See No Evil

Last week the whole of Nelson Street in central Bristol (UK) was shut off for a rather exciting project. Nelson Street is normally dull, grey and a bit manky - it's home to several nightclubs, a derelict magistrates court and the back of the police station - but someone had a good idea.
Bristol is well-known for its street art scene and Inkie, a local, brought the city council and street artists from all over the world together to brighten the area up. The whole thing was called See No Evil.
I missed the street party that accompanied the finishing of the project on Saturday, as well as the temporary boards which had been painted on, but what's still there is pretty awesome. I went down on Sunday and took a load of photos, so here they are in a neat slideshow.

More photos will eventually end up on Flickr but I don't see that happening for a while yet.
You don't want to see those anyway, there are loads of great ones over on Flickr.
There's a dedicated group, the Bristol group and Swishrelic's set, then there's the ever-awesome F***YeahBristol tumblrlog, and the project's own website.

I've been very quiet around these parts of late, but that's mostly because I've been being good and doing University work rather than faffing on the internet. The faff I have allowed myself is over at dichohecho.tumblr.com where I've been posting a picture a day (or as often as I manage) from my Flickr (which is also lagging a bit). I thought I should probably post something on here since Jess linked me :)

So, I shall try and keep this more updated; never mind that the last photos I posted were from September, I'll start afresh.

Here's Sporti:

He's an Iford Sporti 6 and makes square pictures on 120 film. In Niall's words the English Holga (well English company, they were made in Germany). He works a lot more reliably than a Holga though, no wrapping him up in electrical tape to avoid light leaks, plus a choice of apertures!

Of course he still has no metering so I have to guess (or use my ME Super to meter) but *so far* I've managed alright. Being a Sporti 6 rather than an earlier version he has double exposure prevention, but I don't mind too much. I've got my Lubitel(assuming it works) for that!

Here are some photos from my first film, shot on a cold, grey & misty February Sunday.

 Up in Kingsdown, I love these narrow streets that give you a slice of view down to the city centre.

Shiny old car, Kingsdown Parade 

 Ben on his bike

Me, taking a Bristol cliché photo

When I developed these it was pretty hot and I had a massive special and merrily started developing the roll with the chemicals I'd used for my 35mm films. Just as I started agitating the tank I realised I should have a couple of hundred ml more developer in there. Oops.

I hastily made up some more and chucked it in and carried on, for the stop & fix I just used the smaller amount and agitated it more than you're meant to. Amazingly they came out ok, you can see tide marks vertically on some of the photos, but clearly that's the aesthetic I'm going for, yeah?

They could still be horrible negatives but the lovely Niall scanned them for me so I got away with that one.
Next time I will get it right. I hope.

Bits & Pieces from September

One of my favourite buildings in Bristol - just a fantastic colour ; Tasty lunch from the genuine Italians in St Nick's Market, eaten by the river in Castle Park ; A little bit of eccentricity in the midst of the concrete mass of Broadmead.




Rustiness & decay, countryside style ; A view to make me nostalgic - the Somerset Levels ; Bringing the outside in - hops from the hedgerow with added wildlife.


A gaggle of geese (or ducks?) at the house of RWA artist Lucy Willis who does the most lovely watercolours, with a liberal amount of Venice. She has a great way with light. Mum & I visited her house when it was open as part of the Somerset Art Weeks.

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Hestercombe II

This has been a while coming, but here's the next installment of new camera at Hestercombe, yay!

See my previous post for some explanation of what Hestercombe is. I went with the lovely Niall.

View down into the formal garden from the round pond (with a Niall in)

Niall's photo, up into the water feature

False orange blossom, it smells lovely

Balustrade + Japanese anemones

A long rhene edged with stone

Lovely red Virginia creeper

More lovely creeper overhead

The central part of the formal garden, from above

Lovely echinops & a well-weathered bench

All my photos from Hestercombe can be found in my Flickr set. These were all taken on my new Canon Ixus 105!

Hestercombe I

Back in September the lovely Niall came down at the weekend and we had a little expedition to Hestercombe. There's a house and gardens but the house is private. The gardens are split into two parts; the landscaped valley and the formal terraced garden. I've been there plenty of times as it's near my house but Niall hadn't so we explored pretty thoroughly.

On the day we were there there was a "family" event going on. This meant that on one of the lawns there were a few stalls selling "gifts", a Punch & Judy show, a falconry display(with uncooperative birds), and a tent full of tasty local cheese, cider & similar products. We enjoyed the latter the most...

There are lots of walls like this

An old mill with a waterwheel

A swan in the mill pond

And pretty views.

Landscape gardens are generally cleverly built so that there are lots of constructed views. You can sit in a little Grecian temple and admire a carefully composed segment of landscape.

The swan the right way up.

Another, more tranquil pond

Wayfaring Tree, which we thought might be related to red currants

Nice view through the trees

And back up the valley

And that's enough for now, formality next time I think...

All my photos from Hestercombe can be found in my Flickr set. These were all taken on my new Canon Ixus 105!

September Stuff

I don't normally think of September as a sunny month, but it clearly can be. My September was spent revising, hanging about at home and preparing to come back to Bristol. I was still using my sister's old camera & not taking many photos.

Wandering around Clifton having a break from revision on a sunny afternoon.

Baking, the perfect form of procrastination.

And way of killing boredom when stuck at home.

My older sister and I were at home at the same time and we all went to Kilve beach. I seem not to have taken any photos of the actual beach (except maybe on film)

But there were pretty trees, I do love a pretty tree.

And a nice overgrown industrial relic...

That was a strange sort of jumbly post but it fills in some gaps. My *new* camera arrived in mid-September so no more Kodak CX7350 from here on in! (hopefully)
Next time: Hestercombe with Niall.