The Limbo Connection's photos with the keyword: Benjamin Carter

This is the plinth supported by the pillars which once were chimneys on top of which Benjamin Carter's sphinx surveys the visitors. They file past with scarcely a glance.

Having bought the book in the secondhand bookshop at Lacock Abbey, I felt an unstoppable urge to photograph it under Benjamin Carter's sphinx which is supported by the plinth in the picture. The book is open at a reproduction of Evelyn Hofer's 'Portrait in Windowlight' photographed in 1969. Secondhand books are seldom described as 'used' or (worse) 'pre-loved'. I need to analyse why this is so, and whether it means books are held in high or low esteem generally. Photographed with a 50mm f/2.8 vintage Tessar lens on a Canon EOS 40D.

Photographed using a Nikon D300s with a 28mm f/2 Nikkor AI lens.

Nikon D700 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AF lens. Wonderful light on a clear early November afternoon. I went equipped with a set of three lenses released to coincide with Nikon's introduction of automatic focus (not counting the two specialist lenses made a bit earlier specifically for the F3 camera). All of them must be 30 years old plus. Here I used the 24mm which is simply the optics of the 24mm AI repeated in AF mechanics. Likewise the 70-210mm f/4 which had an earlier iteration as a manual focus zoom in the 'E' series. And finally the 35-70mm f/2.8 which I guess has had the hardest life of the three but keeps turning in a stellar performance.

Lacock Abbey: Benjamin Carter's Sphinx. Nikon D700 + Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D lens.

Nikon D700 + Nikkor 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5D lens.

Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire. In 1755 Squire John Ivory Talbot had the new hall built and some old chimneys were moved into the grounds as a garden ornament. The Squire got a mason called Benjamin Carter to carve him a sphinx to go atop his renovated Tuscan columns (formerly his chimneys). There is a myth that when there is a full moon at midnight, the sphinx jumps down from her resting place and walks across the park to drink from the river. 200mm f/4 Meyer-Optik Orestegor lens on a Canon EOS 30D camera.