Bicycle Belle

[Mick Fagan]

A study of part of my day to day bicycle, with the centre of attention being the bell.

Shen Hao HZX45-IIA
Fujinon f/6.3 250mm
13mm front rise
D76 1:1 Ilford FP4+
1/2 second at f/16½ (½ stop for bellows draw)

[Maris]

Ok, Mick, I think I give up on Bicycle Belle. Maybe I'm too literal minded to see a finely fettled bicycle as mobile visual poem.
Nevertheless I've come back to Bicycle Belle again, and again .... and again in an attempt to deconvolute its secrets.
Mick, if your purpose was to provoke intrigue and perplexity you have succeeded most generously.

[Barry Kirsten]

I'm tossed too, Mick. When I read the title I imagined I'd see something like 'girl on a bike'. When the image appeared I became intrigued and looked at it for a while without enlightenment. But here is part of the conundrum, that knowing the title forces the a certain expectation in the viewer to look for something feminine in what is essentially an image of a bike handlebar with bell. I can't see it, but I feel the joke

[Mick Fagan]

I must apologise to both of you, it was a play on words for a set subject on another photographic forum.

I meant to remove the last "e" on Belle after I had typed in the subject line, I didn't realise I hadn't done that until I received a notification.

The good news is that it did at least, sort of, make you look a little harder than you normally would at one of my images.

I've been doing quite a bit of photography around the house and not too far from the house of late; this is one of those around or near the house subjects.

My original caption was, "Mobile Glockenspiel". Glocken is German for bell(s) and Spiel is play in German, so the direct translation is "Mobile Bell Play".

If you do a search you can find out what a Glockenspiel instrument is in Germany. It looks like a small xylophone made from steel bars and usually small wooden mallets are used to hit them. Street artists sometimes have them, especially in Munich in the old parts of the city. According to my wife, Glockenspiel means "to play the bells."

[Barry Kirsten]

Ah well, nice bell anyway.