Framedlight

We spent a few days in Scotland before we went on our big trip to St Kilda this June. We have relatives who live in Newport on Tay, the other side of the bridge from Dundee, and we had spent a very pleasant evening with them, so the next day thought we would visit the V&A in the city. The whole of the riverside in Dundee has become very run down and is now being gradually gentrified. The riverside already plays host to the Discovery, Scott's Antarctic vessel, and next door is the modernistic building that houses the Scottish Victoria and Albert Museum. It was a very hot day when we visited and the cool of the building was welcome. The exhibits in the museum naturally show the evolution of Scottish crafts and there was a big temporary exhibition on tartan which we did not visit. The inside of the building is arranged around a very large central atrium and an enormous shop area on the ground floor! I found the exterior of the building to be more impressive than the interior. We h...

After visiting the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition I thought I would photograph around the museums. I got some stability from the balustrade to take a few long exposure shots of people walking up and down the grand staircase at the Natural History Museum. After a must-do dinosaur shot I moved on to the V&A where I found the jewellery gallery a good subject for ICM (although most of my efforts were worthless), as was the 'War Horse' display they have on at the moment. There is a glass staircase in the jewellery gallery which is worth looking at. I had not realised that you are not supposed to photograph in here but security did not realise until I had nearly finished.

About three weeks ago I had an exhausting day in London, taking in exhibitions and making photographs along the way. I started in St Pancras Station using my camera with a Lensbaby, to try to get a different take on the well photographed set pieces. For those of you who have not come across the Lensbaby before, it is a lens with an optic which has a flexible base to allow you to shift the angle of the lens away from the plane of the camera to get selective focus. It is possible to change the glass part of the lens to give different effects. I have just bought the Lensbaby Three Optic Swop kit, which comprises, a single glass optic which gives more distortion than the double glass optic that comes with the Lensbaby Composer (the basic lens), a plastic lens to give Holga type effects and a pin hole/zone plate lens. I did not have the tripod with me so I worked with the single glass optic and the plastic lens, using an aperture, mainly of f5.6. I also took the 50mm f1.4 lens with me, to ...