Promenade silhouettes

click photo to enlarge
I once posted on a photography forum an image of the silhouette of a bicycle (The bait digger's bike) propped against some old seaside railings. All the details in the shot were black, and they were set against the orange and purple glow of dusk. The comments that followed were more numerous than I expected, and quite a few were about the details of the bike, speculation about its gearing, quality and so on. What I learned from this is that the reduction in detail that a silhouette entails focuses people's attention on the details that remain to a greater extent than would have been the case if the image had been well lit.

Today's photograph is a case in point. I took it a while ago at Lytham Green, an open space next to the where the River Ribble flows into the Irish Sea at Lytham in Lancashire. It shows my favourite photographic model (my wife), sitting on one of the ornate cast iron benches next to the footpath that overlooks the water. Next to her is a street light with an old style lantern top, from which hangs a life belt and the attached rope. Apart from the grass and the late afternoon sky of February that's it. It's a shot that I don't think would work if the light had been behind me and the scene had been fully lit. I don't claim that it's a great shot, but I do think that the silhouette I captured has more interest, and that the eye lingers over the details longer, than would have been the case with any other treatment of the subject.

Of course, the Victorians knew all this, as did the eponymous Etienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), Louis XV's miserly finance minister, who discovered the power and interest of silhouettes as he spent his retirement cutting them out of out of black paper. So too did John Miers (1756-1821), the English painter, whose portrait silhouettes on plaster and card were much sought after for the likeness (!) and detail of his depictions. Perhaps, in these straitened times, when money is tighter, and people are doing more for themselves, the inexpensive art and craft of silhouette cutting will make a comeback to while away those dark winter evenings!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 96mm (192mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/2000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Clouds

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It's cloud illusions I recall,
I really don't know clouds, at all.
Joni Mitchell (1943- ), Canadian singer, songwriter, painter

Leaving people aside, what would you say is the most beautiful sight on earth? Flowers? Birds? A favourite landscape? Or perhaps a particular work of art? There is certainly beauty in all those areas, but, if pushed, I would undoubtedly nominate the loveliness of clouds.

In many parts of the world clouds are an almost daily presence, and in some areas are a constant that people try to wish away. Perhaps it's this familiarity that makes people overlook their allure. Yet, if you lie on your back on a summer day, with a fresh breeze blowing endlessly forming and re-forming cumulus clouds across an azure sky, you can re-capture something of the sense of beauty and wonder that you probably experienced as a child, when you took more notice of clouds. Scientists have systematised clouds into types grouped by the height at which they are found. If you know something of this then you'll probably recognise stratus, cirrus, cumulo nimbus, and possibly the many other variants. But an appreciation of clouds can exist independently of any knowledge. Their beauty lies in the way the light illuminates them and pierces them, in the colours that they show at different times of day, in the contrast they make with the background sky and the land below, and in the changing shapes that bring endless delight to anyone who cares to look. It seems I'm not alone in my admiration for clouds. An organisation of enthusiasts - The Cloud Appreciation Society - has over seven and a half thousand members! Here you can read what John Ruskin had to say about the beauty of the sky.

My photograph shows clouds over the sea near Lytham windmill, Lancashire. The sun is trying to force its way through the rain-bearing, swirling mass, but with little success. I emphasised the yellow tinge to increase the dramatic effect, and gave a blue complementary tint to the rest of the image. This isn't a photograph of the scene as it actually appeared to me - it is a picture I have created out of the component parts, and that I have altered to give a melancholy, possibly spectral, mood. I used a wide zoom lens at 44mm (35mm equivalent), with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f7.1 at 1/2000 sec), ISO 100. I dialled in -1.3 EV to capture the detail of the brightest part of the clouds and to give a silhouette effect to the buildings and people.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen