The Pompey Stroller...

Today, I was strolling around Portsmouth and Southsea, not Sarum.

The first direct train on a Sunday, doesn't even get to Portsmouth until midday, which in winter, means half the day has already gone!

But such brilliantly sharp, luminescent winter sun, so clean and crisp, meant I had to be somewhere a bit special and I always find much to photograph in this Naval (less now, of course) Heritage city. But train fares mean it's quite a rare treat...

I took my new Slik tripod - and walked around with it for miles - and for hours - and I almost didn't take these post sunset images, I had about had enough. My stroll had taken me from the Harbour station, via Gunwharf Quay and the Spinnaker Tower, then following the old walls to Southsea, via the rather tacky 'pleasure beach', the hovercraft terminal, up over the Common, to the Castle and then back through Southsea to Portsmouth city centre via Somers Town and then headed back to Gunwharf Quay, again!

I originally sort of planned to get the ferry to Gosport - which goes across this scene, here, to get dusk shots of the Spinnaker Tower, but as I said, I (almost) had had enough by this point.

I reckoned these, close to my subject, with the Nikkor 10-24mm lens would do. And I reckon that THIS will do, looks nice to me! Look in LARGE

I did try and use a 10 stop ND filter, which sort of worked, to a point, but by the time the tower was floodlit, the exposures times were stupid and impossible to guess right. So, this just uses a polariser filter.

Hope to get back to Pompey again, sooner than later, but I'll leave the tripod at home next time!

Hope you all had a great weekend and made the most of the brief respite in the weather here, today.

Spinnaker Tower is 560ft (170m) tall and visible over 23 miles away and so is considerably taller than my usual Salisbury Cathedral Spire (404ft, but which is just a little older...

Wikipedia

Website

As you can see in my Blip from a year ago, (below, right) we were in the middle of tons of SNOW!