This afternoon I took Ruby on a long walk (2 hours) to test a new vintage lens I’d bought. Not another one Phil, I hear you shout.
Yes a Fujinon 55mm f1.8 prime lens with Electron Beam Coating. How cool does Electron Beam Coating sound? It was worth buying the lens for that on it’s own.
Anyway we found ourselves in Arnot Hill Park (the Duck Park to locals). I noticed a wedding party at the civic centre and decided I might try and blag a wedding pic to test my lens. The bride and groom were having a photoshoot in the pagoda gardens. I loitered around and while loitering I struck up a conversation with Martin, who was gardening in the rose gardens.
I asked him about the roses (I knew they were planted this year). He told me despite having turned the soil over and laid new topsoil many of the roses had blackfly. I told him I knew they were new roses as we saw the “community payback” offenders digging the old roses up in the winter. The supervisor of the offenders had told us we could take any old plants away and we had relocated them to our garden and had managed to save three of them !
Martin has been gardening in the park for about 7 years, initially as agency staff, but for the last couple of years as a permanent member of staff of the council. He’s an “Arnold lad” and took great pride in the work he did. We had a really good gardening chat about the various aspects of the park and also about how the park recycles the green waste from the gardens.
I told Martin I was a keen amateur photographer and was testing my lens. Martin told me there was an event next week that I might be interested in. The council were unveiling a statue by the park gates to “Arnold lad” Thomas Hawksley a civil engineer of the 19th century, who was associated with creating clean water supply.
I then asked Martin if it was OK to photograph him for my 100 strangers project. He agreed straight away and struck up a pose with his hoe !
This was shot at f5.6 , ISO 400. The Fujicon (which is probably a late 1970’s lens) has done a great job job. The photo was edited in Darktable and GIMP. The colour photograph was really nice, but I decided it was too busy with the bokeh greens, Martins Orange gloves and the Gedling Borough Council maroon / purple fleece. The resulting mono photo turned out really nice.
Thanks for being stranger 189 Martin.
Oh and I never blagged the bride and groom shot as they had gone by the time I had finished chatting to Martin. Although if you see tomorrows picture (that I posted today) you might get a nice surprise !
Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
https://www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers"
My own strangers can be seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/57144254@N08/albums/72157657822400168
