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Posts Tagged ‘photography’

A Year in Pictures – Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey
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You can’t take photographs inside most of Westminster Abbey, and the exterior is hard to capture because of the sheer size. But on my research trip for Midnight Never Come I gave it the old college try. This is the north entrance, where you purchase admission and audio guides, and I have an odd fondness for the patchwork appearance of the stone — not to mention a general love of Gothic architecture in the first place.

A Year in Pictures – Yosemite Road

Yosemite Road
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This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A friend took me on a day trip to Yosemite National Park in late spring, when there was still snow here and there, but it was warm enough not to freeze your fingers off. It was my first visit to a major national park, and, well, see for yourself: absolutely stunning. (Also, this is a splendid example of what Lightroom can do, because the picture as it actually came out of my camera had the sky badly washed out for some reason. The intense blue you see here is much closer to what my eye saw at the time.)

A Year in Pictures – Column at Sravanabelagola

Column at Sravanabelagola
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This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Sravanabelagola is a fair hike to get to: not only do you have to climb the hill (which is fairly steep), but you have to do it barefoot. And even in October, the stone was quite warm. But the view from the top was absolutely splendid, and dotted with various shrines, buildings, columns, and more.

A Year in Pictures – Penny-Farthing

Penny-Farthing
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This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

When I went to the Museum of London to research With Fate Conspire, I discovered they have a charming little mockup of a Victorian city street, including this penny-farthing leaning in a corner. It’s just about the only bit of that mockup I managed to get a decent photograph of — the light there was not forgiving to photographers without tripods . . . .

A Year in Pictures – Bell at Vincennes

Bell at VincennesCreative Commons License
This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Near the end of our time in Paris, we spent an afternoon at the Chateau de Vincennes, which is a castle in the Parisian suburbs. The donjon closed at 4 or 5, but the area as a whole stayed open, so my husband sat on a bench to write postcards while I prowled around and took Yet More Pictures. I’m glad I did: the light became beautifully dramatic, silhouetting the castle against the bright clouds behind.

A Year in Pictures – Lion in Snow

Lion in SnowCreative Commons License
This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The first day we were in Krakow, we wandered around the Stare Miasto taking pictures of everything there. My last day in Krakow, I wandered around the Stare Miasto taking pictures of everything again . . . because this time it had snowed, just enough to frost everything in a bit of fluffy whiteness. I had liked this lion (at the base of the Town Hall Tower) the first time I saw him, but he was even more charming in the snow.

A Year in Pictures: San Francisco Tea Garden

One of the reasons I pushed to get the WordPress thing started up finally is, this project is much easier to wrangle through here than through LJ/DW.

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve gotten more interested in photography lately. I’ve been taking better pictures in general, then cleaning the results up in Lightroom. I’d like to share them with you, and so I give you: A Year in Pictures. Every weekday from now until the end of the year, I’ll post one of my favorite shots, with a brief note about what it is and why I like it. (The order will be randomized, so you don’t get giant wodges of Italy or Japan or wherever all at once.)

Statue in the San Francisco Tea Garden

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This work by https://www.swantower.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This is a statue in the Golden Gate Park Tea Garden. On this particular day it was typical San Francisco weather: mildly gloomy, raining a little, i.e. not generally the best for photography. It worked well for this shot, though, because of the statue’s slightly melancholy air and the vivid green of the bamboo. Plus, by this point I was starting to learn something about good framing, which is a concept that really escaped me in my earlier years . . . .

last of the photos

The last seven of these are new.

No photos from Brighton, alas. Partly because I was busy at the con, but more because it rained a fair bit while I was there, and when it wasn’t raining, the wind was trying to fling me into traffic. No, really: at one point a guy waiting at the intersection with me was leaning back into the wind at about a fifteen-degree angle, just letting it hold him up. It was kind of ridiculous. Since the weather also meant my glasses were constantly being coated in a thin layer of salt and grit, I decided not to expose my camera to such trials.

It might also have something to do with me being all OMG NO MORE PHOTOS, though. During this trip, I took nearly 3500 shots in total. A first pass of culling has dragged that number down to about 2400, which (by comparison) looks much more reasonable, but — jeebus. If we exclude the major outliers, i.e. the days where I took less than forty pictures, I averaged almost 230 per day. When we went to Highgate Cemetery, I took 350 in two and a half hours.

Which is by way of saying that, while I’ll definitely post more pictures later, it’s going to take a while for me to go through them all and do the necessary editing, labeling, etc. Don’t look for that to happen any time soon, I’m afraid. I had been all proud of myself and the work I’d done on my pre-existing catalogue of photos. All I had left to go through were my honeymoon and Poland, and I was thinking I could see the light at the end of the tunnel . . . but it turns out to have been the oncoming train of this trip. 😛

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five more photos

Added an additional five shots to the photoset so far. Still one per day, but not caught up to the present yet; I’ve fallen behind in dealing with my photos (surprise!), so there are three days I haven’t even gone through yet in search of good shots.

These are, for the record, totally unedited. I’ve tried to pick ones that look good already, but just think how much better they’ll look once they’ve gone through Lightroom!

In other news, I have discovered how many days is too many to be continually on my feet sightseeing. If I ever plan a trip this long again, I need to build in more downtime — or rather, find some way to silence the little voice that insists I should be out seeing stuff, being as how I went to all the effort of getting here.

This entry was also posted at http://swan-tower.dreamwidth.org/600365.html. Comment here or there.