Rock bang full of oysters

You've just got to love Portland Stone, with its distinct facies.  This is grove whitbed, a Jurassic limestone famous for being absolutely full of oysters.  I took this one, I think, at Green Park tube station in London. 

#100Photos #49

A very modern Library

Brum (Birmingham, UK) was very different from how I remembered it.  I'd been through the city a number of times, changing at the horrendous New Street station (the above-ground part of the station has been refurbished now, and is quite something in scale as stations go, but the platform areas are still gloomy and unpleasant). I'd been to Brum once, by car, to see Runrig at the Symphony Hall.  I'd never looked around the city centre, though, until one day I was at a meeting at the Library. I'm not used to this sort of architecture but I really liked the geometry and the complexity created from circles. I took this photo while we were out on the roof terrace at lunchtime.

Oh - and the Library, inside, is amazing!!

#100Photos #48

A twist(er) in the tale

We (the local geology and palaeontology group) were in a huge quarry In Rutland one Saturday. We'd been collecting marine invertebrate fossils in the morning - I'd collected enough fossil shellfish to make a decent gumbo.  There were mussels, horse mussels, clams, sea urchins, all from a warm, tropical sea in the Jurassic, all living in their own trophic niches.  Some of my friends found fish teeth – bony fishes and hybodont (peg-toothed) sharks.

During the morning, the sky had become more threatening, and we had to run to try (and fail) to avoid the downpour that came with a thunderstorm.  Luckily, this quarry has excellent facilities including a warm, dry room with a coffee machine, chairs and tables. It’s not a pretty room but it’s a very welcome one.  Anyway, this was a good time to have lunch, so we did, then we started to move out to another area with rocks and fossils deposited in a freshwater environment.

I was a little behind some of the others, as I’d stopped to chat to one of the group who was still eating his lunch.  As I was walking to join the others, I looked up at the sky behind me and saw this.  Being me, I took a quick snap even though I hadn’t realised what I was looking at – you don’t expect to see something like this funnel cloud.  It was only when I saw the structures in this photo on my laptop screen that evening that I realised what I’d seen!  It was rapidly moving away from us and it was pretty much over the horizon by the time I caught up with everyone, and they were more interested in looking down and at coprolites than the sky.  I was probably the only person in the group to have seen this, and I suspect that minus this evidence, I’d not be believed when I tell the tale!

#100Photos #47

Cloudscape: Sky doughnut

 A detail of a wider cloudscape photo I took one day; I was intrigued by this formation.  Yes, I've deepened the blue.

#100Photos #46

The South Bank

To someone more urban than me, this is probably a rather pedestrian photo.  I see more sheep and cattle than I do people most weeks, and I'm happy with that.  This, though, was a rather special night:  I had ticked off a major item on my bucket list, hearing Holst's Planets live at the Royal Festival Hall in London.  I was still in musical heaven as we left and I took this photo of the lights and colours of the South Bank.

#100Photos #45

Suffolk Coast

This almost feels like it should be painted or printed on canvas!  This was the Suffolk coast (eastern England) on a Summer's day.

#100Photos #44

Peppers on a market stall

I don't call myself a street photographer but I couldn't resist opportunistically 'papping' these peppers as I walked past them on my way to buy a cappuccino one morning (why, yes, I was on my way to the office. Why do you ask?).  I did buy some nice juicy plums from the stall!

#100Photos #43

Golden sands set hard

Well, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words - but sometimes you need words to tell the story of the picture. 

Take this one, for instance, which I took twenty years ago with a stupidly cheap and nasty APS camera.  I think it was my first or second post in the earlier version of this blog (hence comments from that time).

You wouldn’t know from the photo but standing in front of this quarry face was at the start of an adventure and the start of a new career.  It was my first field trip as a student, doing a science foundation course that I hoped would lead to a career as a biologist or ecologist.  Little did I know that by the end of the year I would be hooked on Earth Science and changing tack towards a geosciences degree!  

What you can’t see from the photo is that the quarry was an absolute suntrap and that after taking the said photo I promptly retreated to the shade and sat on a rocky ledge fanning myself with my notebook while I was trying to take in all I was learning that day.  You also won't see from the photo that the 'bird poo' you can just about make out in the bottom left quadrant photo is artfully faked, so we were gleefully informed, with white paint for a wildlife documentary!

Oh – and for those who are interested:  The photo shows an exposure of cross-stratified sandstone, dating back to the Cretaceous Period, in a disused quarry at the HQ of the RSPB in Sandy, Bedfordshire (England).  The interesting thing about it is that this was being deposited in a locally-shallowing sea while global sea levels were rising as a result of  temperature rises leading to 'Greenhouse Earth' conditions.

#100Photos #42

The sorry-looking Coelacanth

I grew up reading about the coelacanth and about how it had been rediscovered in 1938 when it was thought to have become extinct millions of years ago.  When I first saw this specimen, in London's Natural History Museum a mere decade ago, my first reaction was an almost child-like wonder.  Here in the actual flesh was this living fossil (well, this example wasn't living, obviously...).  It was a solid, primitive, hefty-looking fish and looking at it felt like looking at a living dinosaur.  Yes, I know...  It is fair to say that as a species it isn't an underwhelming fossil fish this month (if you know, you know) or any other month.

My second reaction was that it actually looks rather sorry for itself and this particular one is in fact underwhelming.  Like everything else that has been 'pickled' the way this one has, it has become pale and colourless over time. It really is a shame - and not just because live ones are the most amazing blue that would suit what seems to be my usual palette very well! Unless you know how special these fish are, this one isn't going to inspire you at all.  It didn't help, from a photography point of view, that of course you're trying not to photograph the reflections on the glass at the same time.  I didn't have a camera with me the first time I saw it, but when I went back to the NHM to spend a little quality time with the marine reptiles, I also made a point of looking for the coelacanth again.  If I'd started my bucket list at the time I saw it, the coelacanth would definitely have been on it.

Looking at the photo again, it seems only right to make it monochrome rather than leave the poor creature looking as washed out as it is in its tank.  It's not a technically good photo by any means but  this specimen creates deep if rather mixed feelings in me.

#100Photos #41