Some of my best images I think of as "incidental photographs". That is to say, they came about when I was engaged in other business. In other words, I hadn't gone out with the express intention of taking photographs, I had other things in mind, but I had a camera with me "just in case". If I'm visiting my family in another part of the country I carry one. Shopping in town or city, one is with me. When I take the car for its service a camera is in my pocket. If I ... well you get the picture. And so do I!! It's an often repeated truism that the best camera is the one you have with you and, by and large, I've learnt my lesson on that score.
I've done this for more years than I care to remember, and my "go everywhere and anywhere" camera has always been a reasonable quality, small, pocketable device. It's currently a Sony RX100. Prior to that it was a Panasonic Lumix LX3. I had the Sony with me recently when we popped into Spalding for some shopping and I took a photograph of the Sessions House, a stone-built, castle-like, court building of 1842 by Charles Kirk senior, as the low sun illuminated the leaves of a nearby tree. I also had it when we visited Southwell in Nottinghamshire one evening and we came upon the Minster, a Norman and later church of cathedral size, floodlit in its leafy precinct. Of course there is the odd occasion when I forget to carry it, and it's then that opportunities for a photograph are seen and lost. And, like the fisherman who loses the big fish, the lost photograph takes on ever more impressive qualities the more you think about what might have been. Neither of these photographs are ever going to feature in my top ten or even top one hundred photographs. But both have qualities that I like and that, I think, make them good enough to post on the blog.
photograph and text © Tony Boughen
Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13.6mm (37mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/8 sec
ISO: 2000
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
