Elevation

Although we live in Southampton, for reasons too complicated to explain we also own a flat in Bristol. Lucky us: it's a pleasant modern flat on the top floor of a low-rise block that overlooks the Avon Gorge, and the picture above shows the view from the kitchen window, surely one of the best breakfast-time vistas to be had anywhere. I can spend hours just watching the tidal river ebb and flow, the clouds passing, the buzzards circling above Leigh Woods on the far bank, and the occasional peregrine falcon throwing the other birdlife into fits of hysteria. If you ignore the busy traffic on the Portway down below (easy enough if you have double glazing) it has a certain primal quality, a landscape in which bears, wolves, and hunter-gatherers would not be out of place. At night you sometimes see the lights of daredevil mountain bikers braving the trails that descend through Leigh Woods to the water's edge.

Because a kink in the Gorge means we look more or less due south across it, the change of light from dawn on the left to dusk on the right is, for a photographer, a pure delight. Even though we're only there intermittently, the neighbours must surely be accustomed by now to the lunatic who leans out of the window at all hours clutching a camera. Being in an elevated spot, we get to see some spectacular sights invisible to those on ground level. It's one of the pleasures of life in a flat, as I know from my adolescent years spent on the fourth floor of a council block in Stevenage, gazing out from my bedroom across the town centre, due west towards the motorway and the countryside beyond. Elevation opens out the perspective, and there are few landscape photographs that couldn't be improved by finding higher ground to stand on (or, failing that, a stepladder). Or, indeed, a drone, for that buzzard's eye view.

The window-cleaner's hose has made patterns in the dewy grass

We drove over to Bristol on Sunday as we had to be there for a plumber, and also to enjoy a few days away before the new lockdown began on Thursday. Sunday and Monday were washouts, however: a deep low sent alternating bands of sunshine and truly torrential rain sweeping up the Gorge, which was spectacular to watch but not really ideal walking weather, even with a freshly waterproofed coat. High pressure came in on Tuesday, though, bringing with it the classic conditions for ground-frost and fog, and early on Wednesday morning a pink, dawn-lit snake of mist was winding up the Gorge, as if a low-flying plane had zoomed through, leaving a con-trail behind.

Unfortunately the extreme lighting temperature contrast between east and west meant that the colours in my attempted "stitched" panorama were too weird to fix, so I decided to render it in monochrome. With a bit more work – those highlights need lifting for a start – I think it could still be quite effective, even though the distortion is quite bad. It's a shame about the colours, though: one of these days I will remember that digital cameras have a built-in "sweep panorama" function. I should probably figure out how it works and give it a few tries before the next real opportunity presents itself. Or maybe even start using a tripod, establish the nodal point [1] of some lens and camera combinations, and do some proper stitched panoramas? Maybe, but don't hold your breath...

Back in the days of film I did have a bit of a fling with panoramic imaging: I actually owned one of those Russian swing-lens Horizont cameras, that records a 120° view onto 35mm film. I think I was probably inspired by Josef Koudelka's adventures with a panoramic camera. One of these days I should look out the negatives and scan a few. More to the point, in the early days of digital I did have a brief enthusiasm for some panoramic stitching software (Panorama Factory, I think it was) but, as you can imagine, getting suitable images is very dependent on the use of a tripod and, well, that's just not the way I work. My real successes were few and, besides, that exaggerated panoramic look quickly becomes its own cliché, and tends to dictate the sort of subject matter that is suitable, unless you are a Koudelka-scale genius.

In the end I realised that what I really liked was simply the wide, narrow format, such as the 16:9 ratio offered by a camera as portable as the tiny Panasonic LX3, which is not at all the same thing as a panorama. Or, when it came down to it, I thought, why not just place adjacent photos into a single frame, without any attempt to "stitch" them together, as I did with two pictures from another very rainy day in the Bristol flat? It seems somehow more honest, and also consciously incorporates an element of time passing into the image, something usually missing from a still photograph.

From rainy day to washout in two frames

Here's another using the same approach, from further down the Avon Gorge, on a day when the sun was alternatingly out, revealing the warm autumnal tones, then back behind the clouds, bringing out the cooler colours:

I like that a lot but, even so, a little more attention to parallax / nodal points and all that wouldn't have gone amiss: it was a lot of work getting the two halves to match up properly. Contrary to popular belief, I do own a tripod (not to mention a "nodal slider" attachment!) and might even consider getting it out of the broom-cupboard one day soon. Probably.

1. Don't understand the importance of nodal points / entrance pupils in panoramic photography? If you're curious, or having problems getting to sleep, let this guy explain it to you... Good Lord, why don't these self-appointed explainers on YouTube ever write themselves a proper script, and stick to it? This is surely no more than a four-slide PowerPoint presentation, six at most. Mind you, I've endured many a session where some windbag took 20 minutes to get through a single, four bullet-point slide...