Moochin’ & Skulkin’ – Derelict Thursday Challenge

Derelict Thursday Week 13
 
Former Bank of England, Bristol.

The return of Derelict Thursday, after our two week break as both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fell on a Thursday.

 Tag all entries derelictThursday.

 I shall now remain in Bristol beyond my intended period and from next week, HIMSELF has kindly offered to take over the reins of the Challenge, until it finishes at the official end of winter. He will run it the same way I have done. Both He and Freespiral have been avid derelicters from week one and he has produced some of the very best – and most popular – blips of the Challenge so far. He is also far more web savvy than me and able to understand the navigation of the new-look Blip better than anyone else I know.

I will still contribute to the Challenge like anyone else, though I will now have the freedom to drop a week or so, should I want or need to. This does not diminish my other activities on Blip, it’s just that the whole Challenge took off more than I probably hoped and it is a big task and a bit of a responsibility. The other regular and popular challenges on Blip change their host much more frequently and I did host for over 3 months. I’m glad that I thought up the idea initially and hopefully will always be associated with it in some way but fresh blood never did any project harm and I have got to know and trust Himself well over the year or so that I have (virtually) known him.

Moochin’ and skulkin’ around Bristol after midnight,as the clouds were clearing seemed rather special, following in that supremo and hero of undercover artists, Bristol’s own Banksy. With no tripod though I felt liberated shooting handheld with my very old Nikon Nippon Kogaku 35mm f1.4, on full-frame. There is plenty of dereliction fodder in Bristol though I concentrated on the city centre, mostly because there is so much about you don’t have to go very far at all for subjects.

I took a number of shots of this Brutalist style concrete monstrosity. I have a big brick of a photographic book about Brutalism architecture in cold war USSR (Russia) and the style is not dissimilar. It is heavily boarded up and one sign engraved into the stonework is ‘Bank Of England’. Online searches (not exhaustative, I admit) only come up with the original Grade I listed building, built in 1844, which is still in good use. This must be its bigger replacement, probably from the 1960’s. You might also see the two ‘Her Majesty’s Government ’ crests either side of the facia, near the top.  

Though I had closer images that possibly looked more Derelict, I always love architectural images that show awkward and unusual juxtaposition. The church tower behind seen erupting out of the top is only visible from a distance but that allows me to get the whole of the building in. I left the keystoning distortion (falling over backwards) as it was as I liked its angle upwards and because the 35mm lens is the least wide of wide-angle lenses, it looks fairly natural to the eye. Quite low in contrast, which I quite liked but which gave a poor black and white version. The faint ochre hue from the streetlights I desaturated a little but left the sky as it was.

The life-size Banksy-like black figure (I don’t think it’s an actual Banksy, but again, no real research undertaken) on the right hand panel adds a focal point and anchor to the shot. I also think that this wider shot is easier on the eye than the close-up in-the-face one I originally had planned for my challenge entry.

Technicals
       
I did tend to shoot on manual though, and at a standard 1/15 at f2. You should really only handhold this focal length at 1/30 sec of higher though. This old lens needs stopping down a stop to get consistently crisp results and the bright viewfinder from its very wide maximum is a real boon to manually focussing. To compensate for exposure, I upped, or downed, the iso. Not a technique I’ve heard others using but it does allow for the lowest iso possible. Though my 6.5 year old Nikon D700 has the same very high iso capabilities as the majority of the latest decent cameras, it is comparitively noisy to what is available now.