Xmas in London

For the first time in over 30 years I spent Christmas away from home!  With my daughter tied by shift work as a nurse we took our presents and christmas fayre to enjoy the season in London.  London: my thoughts drifted back to the films and TV productions of Dickens's Christmas Carol and a snow laden city of years gone by.  How disappointed I was - it rained!  But after a wet Boxing day walk and a nice pint in the Southampton Arms in Highgate, I  meandered to Little Green Street across the road from the pub and captured an image that gets a little closer to that Dickensian London I was dreaming of before.

Little Green Street - Highgate

Handheld and at iso 1600, it is not the best of images.  I decided to apply a sepia filter and tone down the exposure around the street lamp.  As ever the light on wet cobbles never fails.

Snow, ice and sun

Last week the snow finally came.  There wasn't much and most of it was above the sky line, as this image of Marsden taken last week shows.

Marsden below the snow line.

After the snow came the ice - sheet ice - impossible to walk or drive on.  Then this weekend the sun came out, so it was out with the dog and my camera.

Marsden Moor

Shooting Range on Deer Hill

Weir Side 1978

In my last posting, I published a fairly recent image of Weir Side, Marsden in the snow.  As I said, I had taken pictures from a similar position thirty years or more earlier.  This caused me to root through my old chemically developed black and white photos to see what I could find.  I have to confess the negatives were not of a very high quality, poor storage over the years had left several scratches, so the image presented has undergone quite a bit of repair in Lightroom.  Here's the result:

Weir Side, 1978

This was taken over 30 years before the picture in the last posting. As you can see they are very similar.  The building with a white side was a Cobbler's Shop.  Over time it has experienced an explosion and is now a dwelling.  As you can see, the street lights have been changed to create a more 'olde worlde' appearance.

First Snow

According to our postman, the first day of winter (as defined by the Met Office) brought us snow.  Not that I was awake to see it, although I did see the melted results on the conservatory windows.  Still it got me looking through my back catalogue of black and white photographs of snow to present as my second posting to Monochrome Meanderings.

Weir Side, Marsden

This photograph was taken in 2009, looking down from Manchester Road.  I have a similar photograph from the late 1970s of Weir Side again taken in the snow, but at a different angle.  Although 30 years apart, without people and cars, the pictures are quite timeless.

Lincoln Cathedral

This is the first, and perhaps the last, post of a new blog that focuses on my monochrome photography.  If after a few months I still enjoy posting to it, it will continue.

Last weekend we went to Lincoln for an overnight stay.  It was my wife's birthday treat which included enjoying a performance of the Messiah in the Cathedral.  This present reminds me of the time when I bought a table tennis set for my sister's 12th birthday.  It was something I really wanted, less so my sister.  Fortunately, while Lincoln was a place I was really wanted to visit - my only previous visit was on a school trip in 1961 - Liz, my wife, enjoyed it too.  The Cathedral is one of the most magnificent mediaeval buildings in Europe and we were able to spend the Saturday afternoon exploring it and taking photographs.  

Cloisters - Lincoln Cathedral

This image was taken in the Cloisters.  With the high contrast lighting it was difficult getting the right exposure.  In the end I underexposed the image to prevent blow out of the highlights.  In the computer, the dark areas were given a boost to retain the detail.