The Limbo Connection's photos with the keyword: pub

The 'Beer In The Evening' website includes a user review of this pub by an anonymous contributor remarking "the sort of pub where a woman may come in on her own, and feel safe, as long as she has a sense of humour." www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/21/21393/New_Crown_Inn/Bath

Nikon D2Xs and Tamron SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 lens.

When by chance I met this Italian visitor outside the 'Red Lion' in Avebury, she was on holiday from her home in Ireland. She was enjoying a glass of real ale and preparing a cigarette. Telling me about her day out, she opined that the Avebury landscape had its limitations. She said, 'You walked a bit, and saw a pile of stones. You walked a bit more and there would be another pile of stones'. Never before had I heard Avebury Circle described as 'a pile of stones' but she had a point, and she certainly expressed it amusingly. In days of yore the locals broke up the stones to make building materials, and so they didn't overdo the reverence and awe. They probably just said, 'here be a handy pile of old stones'. Photographed using a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AF-D lens on a Nikon D2Xs. Cropped and converted to black and white.

A pint of lime-and-lemonade in the 'Rising Sun' following a walk over to the ruins of Barn Farm. Nikon D700 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AF-D.

Like many former pubs built to serve a neighbourhood, 'The Castle' closed and was converted into apartments. It had been a friendly, vibrant sort of place where people would nod and greet you without your having to serve an apprenticeship of several months before being accepted. It would often be full and seldom dependent on just a few patrons. But things changed. A new road bisected the street 'The Castle' was in and it was less easy to get to it. Pub beer increased in price whilst supermarket bargains competed for the business. Social habits changed. Residential values increased relative to other real estate. Smoking in pubs was banned. A British institution was lost to many neighbourhoods and communities. Do they miss it? Probably not. Photographed using an Optomax 35mm f/2.8 M42 lens. Not the crispest of optics. Lightroom was used to put in many adjustments.

Posted eight years to the day since briefly making the acquaintance of these co-operative ladies enjoying refreshment and a smoke outside the Red Lion at Avebury. A lot of water under the bridge since that day. I converted the photograph to black and white after cropping and sharpening it up a bit. It didn't need much post processing, being taken with the Nikon D2Xs at 100 ISO, a setting where it reigns supreme (I wish I remembered this fact more often). Shot at f/7 using a 50mm f/1.4 lens with a shutter speed of 1/200th.

Nikon D90 and AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G lens. I made thousands of photographs using this lens. It was not the best made lens (plastic mount, for a start), nor much good at controlling distortion (useless in fact), but for sharpness it was remarkable.

Avebury, Wilts. Nikon D700 and Tamron 70-210mm f/2.8 LD SP lens.

Posted previously, but this is a brighter edit. My recent visit to Avebury on 4 October, 2018, reminds me of this scene photographed almost exactly three years before. The light at this time of year can be compelling if the clouds allow the sun to illuminate the stones. Nikon D2Xs + Nikon Series E 75-150mm f/3.5 lens on a TC-16A teleconverter.

Nikon D2Xs + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens.

Nikon D700 + Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 series E zoom lens.

Outside the 'Red Lion' at Avebury, Wiltshire. Nikon D2Xs + AF Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 lens.

Photographed in Avebury, Wiltshire, using a Nikon D2Xs with a Nikon TC-16A teleconverter and a Nikkor-H Auto 300mm f/4.5 lens from around 1971. The TC-16A is compatible with only a small number of cameras and although Nikon doesn’t officially recognise the D2X as one of them, it nevertheless operates successfully. The Nikkor-H has been factory AI converted, making a functional set of instruments never really envisaged to harmonise. The TC-16A adds 1.6x to the lens it is mated with, so in this case the focal length was 480mm. You really need a fast shutter speed and a bit of stabilisation using a rig this long. I put it on a monopod and the shutter speed was 1/1500th. Mostly you’re forced into using maximum aperture and ISO even in decent light. The results can be mediocre, but now and again you get a sensation of unusual packed perspective. Of course, perspective depends on where you stand, not which lens you use, but you might never choose a tiny area of a picture to enlarge and get this view.

Interior shot of The Castle, Mount Pleasant, Bradford on Avon, photographed with a Canon EOS 30D and a vintage Nikkor-S 35mm f/2.8 lens.

Once in a while you take a picture that you like but which has some frustrating deficiencies. This photograph of a pub interior dates from a period when I casually used a tiny Pentax Optio S30 digital camera, a very handy and surprisingly capable instrument yet with a user interface I found difficult to master. Recently I started using the application Lightroom and was thrilled to find that even with low resolution JPEGs it could dig out detail hitherto obscured and improve exposure and vibrancy by a considerable degree.

This is a picture of the interior of the ‘Rising Sun’, the one remaining pub in Christian Malford. It used to play second fiddle to the mighty ‘Mermaid Inn’ on the main road at the other side of the village. Then the M4 motorway opened and the main road was downgraded. The ‘Mermaid’ closed and the ‘Rising Sun’ somehow survived despite the calamitous decline of the traditional English pub. The ‘Rising Sun’ was built in the 18th century and was formerly a smithy. Its proximity to the railway halt which was in operation between 1926 and 1965 provided a sideline selling tickets for the Great Western Railway for some, but not all, of those years. The postal address of the ‘Rising Sun’ is Station Road, Christian Malford. This is curious because there never was a station in Christian Malford. The rudimentary timber-built halt was unstaffed, had no facilities, and no footbridge over the two short platforms. Even when there was a halt, the road was not named after it. Perhaps some strange romantic nostalgia influenced the street-naming authorities who wanted to convey a sense of importance to the village long after it had become so unimportant that even the ugly little halt had been taken away. As a matter of historic fact, the street on which the ‘Rising Sun’ is situated already had a perfectly good name as evidenced by official census documents of the second part of the nineteenth century. It was known as ‘Frog Lane’. Nikon D700 + Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AF-D lens.