In my post about Wordless Wednesday, I explained that I will be providing a backstory of each photo I posted in separate blog articles. I decided to do this after every four Wordless Wednesday posts, and this article will be the first of many in the future.
Founders Garden
The Founders Garden is "dedicated to the individuals and organisations that founded the original Springfields Gardens in 1966. It has been planted with perennials, shrubs and some trees that were lost during the redevelopment of the gardens in 2004. It features a stunning rose arch that leads to the centre of the garden." (Source: Springfields Festival Gardens website)
Earlier in the summer we went to our favourite outlet shopping centre, Springfields to buy school shoes for our eldest son. Afterwards, we took a stroll at the adjacent gardens and I took this photo using my 360 camera, the Xiaomi Mi Sphere 360 panoramic camera (available at Amazon UK). I converted the photo into a little planet and tried to be smart by further converting it to a cinemagraph using the Android app Zoetropic. A cinemagraph is a still photograph in which a minor and repeated movement occurs, forming a video clip.
Unfortunately, the cinemagraph did not work in this blog but check out the photo's Instagram version and you will see the clouds moving around the 'little planet'.
Peterborough Cathedral cloisters
Again, I took this photo using my Xiaomi Mi Sphere 360 panoramic camera (available at Amazon UK) and later converted into a little planet.
According to Wikipedia, a cloister (from Latin claustrum, "enclosure") is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church, commonly against a warm southern flank, usually indicates that it is (or once was) part of a monastic foundation, "forming a continuous and solid architectural barrier... that effectively separates the world of the monks from that of the serfs and workmen, whose lives and works went on outside and around the cloister."
One Saturday last June, we joined other Catholic parishioners in the city for the One Mass and International Celebration inside Peterborough Cathedral. Afterwards, there was food to share and the chance to socialise with the other parishioners at the Cloisters.
Red rose
This photo was taken in 2014 and was one of my earliest close-ups, showing details of a single red rose. I took the shot at night with just the ceiling fluorescent light as light source. I later tweaked the colour and light in Gimp 2.8. This is among my favourite photos and also one of the most viewed on my Flickr account with 3,484 views and counting.
What makes this shot even harder to take is that I used an old Olympus PEN E-PL2 camera with a much older legacy lens, Minolta Rokkor MD 50mm f1.4 mounted on another old relic, a Vivitar 2x macro teleconverter for Minolta MD legacy lenses. I bought the camera and the macro lens set-up over at eBay since I cannot afford (until now) a digital macro lens.
Cean
This is my first proper multiple exposure shot, a portrait of my eldest son in late 2013. He was not happy during this shoot as he was busy in his computer game. You can see it in the pout he's giving me when I took the shot. This was a good thing actually as it turned out to be quite artistic. I first posted this photo with some more description in one of my older blogs, pinoyborian photography.
This photo was taken using my old Olympus PEN E-PL1 camera and Olympus mZuiko 14-42mm lens.
