My Kind of Landscape » - urban landscape photography

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Light is an amazing thing… and if you’ve spent any time with me in the late afternoon, you’ll know that I can be quite vocal about proclaiming my love for it. Don’t ask – it’s involuntary! I’ve been noticing the changes in light a lot more than I used to – case in point: I have a love/hate relationship with a shadow I drive past on my way to work. Love/hate, you ask? I love the shadow. I hate the fact that I can’t physically fit in the space I need to take the photo I want. I’ve watched this shadow move across the building – I could tell when we’d gone past the shortest day of the year, because it started to move back in the opposite direction. All this is making me sound like I sit and stare at shadows all day… I promise it’s the 15 seconds as I drive past at 8:10am every morning, that’s all! Or… in that location, anyway – just up the road is a different story…! Anyway – I’ve taken a couple of photos lately that really show the difference a few minutes or a change in conditions can make:

… can you see why I love it?! In case you were curious – the first two photos are three minutes apart, the second two are 21 minutes… and yes, I sat in my car and waited for the sun to come out from behind a cloud. Worth it? I think so.

Posted in Light

Lesson #1 – if you try and take a photo of a red red red wall in full sun, you will get a massive headache. Lesson #2 – you need to take the opportunities in front of you, even if it means ruining a pair of shoes by hiking across a wet, muddy construction site. Lesson #3 – you have an amazing family when they understand how you need to abandon them to go and take a photo of a purple wall. Lesson #4 – wear sunglasses for as long as humanely possible, or carry a tissue for watery eyes from too-bright sunlight. Lesson #5 – turn around and look what is behind you. Lesson #6 – stand your ground, and ignore the people who think you’re weird because they don’t see what you see.

Posted in Newbies

I absolutely love this first photo… so this before/after makes me a little bit sad – the yellow/blue combination was so happy and fun. Black and grey definitely don’t have quite the same impact. Change is change I guess – I have seen plenty of places redeveloped for the better, so I’ll just have to take it as it comes!

11/01/13 ~ 6:02pm

28/09/14 ~ 5:38pm

Posted in Before & after

I can’t believe I’m up to edition #83 of my newbies (and I still think that’s a ridiculous name) – this post makes a grand total of 568 ‘newbies’ (!!!) and as of today I’ve got just shy of 5,000 photos in my collection for 2014. Don’t worry – my hit and miss rate isn’t really that awful – there’s plenty of locations that never make it to a blog post. I also tend to take a few photos of each location with stupid manoeuvres like ‘oh wait, half-a-shuffle-to-the-right… no, too far… just back a bit… whoops, tilt this way, bend that way, rotate 0.1 degrees in that direction, lean forward, no… backward a bit… squat down, stand up, no… half way in the middle…’ – you get the drift? Actually the main one is more like ‘oh ****, I can see myself. Tuck your arms in, woman! Think skinny. Turn sideways, bend yourself into some ridiculous angle, and hope to god that no one is watching…’. Alternately (and just as regularly) there is ‘[glare at camera] no. that doesn’t work. try again. different angle. there’s a picture here, I just need to find it. no. walk backwards. forwards. landscape? portrait? no. argh! get it right!’ Yep. That’s my life. Believe it or not, it’s quite rewarding.

Posted in Newbies

Right. This is a feeble attempt to clear the backlog – so be prepared for a lot of photos in a hurry… and it’s pretty obvious they’re all taken around the same area! I’ve got a bit of a craving for amazing colours instead of neutrals and highlights, so once I clear this lot, be prepared!

Posted in Newbies
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