Thumbs Up!!

...from Mick, the Library security guy...

To say that I was blown away - and delighted - by the response to my Stormy Sky New Forest mono landscape Blip of yesterday, which is still, right now, at the top of the Spotlights, is a bit of an underestimate!. I liked the image and thought it quite nice but some extremely nice things were said! HUGE thanks to ALL!

So, how do I follow that? Well, I don't - and can't! Not really.

After all my neat and precise tripod-bound blips of late (yesterday's was not taken with a tripod though) I wanted something far more spontaneous and candid this morning, for today's.

So, initially my aim was for some very wet still dark reflection shots in the city centre, or possibly some blurry colourful movement shots. Except, no rain, no standing water and pavements as dry as a bone (well, almost!).

There was also a bone-crunchingly cold and blustery wind and I forgot my scarf. In my pockets and lens pouch, I had taken 16mm fisheye, 35mm f1.4, Nikkor 16-85mm (excellent VR for those movement shots) and the very old, all metal and totally manual Nikkor 135mm f2, in case I was in a position to get some candid portraits.

No portraits were found, so none taken but just as I was passing the library (on way to coffee shop for a warm up and re-think!) my mate Mick was doing something behind the glass going along the library. He's a photographer as well (Canon, the fool!!) and we get chatting every time I pop in to rent a DVD or am photographing an exhibition preview. He has built a studio in his garage and is always going on about his next purchase for it and the next big lens he's going to invest in!

Anyway, he's actually above me and there's stencilled lettering on the glass. I tap on the window and immediately aim for a snap of him, hurriedly yanking the very heavy and long focus on the manual lens. The first had his thumbs in focus and fortunately he held the pose til I got this one a millisecond later. I thumbed up in return and went home. The library wasn't due to open for at least another hour...

The light was awful, and underexposed as it was against the light, the only source being the overhead fluorescents from inside and above. The result has been one of my most time-consuming edits - still far from ideal but hopefully I've done him some justice and I was actually really pleased that I had actually got a portrait and a sharp one at that, when you consider how shallow the depth of field is, giving the maximum f2 aperture used. He does actually have almost white hair and fair eyelashes so I haven't overexposed these parts!

So, here is Mick, quiet, calculated but opinionated and one that you really wouldn't want to cross, giving a chummy thumbs up on a miserable winter's morning. I hope he has a good day as he had kind of made mine.