click photo to enlargeWhen you have a blog to feed you're always on the look out for photographs. The drive to find enough shots to fill the week's quota sharpen's one's eye tremendously and images can rear up before you in the most unlikely places. Today's offering is an example of this that I came upon when I was dusting in the living-room.
Several years ago my youngest son was a member of the team that won a national competition called "Target 2 Point 5 Challenge." This was organized by the Bank of England, and was for 6th form students studying economics. As well as a couple of prizes, each member of the team was presented with a trophy by the Bank's governor. It was this that I was dusting, a tall, engraved, prismatic piece in very hard plastic/glass, proudly displayed in my house. When I picked it up the sun caught it, throwing a spectrum on to the shelf. Curious, I raised the trophy to my eye and looked through the base. My view of the room was instantly fractured into multiple planes. I made a mental note to do that again, but with a camera, and continued about my domestic duties.
A couple of days later, in the evening, I took the trophy, placed it under a bright light source and examined it from every angle, pointing the LX3 at it with the lens set to macro. I eventually settled on the shot I've reproduced above. It involves reflections and distortions of, mainly, the trophy itself. It was taken by aiming the camera at the base and features quite a bit of text, as well as areas of light and dark, that made quite a good composition. When I came to process it on the computer it occurred to me that the image has something of the look of a Cubist painting. I don't imagine that Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, the two premier exponents of Cubism, ever looked through prisms to find ideas for their fractured paintings. But, after my experience with my son's trophy, I wouldn't be surprised to find that they did.
photograph & text (c) T. Boughen
Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
