Blue with yellow

click photo to enlarge
I've been thinking for a while of extending my series of still life flower photographs by using a couple of our "blue and white ware" vases. These aren't, I hasten to say, the classical Chinese pottery, but nineteenth or twentieth century copies, unmarked, probably made in Britain, but possibly imported from a Far Eastern manufactory.

When you decide to use a basically blue vase, the question arises of what colour flowers to place in it. The complementary of blue is orange, but that pairing always seems a touch lurid to me, unless the shades are carefully selected. I do like to see dark blue with a rich cream, though if it veers towards the white it tends to look a bit nautical. Dusky pink can look well with dark blue, and some greens please me when paired with it too, though I recognise that's not a combination that appeals to everyone. In the end I went for yellow, mainly because the Heliopsis in the garden are producing blooms in abundance, but also because it makes a good pairing with blue.

On this occasion I decided go for an all white background, but try as I might, I couldn't produce anything that I liked. The arrangement seemed washed out, with no "bite". I added a red/pink carnation or two thinking to give it a lift, but it just looked gaudy. So, I went back to my tried and tested black background and it all came together immediately. The outlines of the vases were just as clear as with a white background, but, more imporantly, the patterns in the white of the vases stood out: against the white background they had been outshone. The yellow of the flowers was also richer against black, and the green looked lighter. So here it is. I've lost count of how many of these I've done now, but, if you like this sort of thing, I can say I think I've got a couple more of them in me. If you're not keen on them - ah, well!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/5
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Country music, photographic genres and hoverflies

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Q. What happens when you play country music backwards?
A. You sober up, your wife comes home and your dog comes back to life.
Anon.

As far as music goes I like to think I've got an open mind. I enjoy rock, blues, folk, jazz and classical. Even a well-constructed pop song will attract my attention. But I do struggle with British brass band music, even though I have a Percy Grainger CD with his music played in this way, which I enjoy very much. I'm also not a big fan of country and western, partly for the reasons alluded to in the joke above, but also because it seems like the pulp fiction end of the musical spectrum. That said, there are a few individual songs by the likes of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash that I quite like. And, when it comes to song titles, country and western has the appealing ability of being able to mock itself. Many people will have heard If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me, but how about She Used My Tears To Wash Her Socks, or I Gave Her A Ring, She Gave Me The Finger. And what about the slightly surreal If The Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me?

As far as photography goes I am, broadly speaking, a generalist: I like to try my hand at most genres, though I favour landscape, architecture, semi-abstract, still-life, flora, black and white and candid. However, as with music, there are a few specialisms that don't interest me. My indifference to motorsports photography is probably linked to my disdain for fast cars. "Street photography" is something that leaves me cold: many practitioners seem to engage in indiscriminate machine-gunning with the camera in the hope of producing something of the quality of Henri Cartier-Bresson. That's not to say that candid photography of deliberately chosen people, situations and compositions doesn't appeal to me - it does - but street photography as it seems to be practised appears to be so much less than that. It's a genre that I associate with the rise of digital, though it must have existed in the days of film. The same seems to be true of insect photography. If you visit the forums you can hear people almost salivating at the onset of spring when the "bugs" start to appear and they can mount their macro lenses and hunt out the little blighters. This is another type of photography that holds no particular fascination for me.

However, that's not to say that if an obliging hoverfly comes my way when I'm photographing Heliopsis flowers that I won't take his (or her) picture. I will. And I did! As you can see above.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Thinking about the Zenit E

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The first SLR I owned was a Zenit-E known as the Zenith E in English-speaking markets. This Russian camera was manufactured in vast numbers - over 12,000,000 were made. My copy was bought in 1972, when I was an impecunious student, and I found it a great introduction to more "serious" photography, serving me well until I bought an Olympus OM1n a few years later.

The Zenit was a very solid camera with a selenium light meter mounted above the lens. The shutter speeds were B and 1/30 to 1/500. Film settings were 16 ASA to 500ASA, though I only used Ilford black and white rated at either 125 or 400. The lens mount was M42 thread, and the standard lens with this camera was an f2 58mm offering. All camera manufacturers have a name for their lenses - Olympus/Zuiko, Nikon/Nikkor, etc, and Zenit were no exception. This lens had the name Helios engraved near the filter threads. I often wondered why they chose the Greek word for the sun. Whatever the reason, I cannot hear that word without thinking of that particular lens.

Today I decided to produce a photograph that said, "summer", so I went into the garden and took a few shots of some perennial yellow daisies that fill a border. I didn't know the name of these particular plants, but a bit of research leads me to think they are a variety of Heliopsis. Noticing that the name, very fittingly, borrowed that Greek word for "sun" I was immediately put in mind of my old camera. Interestingly I can't remember what became of it. I still have the Olympus, but the Zenit is long gone. Perhaps I gave it away or sold it. One thing I know is I won't have thrown it away because it failed - it was built like a T62 tank and seemed capable of going on for ever.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On