Out to pasture

click photo to enlarge
In my working life I had an interesting but demanding job that made ever more claims upon my time as I progressed up the hierarchy. Consequently, when I decided I would retire one of the major attractions of ceasing regular, paid work was that all that time would be returned to me to do with as I pleased. And so it proved. I've never been a person who has been unable to fill their time, I've never complained of being bored, and I've always had things to do. Retirement gave me the opportunity to pursue my interests, things that formerly I'd dipped in and out of or had neglected.

However, to my surprise I found that complete release from the pressures associated with paid work didn't quite suit me. The fact is I like having to deliver within a specified  time-frame and having a full and busy life. Consequently I have expanded what one of my sons calls the "community activism" side of my life because it offers me those pressures that I missed. But, one of the lessons you learn in life is that upsides often have, somewhere or other, downsides. In this instance the downside is the reduction in time available to devote to photography and this blog in particular. In the past circumstance has caused me to cease posting or reduce my frequency, and I've reached that point again. I'm not stopping, but I won't be maintaining my alternate days schedule.

I chose the title of today's post to fit in with what I have to say in the post, not that I particularly feel "out to pasture", but that is one of the ways that retirement is sometimes characterised. I saw these horses as I drove past them. I walked back to get these photographs showing them fringed by light from the lowish sun.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 38mm (57mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Fallen leaves and Blogger colour

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Over the years I've been generally quite happy with Blogger, the Google-owned service that provides the blogging platform I use. It is free, easy to operate, easy to adapt, doesn't require me to host advertisements and it is very reliable. It has fewer bells and whistles than Wordpress, a blogging service I use for a different site, but overall I prefer Blogger for the reasons listed: it does all I require.

However, a while ago something happened to the way that my photographs were displayed. Instead of showing just as I had prepared them, as soon as I uploaded them the colours became over-saturated. I take a lot of care in preparing my images and the last thing I wanted was for them to glow with artificially bright colour. I searched to see if there was a reason for this but came up with nothing. So I muted the colours of the shots I posted hoping to compensate for what was happening. It did somewhat ameliorate the effect, but I wanted an answer to why it was happening and a better solution. A search some time later turned up the answer. At a point I couldn't determine Google's Picasa photograph hosting had been placed under the wing of Google+. A feature of these galleries is that photographs there are always made brighter because Google in its wisdom has a feature called Auto Enhance turned on by default. Why? I can only think that they assume people like the "vivid" or "saturated" look of TV, magazines and some phones and cameras. Well, many don't, and so I looked for a way to turn it off. After much searching I discovered that the only way to do so was to join Google+. I was not happy with that at all because I've deliberately ignored all the social media services for reasons I won't go into here. But, Blogger is free, I pay nothing for it so I can demand nothing of it. I had no choice but to sign up to Google+. I did with bad grace and in a minimal manner. I then turned off Auto Enhance, found all was well, and I now carry on as I was, and ignore Google+. At some point I intend to find out if I can exit from it without Auto Enhance turning back on again.

I was reminded of all this when I took today's photograph of fallen acer leaves we came across in Lincoln. When I looked at the camera screen after I'd taken my shot I showed it to my wife. The colours weren't saturated, they were unnaturally muted! I assume the white balance was wrong. But I was out shopping and photographing only incidentally so rather than change it until I got it right I made a mental note of the brightness of everything and went on my way. I was glad I did because when we came to the fallen willow leaves the camera recorded the colours perfectly. Go figure!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Views with spires - take two

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For quite a while my blog statistics have shown a photograph that I posted in May 2011 called "Views with spires" as the one that receives most hits each month. I often try to work out why such things happen because, on the whole, the most frequently viewed post in a particular month is one published early in that same month. However, for reasons that are usually unfathomable, posts reasonably frequently depart from this pattern. Sometimes it's because I can see a particular website has referenced it and readers have looked at a link to it. But mostly I simply can't account for it. Why, I often wonder, is "Tree shadows and architectural drawings" my blog post with by far the most hits, fifty percent more than the second most visited? Who knows? It certainly can't be down to the quality of the image!

