Cumberland Basin and Scouring

By shendyNo Comments
Note for those unfamiliar with Bristol: Cumberland Basin is the bit of the Bristol harbour system that sits between the Floating Harbour (where the historical docks are/were) and the tidal River Avon that heads out under Clifton Suspension Bridge and into the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth (where the modern docks are). This is not the same Avon as Stratford-upon-Avon - that joins the Severn at Tewkesbury. Cumberland Basin normally looks like this. A few weeks ago someone at work mentioned that Cumberland Basin was empty, which sounded unusual so I quickly googled to see what was going on - and apparently it's something that happens quite regularly, with a schedule published on the harbourmaster's website.It's all part of the process to stop the Floating Harbour from getting silted up - they let the Cumberland Basin empty with the tide and then open sluice gates to allow water from the Floating Harbour out, which takes silt with it. The process is called "scouring". Given...
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Archery

By shendyNo Comments
Back in January I took up archery - it's something I've quietly fancied for a few years (see below) and I finally got round to doing something about it when a leaflet dropped through the door over Christmas.I'd only tried it a couple of time before - once on a Warner Holidays break on the Isle of Wight back in 1994 (see the first photo in the gallery below) and then at Nudefest in Cornwall in 2013. So yes, a lot of my previous experience at archery was in the buff - and I am duty-bound to point out that I won the competition at Nudefest - I even have a trophy and can therefore claim to be Best Naked Archer in Britain 2013! I do have photos of that too, but well, no. Chatting with the club organisers at North Bristol Archery, I offered to take some photos for their website, so last week I went along with my bow...
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Using A Vintage Camera

By shendyNo Comments
One of the cameras I inherited from my father was his parents' camera - an Ansco No.3, which is now somewhere in the region of 100 years old.I'm pretty sure that this is the camera my dad took with him when he cycled through the Alps in 1953, which was a couple of years before he bought his own camera. It's a lovely old folding camera, but with some surprises. It has movements - rise and fall and some swing.It takes 118 rollfilm (more on that in a moment) but also has a separate back for sheet film - quarter plate, for which there are also a dozen (heavy) dark slides.You can see on the photo below that it even has a small built-in stand that folds out - there's another for when you use it landscape. It's always looked in good condition (although I have had to re-stick the leather(ette) cover, and the shutter speeds seemed sensible. The big blocker has...
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Concorde

By shendyNo Comments
Given that this is the 50th anniversary of the first Concorde flight, I thought it would be appropriate to share some photos from its last landing in Bristol, in November 2011. A work colleague lived backing on to Filton airfield, and they were all given free tickets to see the landing from the airfield itself - he very kindly offered me one on the ground that I took photos. Before it came in to land, it did a flypast of the airfield, and the shot below is all I have of that - I took that one photo and the camera battery ran out. Now remember that this was back in the days of film, when camera batteries lasted for at least a year, so it was quite an unexpected event. Panic hit - have I taken a day off work, used a friend's ticket and ended up with just 1 photo, and that not even of the landing? Fortunately I can be...
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