Stuck in a hotel, far away from home things get a tad tedious and you go a bit stir crazy. After a while, everything becomes a potential photograph, and you start to look at things a bit differently.

After being awake for a goodly portion of the night due to the mammoth thunderstorm and bucket sized raindrops hammering the roof of the caravan for a few hours, I went for a rather early morning stroll to see what was happening.
On reflection, I probably should have used the tripod that was in the boot of the car, althought the clouds weren’t quite as dramatic as I would have expected (or hoped). I also learned that the sun actually rises a lot earlier than 4 o’clock.

This shot, is taken looking across the River Blackwater from St Lawrence, towards the two towers of the de-commissioned Bradwell-on-sea nuclear power station.

Bradwell-on-Sea is a village in Essex, England. It is located about 9 km (5 miles) north-northeast of Southminster and is 30 km (19 miles) east from the county town of Chelmsford. The village is in the district of Maldon and will be in the new parliamentary constituency of Maldon. It has a population of 877.

It was a Saxon Shore fort in Roman times known as Othona. The Anglo-Saxons originally called it Ithancester. Saint Cedd founded a monastery within the old walls in 653, which survives as the restored chapel of St Peter-on-the-Wall. From there, he evangelised Essex. In the 20th century, the village became more well known as the site for the Bradwell nuclear power station. It also has a very good sailing club and outdoor leisure facilities

The village has been called Bradwell juxta Mare, Bradwell-next-the-Sea and Bradwell near the Sea.

Celebrated Residents include Thomas Abel, Sir Henry Bate Dudley and Tom Driberg

During World War Two Bradwell Bay Airfield was a front line air base.

The village is on the Dengie peninsula.

Stuck here working, while outside ity’s sunny. Been watching the shadows crawl across the wall while waiting for some inspirational words for the documents I’m writing.

This, it has to be said, makes my eyes go funny – It may just be me, but the actual image appears to be an oddly shaped trapezium.
Image Copyright Dave Frost – www.davefrost.co.uk

What about the cornfield? – The traffic stopped at the perfect spot to capture exactly the image in my mind’s eye. The only problem was that some bastard had been out in the combine harvester over the weekend, and all I had was a field full of stubble…. Ah well, there’s always next year….

Not sure why, but seem to have become slightly obsessive about reflections recently. Haven’t touched the camera for over a week and cabin fever has not irreversibly set in. Been meaning to hve a crack at these things since the storm in a teacup shot (see my Flickr stream) to try and capture some clouds etc. reflected in the water. for the last two weeks the skies have been a monotonous grey, so as the sun attempted to shine this afternoon I felt obliged to have a go at this.
Regrettably, my cd tray only had this knackered old thing in (it’s got more scratches than a cat’s scratching post) and I didn’t get the tripod out, but went OK from a test perspective.

For those that care, this was taken hand-held, with the Canon 50mm f1.8 plus 36mm kenko extension tube.

So, with a view to practicing, I got hold of some black foamy stuff, and wrapped it round the end of the flash to focus the light in a narrow field rather than having it spill all over the room.
The flash was then attached to the wireless trigger set to 1/16th power and placed on the floor so it pointed upwards to the space where I wanted to be. I took a couple of test shots to make sure my position and the flash position worked OK (f32 was too dark, f8 let too much ambient light in for the exposurte time I wanted).

Once I was happy with the effect, I then stuck the camera on the tripod, locked the focus just in front of a black tv screen and set the timer. I had a few duff attempts where I hadn’t managed to get myself in the shot, but finally got myself in the right place. The Flash was set to first curtain sync, so as soon as it fired, I slipped out of the shot and then used a keyring torch (one of the cheapy single LED ones) to paint in some swirly light.

Empty promises

Post processing was just a bit of sharpening and a conversion to black and white.
Aperture – F11
Shutter Speed – 10 Seconds
ISO – 100

Things are getting desperate here on Canvey – The things you do to get out of wrapping presents ! – Found this novelty beaker from our cruise and couldn’t resist a few frames. (To see larger versions, click the Image)