Howard Somerville's photos

The roads through Burnham Beeches, like this one, were until recently public highways and used by through traffic. Mercifully, they are now closed to vehicles.

Taken at 8:35 pm from Hinksey Heights, 2 miles from City Centre.

Taken in August 2008 with a 1963 Beauty Lightomatic rangefinder camera, yellow-green filter, XP2. Chromogenic film, which tolerates as much as 3 stops of overexposure without significant loss of quality, comes into its own with subjects like this with a large exposure difference between the foreground and sky. Here, exposing for the foreground still left full tonal separation in the sky and clouds. On conventional blank and white film, they would have 'blown'. But now in 2019 I see little point in using a film camera. Today, image quality from the best digital cameras exceeds that obtainable from 35mm, and with RAW files and exposure bracketing and tonemapping, the HDR of digital is almost unlimited. Coloured lens filters (for B&W shots) cannot be used with digital sensors, but their effects - and even the pictorial qualities of film, where these are desired - can easily be reproduced in post-processing.

My first good colour slide (Kodachrome II) The 14th Century building was home to the Almoner of the Benedictine Abbey founded at Evesham in the 8th Century.