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I think this is a vase meant for flowers at someone’s gravesite, but I’m not certain. Regardless, it’s formed a close relationship with the grass instead . . . .
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This is from the eastern portion of Highgate Cemetery . . . which is ostensibly the less overgrown part of the site. And indeed, there are large portions of East that are perfectly well maintained — but get off the main paths, and you soon find yourself in a wonderland of headstones and ivy.
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I had to resist the urge to title this one “Bored Jesus Is Bored.” Apparently this sculptural motif is actually called “Contemplative Christ,” but man, he just looks tired and disappointed to me. ๐ Anyway, this is one of the graves in Peksow Brzyzek in Zakopane, and as you can see, it isn’t your standard Western headstone. (Also, I am exceedingly fond of the moss.)
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This is one of the more famous bits of Highgate: the “Circle of Lebanon,” so named for the Cedar of Lebanon that stands atop the central part. It’s at the upper end of the “Egyptian Avenue,” and together those two areas form a rather spectacular display of Victorian funerary extravagance.
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This is the third of the spectacular cemeteries I’ve been to. It’s the Peksow Brzyzek in Zakopane, Poland, a place which introduced me to a wild array of funerary monuments of a very different sort from the codified Victorian catalogue of motifs. (Among other things, many of the Peksow Brzyzek markers are vastly more recent.) It was actually difficult to photograph the place well, since everything is crammed together cheek-by-jowl, but you’ll see more of it as the month wears on. This height of this cross is not an artifact of the angle; it towered over everything around it except the trees, and gave those a run for their money. Those beads are a rosary necklace, if you need a comparison for scale.
Also, here again we have a splendid example of what Lightroom can do for you. The cross was rather backlit, but fiddling with the settings allowed me to bring out the carving on the front, which was otherwise lost in shadow.
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Parts of Brompton Cemetery are nearly as overgrown as Highgate, but in a different way: fewer trees, more ferns. (And a wall that bids fair to win the award for Most Ivy Per Square Inch, which you will see later.) There were seas of underbrush to the sides of the main path, with headstones and crosses poking up, and some of the ferns orange with the season. I do not know if there are plans to try and clear the cemetery grounds and restore them to a more manicured state.
It turns out that the reason I could only get the Leica V-Lux 4 from Austria was because they’ve discontinued it. And the reason they’ve discontinued it is because . . . there’s a new one out as of about, oh, yesterday.
On the left, my Leica V-Lux 2: not sure how old it is, but given that I’ve had it since 2011 and it was a hand-me-down from my mother who used it for some amount of time before that, let’s go with “elderly (in camera years)” and leave it at that. On the right, the V-Lux Typ 114, which is O_O shall we say a little bit larger.
I’m okay with this. I just didn’t realize how much larger it would be. Still nothing compared to my father’s setup, but his rig — body and lens — weighs about four pounds, which is way more than I ever want to carry around myself. This should be fine. I’m going to sit down with the instruction manual and learn how it works, including both the stuff the V-Lux 2 couldn’t do and the stuff the V-Lux 2 could do but I never actually learned it, and then I’m going to find an excuse to go photograph something dark just so I can cackle at what it’s like to have an up-to-date sensor that isn’t borderline at ISO 400 and useless above that.
Best thing? I called the Leica store in San Francisco yesterday to ask when the Typ 114 was going to be released, and the guy told me they’d arrived that morning. I thought about going to the city to pick it up, but it turned out that shipping would cost less than parking, would require zero effort on my part, and would have the camera to me today — way sooner than I could have gotten up there to claim it in person. Laziness for the win!
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October will be a themed month, sort of — the theme is “October-ish stuff,” which is to say autumn color, cemeteries, and bones. (Only two photos of bones, if you’re put off by that sort of thing.)
To start us off, I have one of my favorite photos from my 2013 trip to England and France. This is a funerary urn in Highgate Cemetery, covered in a velvet layer of moss. I know all the growth on and around the monuments in Highgate is not good for them, and people are working to restore the ones that have been badly damaged . . . but of course the partially ruined state of the place constitutes a large part of its aesthetic appeal.
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Today we are kicking it old-school, not just with another print scan, but with a photo from my oldest album. I thought I wasn’t interested in photography until I went to Costa Rica; then I realized I just needed to be in a place worth taking pictures of.
Or at least presented with beetles worth taking pictures of. ๐
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If I needed evidence that proper cameras still have the edge over cameraphones, this provides it. I tried to take a photo of this window (in the Okinawan Prefectural Budokan) with my phone, and it came out useless, with the etching totally washed out. When I came back the next day with my actual camera, though, I could control the settings enough that it came out beautifully.
