Alleyway

More ducks

Ducks

In the trees

Below: Two very different angles of the great trees in the middle of The Circus in Bath. The first one makes me think of Roald Dahl's The Minpins.

Finally

Iain enjoys a beer and a cigar after finishing his exams for the year.

Bath at sunset

More from the EF 135L. Again I'm stumped by the lens' performance, the images below are untouched from the camera. They were taken just beside the Royal Crescent, bellissimo!

Dinner with friends

It was actually a meal for 8, not two very hungry people as the picture might suggest. On the menu was:

Baked potatoes and cheese

Accompanied with layers of smoked salmon and a sour cream and chive dressing

Mixed vegetable salad

Including lettuce leaves, sliced yellow pepper, red onion and cucumber (It was supposed to be a chicken salad but there was no room for the chicken so it went on the side)

Gently boiled asparagus

Topped with scrambled eggs and a sprinkling of chives

Needless to say, delicious! Also, far too much food.

Clear skies

I recently rented the Canon EF 135mm f2.0 L to shoot an ice dancing competition in Bristol. Before I returned it I felt obliged to take it out for a spin (no pun intended), and spent the best part of two hours wandering Bath at sunset. About 200 photos later I'm stunned at the results, and left with an arsenal of photos waiting to be published.

At first I found it difficult to visualise just how much 135mm crops out of my field of view (having been used to 10-30mm), and spent a lot of time looking like a goon with a humongous camera and lens stuck to his face. I soon got used to how far away, or how detailed I had to look to mentally frame my shots.

The performance, needless to say, was incredibly impressive. I had read before that most L lenses keep pictures nicely saturated, and was pleased when this proved absolutely true.

Whilst the picture below doesn't immediately convey the lenses capability when it comes to colour, upon further gazing I feel that it holds onto the subtle changes in colour very well, especially the whisp of orange at the bottom left. Additionally, the colour in the photo is straight off the camera and hasn't been processed at all.

I liked it so much I decided to make it available as a wallpaper, links to download are below.

Clear skies

Download the wallpaper: 1280x800 1024x768

Plain white T

More from the visual arts society

Following on from the post, First shadows of summer, more work from Bath's Visual Arts Society.

More ice dancing

First off I'd like to thank Gabriele Kociok-Kohn for inviting me to attend the competition and everyone there for being such good sports. Gabriele was indeed correct, it was a challenging sport to photograph, and indeed a challenging venue as well.

Apparently this type of ice dancing, more like ballroom dancing, is less commonly televised, and differs from the easily recognised pair skating. I've managed to sort the photos from the event into two web galleries, available below.

Bristol Ice Dance 1 - Favourites

Bristol Ice Dance 2 - Best of the rest

Ice dancing

I spent the evening at the Bristol Ice Rink photographing an ice dance competition. Decided to rent a lens just for the occasion, and the EF 135 f2.0 L certainly didn't disappoint. My only complaint is the lack of a zoom range, the 70-200 f2.8 L wasn't available sadly.

Anyway, 900+ photos whittled down to around 60 certainly took a while, and half of them haven't been processed yet. Expect more to come soon.

Tandem

Summertime snooze

Team Bath Racing

The University of Bath's Formula Student team (website) unveiled their car, the tbr10, at the university's design exhibition yesterday. They will be competing at Formula Student's (website) international competition held at Silverstone in the third week of July, 2010. Click here (link) for more pictures I took of the event.

Anticipation

Left handed photography