Tower Bridge seen from London Bridge

click photo to enlarge
One recent cold and windy night we found ourselves in London Bridge station waiting for someone. We had about forty minutes to kill so we walked out onto nearby London Bridge. After photographing the big blocky office building on the nearby south bank we walked out onto the bridge itself. It was freezing! Definitely not the weather you'd choose for photography.

The temperature was low and the wind speed high making it colder and harder to hold a camera steady. And yet, there on the bridge, besides the usual tourists taking photographs with their phones, were a few hardy photography enthusiasts, some with tripods, some without. I joined their ranks, tripodless, and started to take a few shots of the illuminated Tower Bridge, nearby HMS Belfast and the lit buildings along the shore. It quickly became apparent that a bright lens and a reasonable focal length were required. I happened to have my current portrait lens with me, the Olympus 45mm 1.8, since I'd been photographing my grand-daughter earlier in the day. It proved ideal for the job. Reasonably sharp wide open and image stabilised by the camera body.

As I took my photographs I reflected on the time when I used Four Thirds cameras without stabilisation, and without the high ISO performance of current cameras. The quality that was possible today simply with my unsupported camera body and lens was impossible only a few short years ago. The metering too has improved in leaps and bounds and it took minimal effort to achieve what I consider to be the very satisfactory result in today's photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm (90mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:5000
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blogger image backgrounds and those rings

click photo to enlarge

Many people have increasing concerns about the power, reach and intrusiveness of Google. Blogger is owned by Google and is one of their many free offerings. From the time I started using it in 2005 there has been the facility to add advertisements to a Blogger blog and for the blogger to make money (usually very small amounts) from so doing. The Google word for this is "monetize", a horrible construction. I've never had the desire or need to do so, and this blog is advertisement-free, a situation I don't foresee changing. Of course part of this process involves Google making quite a bit of money from the advertisements, based on key-words, that are placed in the blog. Consequently I suppose that by not using advertisements I'm taking advantage of Google's benevolence. But, they don't seem to mind so neither do I.

I do wonder, however, if Google has its ear closer to the ground than even the conspiracy theorists imagine. In the Comments of a very recent post there was an exchange of views concerning the effect of the white background that accompanied the enlarged view of a photograph. On some subjects it doesn't work very well, is overpowering, and is at odds with the black background of the blog pages. Well, quite soon after that date the background to enlarged photos was changed to black. Were Google listening in, or was it one of the planned incremental changes that are regularly rolled out? Whatever the reason - and it hasn't been trumpeted anywhere by Google that I've noticed - I like it. And, at the risk of pushing my luck I'd like to suggest that it be retrospectively applied to older posts too.

All of which has nothing to do with today's photograph of abseiling workmen on Tower Bridge in London. I spotted them as we walked past the other day. They appeared to be doing something electrical, perhaps installing the enhanced lighting that will illuminate it during the Olympics. I read that, in addition, a set of large, illuminated Olympic rings will hang from the bridge during the Games. When I first heard of this proposal I tried to imagine a worse combination of the insensitive and the tawdry. But I couldn't.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm (plus crop)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 1000
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

New perspectives on familiar subjects

click photo to enlarge

It occurs to me that the title of today's post states one of the aims of most enthusiast and professional photographers. It is still possible to find subjects that haven't been photographed before, or haven't been photographed very often. But, photographers number in their millions, photographs in their billions, and inevitably most of the things that you and I point a camera at have been subjected to photography before. Consequently we daily try to see our familiar subjects in a different way from the way they've been seen before.

There are two ways of achieving this goal. You can set about the task consciously, adjusting your viewpoint, focal length, time of day, weather or any of the other variables that you can deliberately manipulate. Or, you seize the moment when serendipity offers you the opportunity of a less usual kind of image. On my Thames-side walks from Rotherhithe into the centre of London I've taken more than a few shots of Tower Bridge, a structure that says "London" to the world. Most of them have been ordinary, unexceptional, cliched, hackneyed, boringly familiar - choose your own description. I've posted only two of my images that have the bridge as the main subject - one from a less familiar location, and the other a deliberate attempt at a "different" kind of portrayal.

A couple of days ago I seized the moment when a shaft of late afternoon sunlight illuminated the bridge and made it positively glow against the dark clouds and deep shadows, and I thought this serendipitously taken shot, though not unique, was unusual enough to post.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bile, vitriol and politics

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A lot of the comment that I have read in the U.K. and U.S. press surrounding the recent shooting of an American Congress woman and her supporters has concentrated on the language that now pervades political discourse in that country, and the way in which, following the rise of the "Tea Party", it has become increasingly aggressive, vitriolic and abusive. Too often honest disagreement has, apparently, been replaced by hate, and the metaphors and imagery used in "debate" are frequently militaristic, violent or intimidatory. Opponents are to be "eradicated" rather than beaten in the polls. Sarah Palin's phrase, "Don't retreat, reload", and the use on her website of what appear to the cross-hairs of a rifle's telescopic sight aimed at political constituencies have been especially singled out for condemnation. One can only deplore this degeneration of politics into vicious, verbal brawling. When it spawns actual violence it needs vigorous, considered action and one hopes that the response of the American people and politicians will be more than a temporary moderation of the flow of invective. From a British perspective, we do not want this kind of savagery to descend on us - we have quite enough problems with our politics already.

What has received less comment in connection with the recent events is the link between the increasing prevalence of vitriolic language in politics and the rise of the internet as a speedy and often anonymous medium of communication and dissemination. For many years I have been concerned about the readiness of people to verbally abuse others on forums and message boards from the safety of an anonymous "handle". This even spread into phototography forums, arenas that aren't the obvious place for vituperation, to the extent that I now rarely visit them. The internet also provides the capacity for widely spread, like-minded individuals to organise, and spread their influence, again often anonymously. This is positive and fine when it involves, say, genealogy, but less so when it helps those who think the state is an enemy to be attacked by all means possible. It's probably true that "talk radio" and the so-called "shock jocks" got there first in this regard, but for me the internet has exacerbated the trend considerably.

What has this to do with a photograph of Tower Bridge, London, reflected in a window of the Assembly building. Not a great deal. Though I suppose I could say that this fractured and warped view of the world is analagous to the distorted view of some of the people discussed above - but I won't!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm
F No: 6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On