Jardí Botànic de Barcelona

Barcelona again.

This was one of my favourite places we visited. High on Mountjuic,

(Barcelona's own minature 'mountain')

behind the deserted 1992 olympic park, tucked away on the hillside, there is the 

Jardí Botànic de Barcelona.

Apart from a dazzling display of interesting botany from around the world

(out comes the 100mm macro, and barely leaves my eye as I wander glued to camera from specimen to 

specimen

)it's worth taking a nice broad look at the really great landscape architecture going on. Harsh opposing lines built from white concrete and rust red core-ten steel, the path you follow feels to be cut and edged into a climbing landscape. For me this hugely complimented the riotous colourful beauty of the planting

(even in January - such flowers!)

and provided a crisp monochromatic counterpoint.

So this set takes both colour and monochrome abstract images, one after the other, each complimenting or balancing the next. See what you think.

As before this type of organisational decision and arrangement came during post process but reinforces the general feeling I had when making the two different types of image.

As usual you also can view the set on Flickr

As always cutting criticism and comments via email (tomglendinning.photography@gmail.com) or 

facebook

, are hugely helpful and welcome.

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Aerial Photography

Next set of photos from the holiday to Barcelona - on the return flight the evening light and clouds made a perfect setting as we flew over the Pyrenees.

1. At the edge, the calm sea returns as the sky.

2. Unnamed Clouds

3. Unnamed Clouds

4. Pyrenees

5. Venture Far

6. Unknown Horizon

Cirrostratus and other clouds

A post for the cloudwatchers.

I have been reading the Cloudspotter's Guide by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, and in a very geeky way been finding it very illuminating. It is sharpening my admiration of the beauty of skies, and in learning to classify clouds and their behaviour I am keener to photograph them and capture their 'ephemeral beauty'.

Follows are my efforts to capture the swiftly changing skyscape of high cirrostratus and cirrocumulus.

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This is midmorning Altocumulus Stratiformis with some thin low level stratus, AKA in this case: 'radiation fog'.

White Widcombe

I haven't taken as many snow photographs as I expected I might during this wonderful white week.

However this is the set I made walking on Widcombe hill behind my flat.  It's snowing right now, and I have a good view of the white dusted trees on the horizon blending into the heavy grey sky. 

All shot with my new tripod on the trusty 100mm.

Post is largely, as you can tell, black colour balance to a red tint.  A process most successful I think, on the first photograph: where the closer, darker band of trees is brought into relief with the layered colour. 

1 & 8 were taken with 'Layered Landscapes' very much in mind - it would be interesting to repeat this series using only true landscapes (no seas).  On the remainder I focused on the contrast or lack thereof which the snow brought out of certain elements, like tree-tops.

In other news the website is growing nearer to completion! http://tgproject.bmad-designs.com/ to see it in progress.

This has been a very exciting process for me.  (ALL compliments to Ani, who is rather marvellously making it for me gratis - I love it.)

The forced organisation and realisation of my work recently (the website and Boston's exhibition, printing landscapes for christmas presents) has led to an increased purposefulness to my photography which has been growing ever since the summer.  I am planning individual shots and projects more. Holding my aims in more clearly mind when wandering camera-in-hand is getting better shots I feel.

Enough.

Photo time.

Comments as always much appreciated.

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Layered Landscapes

'This set of photos aim to capture the myriad of moods of the ocean, by focusing on the layered landscapes of land, sea, horizon and sky. It is intentionally minimal in character, and features like waves and misty islands are intrustions demonstrating the 'found' and unmeditated nature of the photography.'

This series became the main photographic exercise of the trip to Pembrokeshire. 

I really enjoyed the sparseness and fuzzy layers of colour which came with the rapidly changeable weather on the coast whilst we were there. It lent a certain ambiguousness to the normally apparent expanse of the horizon. The views from the tops of dunes and cliffs felt as big as you liked, except when you gave it scale; with a wave, or shoreline, and then it served to confuse the sensation rather than clarify perspective. I set about to explore this idea with a multitude of weathers and different 'scaling elements', to see their effect and attempt to capture the emotional attachment I have to expansive environments.

I have always been drawn to photograph landscape scenes which feel blank but draw you off the foreground into the unknown, across the horizon and into space. (I'll make a collection of previous attempts to follow and support this post). 

It's based on a fascination I have with feeling small, and enjoying being a tiny piece of intelligence in an unimaginably vast universe. 

Star gazing, people watching, listening to waves, the flight of starlings. These all have the same quality: trying to experience and observe the smallest to the largest in all their incredible complexity. The overriding emotion is always wonderment.

Please tell me what you think, of the photos or the explanation - this is my first really conscious 'series', which I mean to continue, so feedback would be very interesting to me. 

Email: mister_tom@btinternet.com

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Pembrokeshire II

My selection of 'normal' landscape photos from Pembrokeshire. My landscapes are often bleak to some degree, focusing on dramatic cloud formations and the feeling of space as the forms of the land and sea fall away from you. I am trying to display the emptiness of these landscapes as a space for personal emotion, and convey the sense of peace which comes from feeling so small and insignificant, and therefore free to live and be without conforming to petty, short-lived social fashions.

See my next post for a more specific landscape series I made as the primary photographic purpose of the holiday on minimalist layered landscapes.

VIEW NORTH TOWARD ST. DAVIDS HEAD

APPROACHING STORM OVER 

WHITESANDS BAY

SUNSET ON NEWGALE BEACH