The Snow Business evening meander

I have for some time wanted to take a flight in a hot air balloon over Bath, and last year I finally got an opportunity to do so. It came about in a slightly unusual way.

As part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012, a balloon glow was organised on top of Little Solsbury (or Solsbury Hill as it's more famously known).

Living on the side of the hill, and being just a 20 minute hike to the top, this was something I wasn't prepared to miss.

As you can imagine, I fired off a whole load of pictures, but this is the one that helped me out.


(Canon 5D MkII, Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM @ 24mm, f/4, 1/10)

Some Months later, the owner/operator of the 'Snow Business' balloon in the foreground spotted this image on Flickr and asked whether he could use it in the company magazine. I was only too happy to help. I requested no payment (I'd already sold a couple of large prints of it, so was happy to let this go), but was promised some time in the future, I'd get a free flight. These things mostly never work out, and this offer was soon forgotten.

One Saturday, almost a Year later, I got a call. True to his word, there was the offer. 'Fancy a flight tomorrow?'

Thankfully, it was a glorious evening for it. The wind direction wasn't perfect, in that we didn't head directly over the city, but it did take us close to my home and rather aptly, over Solsbury Hill.

This is my favourite shot, taken just after take-off. It shows the River Avon from a few hundred feet above Saltford, near Bath


(Canon 5D MkII, Canon EF17-40mm f/4L USM @ 40mm, f/5.6, 1/640)

Rather spell bound by the whole experience, one tends to forget the plight of the people chasing the balloon in their cars in order to pick you up at the end of it.

Hayle Beach

It's a common fact that I love Hayle Beach.

Hayle is a small, North Coast Cornish Town situated on St. Ives Bay. The beach is an incredible 3 miles of golden sand (so the tourist-info sign says), stretching from Carbis Bay to Godrevy Lighthouse. More importantly, my parents used to live there.

Since they moved 'home' to Bath, my family and I haven't returned to Hayle for around 7 Years, at least until this Easter passed. We were staying near Falmouth and Hayle Beach was an obvious destination for a day or two beside the sea, especially given the wonderful weather we were blessed with.

With the tide out, the sea is a good few minutes walk from the sheltered cliffs, where it's best to set up camp. Ava and I took a stroll, so she could jump over some waves, obviously. On our way, I took this.


(Canon 5D MkII, Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM @ 98mm, f/7.1, 1/400)

I can't take any credit for the quality of the light - it's simply amazing, most of the rest I'm pretty pleased with.

If ever I was questioned as to why I shoot RAW, I'd point people this image. It was the middle of the day, and the harsh light can prove tricky from a metering perspective. There were a couple of lurking shadows, but the 5d Mk2 did a pretty decent job. I was able to adjust the tone curve to bring out Ava's eyes a little more very effectively. For me, this just makes the image.

I also tweaked the vibrancy a little in Lightroom. Ava's blue jumper was a rather lucky choice given the sky tones, and this just lifted the shot enough to really bring it to life.

I'm a little annoyed about missing her right hand, but this crop was pretty much straight from the camera.. should've got it right first time.

A little bit of history

Finding a starting point is going to be difficult, but I've settled on this. My Flickr stream has an album which is auto-generated by Dopiaza. Each day each identifies the 100 'Most Interesting' images from my photo stream. How this is worked out by Flickr is a deeply-guarded secret, but it normally does a pretty decent job of identifying one's most popular shots. Searching through these 100 images for a suitable starting point is certainly easier than delving into the 5,348 that currently sit in my photostream.

Anyway, here's the image. It's the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (RAF BBMF) Avro Lancaster Bomber (PA474)


(Canon 5D MkII, Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 220mm, f/8.0, 1/40)

This aircraft remains one of only two Lancasters still airworthy today. The RAF BBMF do a great job of summarising the history of this aircraft on their pages.
Anyone who has followed my photostream on Flickr over the Years will know that I thoroughly enjoy taking (or attempting to take) interesting images of aircraft, but this one is one of my favourites. There's a couple of reasons for this.

Technically, I'm really pleased with it. I was reading an article once that discussed the merits of using unusually slow shutter speeds whilst shooting motorsport (another passion of mine, I'm sure it'll crop up again). This inspired me to try out the technique. Panning can be hard enough in itself, but using sub-100th/sec shutter speeds make it particularly tricky.
The article suggested using 1/60th second and below to create really dramatic images, but this only really works with aircraft if there is some background context, in this case, the ground. This particular shot was take at 1/40th second. The Lancaster had just landed following it's display, so was travelling relatively slowly and I fired off a number of shots in my steady-ish panning motion. This one was the only truly sharp result.

The B&W was added in Lightroom, as was the vignette. I'm no longer keen on the vignette - I'll re-cut it at some point to remove it. Why B&W? Well, it was a pretty drab day, and the sky was uninteresting. I think it's adds more than it takes away.

The extra special part for me, is that my Grandfather was in Bomber Command in World War 2. He was a flight engineer in Halifax Bombers and survived to tell the tale. Hero.

I took this at the annual Royal International Air Tattoo in 2013. It's a fantastic event which I really can't recommend enough.

Welcome

Well, this has taken longer than I thought it would. I've been taking photographs for as long as I remember, and over the last 10 Years, I've been taking it a little more seriously. I live in Bath, England and I'm blessed with beautiful surroundings. Naturally a good deal of my photographs are taken in and around my City, but not all. You can see (and buy) a selection of my images at Photos of Bath, but that's not why we're here.

I've got too used to dumping my images on photo sharing websites (Flickr mainly), but not spending time telling the story behind them. This blog represents my attempt to rectify this. The intention is to spend as much time talking around the images, as showing them off.

Here goes.