New from South Essex, UK

[JohnRostron]

I am a retired University Lecturer in Animal Biology & Conservation. As you might expect, my main photographic interests have been in wildlife, but also in the landscape of places that I have visited. I have been taking photographs for over 50 years, but have not given much thought to photographic composition until recently. Most of my photos have been just recording what was there. I include here a couple of what I think are the more interesting images that I have taken. Mainly this is for historical reasons, the subject matter is either no longer there, or is of very restricted access.

The Old Severn Bridge in the Mist


The Little Man in Reeds Cave, South Devon


I now use a combination of a Sony A55 DSLR, and a Canon Powershot SX260 HS.

[davidedric]

Hi John and a warm welcome to CiC. I see you have already started commenting in the forums, which is great because sharing and supporting is what we are all about. You sound as though you have an interesting background - there is an amazing range of experience and talent here too.

Like your sample images, especially the "little man"

Dave

[IzzieK]

A nice warm welcome John...Interesting shots you have here...the second photograph is your avatar too. I like that first one too if I have to choose between the two because mists and fogs gives that mysterious mood to a shot...and this one is really good in that although the end is practically covered in the mists, there is still some shadows left to the imagination of the viewer (me) to decipher what might be there...

[JohnRostron]

Thanks Dave and Izzie. These two were both taken well over forty years ago, before we had children. I scanned the slides more recently. The Severn Bridge one especially took an awful lot of cleaning up!

I took the Severn Bridge one after we had been fossiking (my term for fossil hunting) underneath the bridge. We actually found a Plesiosaur vertebra. This bridge has now been replaced by a posh new one.

The Little Man is what is known as a helictite. This is a column (where a stalagmite meets a stalactite) that forms where there is an air current. The current forms the strange shapes. This one was right at the end of an extensive cave system and was just a few centimetres tall. The cave is now closed to all but a few experienced cavers each year, so the chances of photographing this again are small. The Pengelly Cave Centre, which manages the caves, uses my Little Man photo on its website.