St Catherine's Hill, Frome

My third visit to the Artisan Mendips town.

Better LARGE 

First train, change and connection at Westbury. Frome (pron. Froom) is on a branch side track and few trains on the main Bristol to Weymouth line pull in - there's one at about every 2 to 3 hours, so you do have to plan your trains carefully - there's a LONG wait of you miss one!

It's nearly a mile's walk into town from the station and it was a sharp cold frost first thing, with the sunrise behind a bank of cloud.

By the time it had spilt over the top of that, I was already snapping the sharp, slowly rising warm glow of the local stone in the orange light. Unfortunately, it was also a time of noisy delivery vans, revving and clanging and banging and Frome has no bypass - all traffic, including heavy lorries trundle menacingly through the centre. 

However, I already knew where I wanted to shoot - and what. The lovely, enigmatic St Catherine's Hill. All steep and cobbled with artisan arty farty indie shops that are a pleasure to look at, but never quite seem to be open!

As the sun rose, a few more people walked up and down and one has to try and be a people/street photographer whilst not appearing to be a loiterer being a menace. I wore my flat cap backwards, as I often do, so looking perhaps a bit arty and trendy and I used just one fixed lens for the majority of shots. 

On the previous occasion, back in the swelter of July 2014, I had used the long end of my Nikkor 16-85mm DX zoom, a lot. It nicely bunched up the shop fronts, stacking them up, making the hill look steeper (it's still quite steep - walk up and down a dozen times and you'll see!) 85mm on DX is 127mm in full frame terms, so useful, roughly emanating that old vintage tele street favourite, the 135mm.

So, today, I thought I'd shoot as much as I could with my lovely gem of glass Nikon's G 85mm f1.8, sharp from wide open. I also used a polariser on it.

My previous shots on St Catherine's Hill have been looking up - here I am looking down. The contrast here was MEGA - to expose correctly for the foreground cobbles, the shadows were inky black. That's why you should always shoot RAW - there's always LOTS of info lurking in shadows...

So, I am glad that my previous touristy snaps this time, with this one at least, into a stab at a decently processed black and white, making it more timeless, more Paris or Yorkshire than Somerset. 

Huge thanks for all the interest shown in yesterday's adventure sunrise - I wanted today's to be almost a complete contrast - strolling around ancient cobbled streets with just one lightweight lens, no huge tripod - it's always a pleasure, Frome. Roll on 2018 for the next visit!

In EXTRA is a sign which shows the junction shown here, where there are three pavements intersecting - their traditional names are reassuringly obvious!