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Category Archives: Monochrome Images

Taeppas Tump Morris at Wallingford Oxford

Ladies Morris teams are a common site in the villages around Oxfordshire. In fact, it is said in some corners that Morris dancing traditions might have been lost had it not been for may dances and tunes being preserved by enthusiastic women archivists work over the past hundred years or more. This is a shot…

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Plum Jerkum Dancers

Here’s a Plum Jerkum dancer having a puff after running out of puff dancing at Wallingford Bunkfest in early September. Plum Jerkum hails from Warwickshire, their name being derived from a cider made from the local Drooper plum. Apparently it has the local reputation of ‘leaving the head crystal clear while paralysing the legs’! Here’s…

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Leica M9 Master Shots at Leica Fotografie International

For a recently converted Leica fan, there are a very few specialist on-line galleries where you’d want to have your work showcased, and Leica Fotographie International is perhaps the most prestigious. It’s the site I go to most often to be inspired by wonderfully creative images shot by Leica based photographers from all over the…

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Bronze Envy – Leica M9 at the Ashmolean Museum Oxford

Having missed the grand opening of Oxford’s new Ashmolean Museum some months ago, I wanted to see what the project architect, Rick Mather, and sixty million pounds of refurbishment had delivered. There’s no doubt that he has created a wonderfully light and airy space with a stunning, eighty foot high, glass roofed, central atrium that…

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Leica M9 and Leica 24mm Summilux Lens in Devon

Even in November, Devon’s fishermen are still hauling their boats into the sea to make a small catch to sell in the beach wet fish shop. This image was taken on the beach of a little fishing village called Beer in South Devon as a boatman was dragging a heavy steel hawser down to his…

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Nikon D300 Goes Racing

A pictorial, retrospective review of the excellent Nikon D300 camera body fitted with a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.0 VR telephoto lens and used in the context of a motor racing photoshoot at Snetterton race track in Norfolk. The review discusses why, even today, the thoroughbred three year old D300 is still a great camera for this kind of sports photography and offers some example shots as evidence of its capabilities.

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Moulton Morris Men at Towersey Festival

August Bank Holiday in England is sometimes a sunny affair, which helps enormously if you’ve spent the last year organising a musical extravaganza. For the past forty six years Towersey in Oxfordshire has held a folk music festival which has become a firm favourite with folk aficionados from all over the country. Always a successful…

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Cornish Engine House Ruin near St Agnes

During the cooling of Cornwall’s landmass, vertical fissures opened in the granite and boiling magma bubbled up through them from the earth’s molten interior. These intrusions contained many minerals, and, as they crystallised, they formed seams of tin, copper, zinc, lead, iron with even a little silver. These minerals could not be mined horizontally, so…

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Headless Climber at the Summit near St Agnes

Where’s his head?! Caught these chaps just un-roping having reached the summit of a steep headland climb near Saint Agnes in Cornwall’s mining coastal area. Very dramatic views from this area.You can just see the derelict engine house on the hillside in the middle of the picture. This was shot on a Nikon D70 fitted…

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Summer Palace – Beijing

This silhouette was taken in the Summer Palace, Beijing in China, quite some time ago. It’s one of the few images that survives one of those regrettable clear-outs of ‘old stuff’ that afterward you really wish you hadn’t done. It was shot on a Nikon F90 using colour film, probably Kodachrome. I found the negative…

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