Wet café chairs, apps and art filters

click photo to enlarge

I don't watch many of the TV programmes that people who know me expect me to see. The reason is that I'm prepared to devote only a very limited time to television. So, by the time I've watched, over the course of week, a couple of films, a couple of old, made-for-TV comedy shows, and one or two other programmes, I'm done. With that amount of viewing I've used up the time I'm willing to give to television, and good or bad, I won't watch more. To do so would deprive me of the time I want to give to my other interests and pursuits.

For the same reason I'm currently unwilling to join the majority of the population of Britain in owning a smartphone. It's not that I'm a Luddite, or that I don't think they have some uses above those offered by a traditional mobile phone: they do (though fewer than many would have us believe). The fact is I spend quite a chunk of my week at a computer screen and extending this further via the tiny display of a smart phone would - you've got it - "deprive me of the time I want to give to my other interests and pursuits". However, I'm enough of a realist to accept that the way mobile communications are going the day may come when I will need (rather than want) one.

There is one thing about smart phones that I do rather like, and that is the greater capabilities of the built-in cameras. They are not yet as good as even a basic compact camera, but for some purposes they are good enough. Moreover, currently appearing on the market is the Nokia Pureview 808 with a 41 megapixel camera outputting 2/3, 5 and 8 megapixel images, incorporating a useful zoom facility, offering the opportunity to achieve bokeh, and the capacity to record HD 1080p video. These are the sort of specifications that enthusiast photographers will find appealing. The images that I've seen look very good indeed.

Of course, there is a downside to smartphone cameras and that lies in the "apps", especially the "Instagram" variety that offer "effects" that people find irresistible. I came across this article on PetaPixel recently - "Iconic Photos "re-taken with Instagram" - and concluded that such effects, by and large, represent a pretty good method of ruining a shot whilst at the same instantly consigning it to a big subset of other smartphone shots. All of which brings me to my wet café chairs. After converting from colour to black and white I applied digital versions of traditional processing effects - increasing contrast, burning and dodging. In other words it was hand-crafted, insofar as that is possible with a computer! So why do I think it looks like a commercial pin-hole or Holga effect? It seems that digital camera "art filters" and smartphone "apps" that include both these options are starting to impinge on our consciousness and affect how we see photographs.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 99mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Looking back No. 1

click photo to enlarge

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be - it's much worse!

Two of the principal culprits for the current obsession with looking over our shoulders at the past are multi-channel television and the internet. In theory the more TV channels you have, the more choice you have, and the better quality viewing you experience. In practice the expanded air time is filled with repeats of recent programmes or re-runs of ancient ones, because it costs so much less. The internet, via the likes of YouTube and fan sites, enable the nostalgic to indulge the most obscure tastes in music, comedy or drama. You like Bagpuss - there he is, Mouseorgan and all. The Goon Show - easy to find. Obscure and not-so-obscure 1960s rock groups abound, and on the back of this new exposure polish their Zimmer frames and hit the road again. Not so long deceased pop groups are revived after ever shorter periods out of the public eye - was it only 10 years ago that the Spice Girls and Take That were assaulting our ears with their vacuous ditties, and why are they doing it again? Oh yes, the money!

There is an upside to the ready availability of the past. It means you can find a better alternative to today's offerings! A while ago, when the evening's TV offered little but reality twaddle, I discovered the Pogues' excellent version of the Ewan MacColl song, "Dirty Old Town" on YouTube - a Salford man's piece from 1956, covered by an Irish band in 1985, and introduced to me in 2007! But this recycling of the past also means that the current producers of popular culture don't have to try as hard. If pop songs and TV shows are no longer the disposable fodder that we once thought them to be, then there's no need to make as much new stuff, and it doesn't have to be as good - because it can easily be leavened with sprinklings of yesteryear's output.

All of which leads me to this photograph that I took at the end of September. I was looking back through the images that I took during my absence from blogging and this photograph of St Andrew's church at Sempringham, Lincolnshire, caught my eye. This building is the only above-ground remains of Sempringham Priory, the monastery where, around 1130, St Gilbert started the sole English-founded monastic order, the Gilbertines. The order was unique in admitting both men and women, and, far from ensuring its popularity, this fact may have accounted for its relatively poor acceptance!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: Off