Life in Lockdown – My Guitar Apartment.

Life inside my Taylor acoustic guitar – Who knew!! See below for how I set this up.

Back in March 2020 the covid lockdown hit the UK. I was still working then but we were sent away from the office, with laptops, and told we would be working from home from that point onwards. We were also restricted to only going outdoors for one hour a day (for excersize), we had to stay local and keep away from anyone else. That left me with a problem, what am I going to photograph?

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Thursday Doors – The Stage Door

This is quite an old pic. I took this in 2013 on a visit to the NJ Shore

This is my entry for this weeks ‘Dan’s Thursday Doors’. It’s a nondescript door that, on its own, doesn’t warrant a second look but lots of famous musicians have walked through this stage entrance.

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Vintage Lenses – My lenses paired with a Canon 5D MK2

Canon 5D MK2 paired with my Pentacon 135mm F2.8 – Superb when I nailed the focus, trouble was, I didn’t most of the time.

I’ve enjoyed using my vintage lenses with my Fujifilm X-T cameras over the last few weeks. It’s been really good to slow down, using manual focusing, and I like the colour rendering and sharp images my Auto Takamar 35mm F2.3 lens has produced (it’s a 50mm lens on my crop sensor Fuji cameras). The other vintage lens I’ve been using is my Pentacon 135mm F2.8 – known as the bokeh monster, with good reason.

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Monochrome Madness

Fresh sourdough bread, given to us by our neighbour (she’s a superb and generous baker). I think it works well as a BW conversion. I used the Gradient Map process for this image, outlined below.

Last weekend I submitted a few images for the weekly Lens-Artist Challenge, Colour vs Black and White. I rarely convert my images to BW as I’m mostly shooting for stock. I leave it to others to convert my images if they want a BW version. They can’t convert it the other way.

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Thursday Doors – Photo Challenge

Here’s my submission for this weeks Thursday Doors photo challenge. I spotted this note tacked to the front door of a house in the Horfield area of Bristol, UK. It’s quite common to see comical notes like this around our streets. I really like the huge tacks they’ve used to hammer the message home (see what I did there).

Posted for Dan’s Thursday Doors

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.

Black Nore Lighthouse, Portishead

Black Nore Lighthouse at sunset across the Severn Estuary.

Black Nore Lighthouse lies on the Severn Estuary coastline at Portishead, Bristol, UK. The coast path is a short walk from home for us and one of our regular dog walking routes.

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Vintage Lenses – Auto Takumar 35mm F2.3

My Auto Takumar 35mm F2.3 on my Fujifilm X-T2.

I’ve had this Auto Takumar 35mm F2.3 for a couple of years now but I’ve never really used it that much. Having been out and about and used it all day today that will be changing because its a superb lens.

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Vintage Lenses – Pentacon 135mm F2.8

My Pentacon 135mm F2.8 plus FX Adapter on my Fujifilm X-T2

Back sometime in 2022 I decided I’d try out a few vintage lenses with my Fujifilm camera’s. I’m not sure why. It was probably following something I’d read on the internet but anyway, I decided to give it a go and invested in an K&F M42 to Fujifilm X Adapter. They sell for £16.99 from K&F.

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Lens-Artists Challenge #334 – Cats and Dogs

This weeks Lens-Artists Challenge #334 – Cats and Dogs. Here’s a link to the original post and challenge set by Tina – Cats and Dogs. Here’s a few of my Cat and Dog images.

This cat we stumbled across in Greece had a bit of a David Bowie look with those eyes.
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