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It took some fiddling in Lightroom to get this photo to reflect what I saw; the initial result left the leaves above so thoroughly silhouetted that their color didn’t come through at all. The framing pleased me, though, with the evergreens on the sides and the changing leaves fringing the top.
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This is another scanned print, from my first trip to Japan back in 2002. The fountain stands in the temple of Hounen-in; I don’t know whether it was a monk who decided to decorate it with fallen flowers or just an idle passer-by, but either way the effect was beautiful.
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Golden Gate Bridge is far from the longest in the world. But when you’re looking at it from underneath, seeing the huge length of its span hanging from two simple towers . . . it’s quite impressive.
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After visiting the neighboring island of Delos (birthplace of Apollo and Artemis), we had a short time on Mykonos, where the churches are plastered featureless white. So the silhouette effect, where the details of the object mostly vanish? Works very well here.
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We didn’t have very long at Windsor Castle, because it was one of those day tours where if you aren’t on the bus by the appointed time, they’re leaving you behind. It was long enough, though, to catch a nice view of the autumn colors, and the flag dancing in the wind.
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This is just a little detail shot from the Okinawan-ken Gokoku Jinja. I love the textiles I see at places like this, the ribbons and tassels and cords, and the flowers printed on the curtains.
Warning: camera neepery ahead. Or, depending on your temperament: yay, camera neepery ahead! ๐
I’m looking to replace my Leica V-Lux 2, which is a hand-me-down from my mother, ergo more than a few years old. Searching for a replacement has been educational, because it’s illustrating for me the extent to which the niche occupied by this model appears to be, well, disappearing.
There are DSLRs. There are point-and-shoot cameras. What there doesn’t appear to be is a point-and-shoot with specs that are equal to or better than what I have right now. Nikon’s Coolpix line is right out; they don’t seem to have any model with an aperture range bigger than f/3 to f/6.5. (My Leica goes f/2.8 to f/8.) The Leica website still lists the V-Lux 4, but given that I can’t seem to find it for sale anywhere, I have a sneaking suspicion it’s been discontinued. My best bet so far is Canon’s PowerShot G1 X Mark II . . . but, and I admit this is a trivial concern, its LCD is embedded in the back of the camera. My Leica has the screen on a swivel arm, which has come massively in handy when I’m trying to take photos at weird angles, like from over my head or around a corner.
The Nikon D5200 has the swivel screen — but it’s a DSLR. (Or, to be more precise, it’s a system camera/ILC.) I’ve kind of wanted to move to interchangeable lenses for years now, so I should leap at the prospect, right? Well, not quite. Because that means carrying lenses with me, and I’m not keen to have the added weight, given how many of my trips involve being on my feet all day. Not to mention that switching out lenses will slow me down, and my husband is already wonderfully tolerant for putting up with the amount of time I spend taking photos. (Not to mention carrying our backpack part of the time, so he’d be dealing with the added weight, too.) I’ve worked hard on being as quick as I can, but swapping out for a wide-angle lens or whatever is going to inevitably take time.
Sure, I could get the Nikon and then just never buy any other lenses. But at that point it seems stupid to have a system camera in the first place.
Except that I’m not sure I can get what I want otherwise. The Canon comes closest, if I’m willing to give up the swivel screen; it’s gotten some excellent reviews. But the point-and-shoot market is being cannibalized by smartphones: they may not be as good at taking photos as a dedicated camera, but for most people’s purposes they’re good enough, and much more convenient. If you actually care about the finer points of photography, it seems like you’re increasingly looking at the higher end of the market, just because of the way the lower end is vanishing.
All of which is extended background leading up to a question: is there another camera I should consider? The swivel screen is negotiable, but I definitely need f/2.8-f/8 or better, decent zoom, and ISO up to 1600 (bonus points if the levels above 400 are actually usable). Right now it’s a race between the Canon Powershot G1 X Mark II and the Nikon D5200, but I’d love to know if there are any alternatives.
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A while back we were at Point Lobos late in the day, and the light and atmospheric conditions combined to form what the internet tells me is called “altocumulus stratiformis perlucidus” clouds — yeah, no, that isn’t a term I’ll be in the habit of using any time soon.
The fellow you see on the path there is my very own husband. ^_^
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I actually can’t say for certain that these fish and discs are carved out of amber — they’re awfully white. But they were in the Amber Museum in Gdaลsk, and that’s good enough for me!
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While my husband and I were visiting the Tower of London, I found there’s a spot along the wall that gives you this glimpse of Tower Bridge through the trees. And at that time of day, I could channel my inner J. J. Abrams quite satisfyingly. ๐
