It has a reputation for producing excellent bokeh. Certainly some of these backgrounds are interesting. I’ve done very little post-processing

Canary Wharf

Some views of the bankers across the river







Thames Path

Mainly down by the breakers







These were taken at shutter speeds of 1/60 and below, most at 1/30. I don’t think I could handhold an SLR with a fast 90 lens successfully/consistently at 1/30

Slightly disturbing, if a little over-dramatised. Loving the little guy to the right

Which is a shame ‘cos I don’t have £2.75k to invest in a new one and probably never will.

Bar code

I use an Epson Perfection V750 for medium format with inserts from Doug Fisher . Looks like I’ll have to use it for 35mm too now. Rats.

The good news is that with Vuescan, I can be creative. The image above is actually the 6 negs from a roll that I was testing a Summicron 90/2 lens. MASSIVE file, nearly a 600MiB tiff, but hey! It could be fun. There is a sliding scale of F stops on this image too.

Spot the books!

This is a strange photo!

I didn’t think I’d get anything from this roll. Handheld with the monster Nikkor 80-200/2.8, Tri-X pushed to 1600, little available light, plus a very strange dev. How wrong I was, I’m really pleased with this.

@BearspaceART

Outside The Albany. Uncle Trevor steals some of the limelight. As if he could…

St Paul’s Church, Deptford

I’m amazed this came out as well as it did. Nice shapes and lines

Funny what you find down The High Street

A year ago Nicola asked me to photograph her wedding. Not in a million years was my initial reaction… We’d never met, just exchanged emails & comments about the photos on this site. Nicola liked the photos, is local, and loves Deptford. She had the idea that following the wedding ceremony, they would walk from St Paul’s Church to the reception at The Albany, down Deptford High Street, through the market. Now that sounded inspired. I was interested.

“I’ve got a wedding photographer, I just want you to do your ‘Deptford thing’ down The High Street”.

How could I refuse?

So eighty wedding guests squeezed through the market following Nicola and Jimmy looking for a good deal:

Bargain!

My ‘thing’ was to use a film camera loaded with B&W rather than the ubiquitous digi. Perhaps a little bit more on this choice in a later post, it certainly made things ‘interesting’. No pressure there… But it was exciting. Me bouncing round like a paparazza, the response to the procession from the Saturday crowds and stall holders was incredible!

Let us not forget that once, all weddings were photographed on film… how times change. Respect to wedding photographers (all wedding photographers, whatever format to be honest).

Outside St Paul’s Church

A brilliant idea Nicola & I hope you don’t mind the preview on this site

Congratulations to you both.

What would Johnny Morris have said?

Not only Yertle either, since he seems to be having it away with Myrtle… unless he is trying to reach the moon because it is higher than him (see Dr Seuss). That could be Mack beneath him, about to burp.

These were no small turtles either! I didn’t realise they lived wild or got this big.

Let us not forget that we do of course have quite a famous river bank in Deptford…

Almost opposite the pond in Folkestone gardens I came across these seats:

Scary seats

Not the most relaxing place to sit. Looks like a torture chamber.

There were more alarming chairs as we went round the corner to the dog park on the Evelyn Estate:

Hung not thrown

Another for the Lartigue collection, except this one is as found, not thrown. The dog park, dry as tinder, was (unusually) chock full of dogshit. Even the dog lacked the enthusiasm to play in there today.

And today the area was also more like a chair graveyard…

Where chairs go to die

The wording on this post by Margaret McMillan Park on Idonia Street may be misleading :

Local food?

I think it is a sewer vent and it has probably been there since before Margaret McMillan and her sister set themselves up in Deptford and SE London. They may well have walked past it too, wondering about ‘HAM BAKE’.

Thanks to The Deptford Dame in the comments for pointing me towards Caroline’s Miscellany for more about this stink pipe.

Silly me though, I forgot to look behind it and read what else it really said.