretty place it is.

The end of an era!

The end of an era!
The old Western Gazette building in Yeovil, up for sale 105 years after it was completed.

Since I am still learning about all aspects of WordPress blogging, I thought I would try to see whether I could blog a photo directly from Flickr.

I thought I would try this one of the old Western Gazette building in Yeovil. I took the photo just after it was put on the market in February, No sign of any takers yet. I expect it will become still more ‘flats’ in the end, which will be a real shame.