"Views with spires", to return to the current favourite, does I suppose, describe a subject that appeals to those of a traditional and Romantic mindset, and that title may in fact explain its popularity. Today's photograph of the church of St Denys at Aswarby, Lincolnshire, is another photograph on the same theme. More than that, it shares compositional similarities, with the road curving away to the prominent church tower with its tall spire. When I look through my landscapes I find that I frequently use church spires as strong compositional elements. And why not? Is there anything to beat the strong vertical accent of a medieval tower and spire set against the flat or rolling English countryside? Lincolnshire abounds with convenient examples. Churches such as Sempringham, Gosberton and Donington grab the eye and grace any photograph in which they appear, even if they are shrouded in mist or fog, as is Swineshead in this winter photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 55mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Fractured self-portrait

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Though I've run this blog for eight years and posted with a frequency that I never imagined I could sustain I don't think I've ever been a particularly good blogger. By that I mean I've never offered readers much in the way of information about the minutiae of my existence. A few impersonal  or semi-personal facts here and there are about as far as it goes. I've always been free and easy with my opinions but the daily details of my life, my family and my activities have been largely absent, and where mentioned at all, have invariably been very generalised. The fact is, though I'm reasonably gregarious, I'm a fairly private person. Moreover, I'm only willing to include my nearest and dearest in this blog on the same terms that I present myself. So, my wife is never (well hardly ever) photographed close-up and my offspring and their families, where they do feature, are also distant figures., included for compositional reasons only. My family snaps remain private.

That reticence to place the details of my life on the public stage in part accounts for my dislike of social media. It also explains the lamentable way (in blogging terms) in which I flip-flop between blog comments and blog silence. I recognise that the online dialogues that ensue from blogs, news reports, other websites, even social media I suppose, can have value for those who take part in them. In fact, for a few years, I was a regular contributor of images and comments to a couple of photographic forums, an activity that I both enjoyed and learnt from. However, there's also a part of me that agrees with a recent opinion I saw suggesting that online commenters include just enough of "the mad and the sad" to make the whole exercise off-putting for the average person. Any photographer who has frequented the dpreview discussion forums will recognise there is something in that notion, as will anyone who has scanned readers' comments at the end of articles in online newspapers or even on the BBC website.

It will come as something of a surprise then, at least to more recent readers of this blog, that I post self-portraits with reasonable regularity. However, like today's example, these are often obscured in some way, perhaps by reflection, distortion or using some other such contrivance. The photograph above shows me with my compact camera reflected in an artwork that comprises blocks of mirrored glass. I liked the way that it placed parts of me - head, shoes, trousers, umbrella, in unconnected places. What I wasn't so keen on is the way it revealed me indulging in two photographic fauxs pas that I have been known to bang on about in a deprecating way - photographing single-handed and not using the wrist loop of the camera!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Who knows where the time goes?

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I turned off comments in January and February because I was rather busier than usual and I found that I couldn't devote as much time to the blog as I usually do. Then, at the beginning of March, feeling that things were easing off a little, I turned them back on. That proved to be the wrong thing to do! Things are busier than they were earlier in the year! In fact, the other evening when I glanced at the clock and noticed that a couple of hours had passed in what seemed like a few minutes, I found myself reciting the title of the Sandy Denny song, one that I recall her singing on the Fairport Convention album, "Unhalfbricking", of 1969. "Who Knows Where The Time Goes" will be known by many through Judy Collins' version. I like them both, but of the two singers' voices Sandy Denny's is the one I prefer: her version of "She Moves Through The Fair" (on the album "What We Did On Our Holidays") is one of my favourite songs by a female vocalist.

All of which has little to do with today's photograph. It's an exercise in applying natural lighting and burning that I did a while ago. I'm not a fan of flash, though I do use it occasionally when I try to make it mimic natural light. Here I wanted "Caravaggioesque" lighting i.e very directional light with deep shadows. To achieve it I arranged some curtains to so that a shaft of light from the window fell adjacent to darker areas in a room What better to use as the subject in this exercise in trying to achieve the lighting that one of the Renaissance's greatest painters made his signature effect than the subject used by countless other painters down the centuries - a simple bowl of fruit. In fact - and here I'm consciously trying to establish a link with the title of today's post - a timeless subject. I post it with an apology. This photograph was one of my rejects. I've run out of fresh photographs due to having no time to pursue them. So, if my posting rate declines further you'll know the reason why.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/15 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

A conversation with myself

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How much should a blogger reveal about themselves? The answer to that question will vary from person to person: some will be happy to be more expansive than others. I always think of myself as a private person, and though I'm fairly free with my opinions in this blog (which blogger isn't!), any details that I include about my personal life tend to be brief and fairly innocuous or non-specific. I deliberately don't speak in any depth about my immediate or extended family. Nor do I write too much about the village community of which I'm a part.

