vernon.hyde's photostream  

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A retired librarian, and an occasional photographer, with a fondness for abstraction; for subtle shapes and colours; for the elegant simplicity of a well-crafted artefact; and for the often unnoticed beauty that can be found in the very small.

On a less pretentious note, I can’t resist characterful cats, demonic squirrels, obese wood pigeons, and beautifully coloured six-legged beasts that do terrible things to your garden plants. Human beings, with the exception of performing musicians, rarely get a look in, and I’ve never knowingly photographed a dog. (Not wishing to alienate any dog lovers who might stumble across my Flickr photos, I should hasten to say that I have no doubt that there are many strikingly handsome, or cute and cuddly, members of the dog family. It’s just that I have a preference for characterful cats, demonic squirrels, etc. etc.)

My early photography was done on film with a basic manual SLR. The last 15 of my Flickr pages are from scans of prints from the film years. I stopped taking photographs for a very long time, but was tempted back when I realised the advantages that a digital SLR could bring and, in mid-2007 I bought my first digital SLR, a Canon EOS400D.

I mostly use it with a Canon EFS 17-85mm IS 4-5.6 USM, a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM, and a Sigma EX 105mm f2.8 macro. I use this often incomprehensively sophisticated piece of equipment in a very unsophisticated way – the camera is almost invariably set to aperture priority, manually focussed, and operated in natural light. The depth-of-field preview facility is invaluable. I make extensive use of a tripod, and also of various photo-editing programmes – mostly Corel Photopaint. For my abstracts/photomanipulations I also use a variety of applications which offer me different types of effects filters.

Flickr has offered me a much appreciated opportunity to both share my photographs with a potentially vast ‘audience’, (some of whom have said nice things to me!) and to explore and marvel at the imagination and creativity of so many wonderful photographers (to some of whom I have said nice things!) All in all, a very pleasurable experience!