With an outlook like that I do, of course, eschew the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and all of the other social media sites that are so popular today. The idea of documenting the details of my life, important or inconsequential, minute-by-minute and day-by-day is quite alien to me for reasons of time and inclination. The plain truth is I find it difficult enough to respond to comments on this blog, so I really don't know how I'd manage communicating with pseudo-friends through Twitter!

People sometimes ask me why I blog. There are a few reasons that I've mentioned before, largely centred around the idea of a window for my photography and a means of improving it. That usually leads to the next question: "Why do you accompany your photographs with a 'reflection'"? The original thinking was to differentiate my efforts from those of others and to give me a regular intellectual challenge quite different from those I faced in my day job then (and face now in retirement). But as the years have passed I've sometimes come to think of this blog as a conversation with myself: the putting into print of the thoughts that buzz around my head, thoughts which, in the ordinary course of events, would go unheard unless I shared them with friends and family. The fact that quite a lot of people visit PhotoReflect on a daily basis to read them and look at my photographs still surprises me. The fact that relatively few comment doesn't! I appreciate that is down to me being a fairly ineffective blogger - for years I've taken none of the recommended steps to "build my readership". Moreover, I'm not the loquacious type, so the chatty conversations that some bloggers and readers value don't often occur here. But I'm O.K. with that because I'd find it hard to give the blog more attention than it currently gets.

Today's photograph is one of my rare, openly manipulated shots. I took a photograph of myself reflected in the mirror of a lift that opened alongside me when I was photographing the numbers I recently posted in the triptych. The resulting image was symmetrical with strong perspective and me just to the side of the vanishing point. I found myself wishing for a stronger convergence of lines in the photograph and so I added them in the form of "light rays".

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 7.9mm (37mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.4
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 250
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Semi-detached blogging

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People are incidental subjects in most of the photographs on this blog, yet lately they are the main subject filling the memory cards of my cameras. Not since I was a parent of young children has this been the case. So what has brought about this change, and why are there still few shots posted that feature a person? Well, the fact is that our first grandchild appeared a few months ago and, understandably, I've found her to be a compelling photographic subject, albeit not one that I will post on PhotoReflect.

It also accounts for the semi-detached nature of my recent blogging. I've fitted in photographs and the associated prose in between travelling, fulfilling the job description of grandfather, and undertaking the essential everyday tasks that just don't go away. Which is my way of explaining and apologising for the lack of replies to people's comments, and for the nature of my recent output. The fact is my mind, attention and efforts  have often been directed to other areas of my life. You can tell that this is so because when I'm busy I often turn to my garden for a shot or two, as with today's image of a hoverfly on one of my favourite showy flowers, the gaillardia.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0
Image Stabilisation: On

The story of a blog post

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Most of the responses I get to PhotoReflect are polite, friendly and thoughtful. However, once in a very rare while an individual blog post takes on a life of its own and roams the web, ending up in odd places and provoking unusual reactions. Here is the tale of one such recent post.

On 4th December I posted a piece called "Rooks, hoar frost and adverts". In it I mentioned the humour that I'd experienced reading the advertising pitches that Toyota and Land Rover were making during the present spell of exceptionally cold, snowy and icy weather. The photograph that accompanied it was O.K., but nothing special, and the text was mildly diverting for me, but not, I think, particularly noteworthy. Consequently I was puzzled to see it achieving so many hits; enough that it is now the fifth most visited page on PhotoReflect since I changed my page counter to Blogger Stats in July. So, I did a bit of Googling and discovered that a Wiki site that trawls blogs and that indexes "similar" subjects had picked it up and listed it alongside sites discussing the Land Rover Freelander. A couple of days later I got an intemperate email (complete with expletives) from someone who owned a Freelander, and who wanted to explain to me why I was wrong to describe it as "dangerous", and how he, with a young family, had chosen it because it was a very safe vehicle. I did what I always do with unsolicitited emails and deleted it.

Later, however, I wondered whether I should have responded - in the spirit of broadening his thinking on the ownership of such vehicles. I'd have talked about how bigger, heavier vehicles are only relatively safer, and how their safety comes at the expense of increasing the risk to other road users and their children. Then I'd have suggested to him that by his logic he should have bought the biggest available 4X4, or better still, have got a massive lorry (HGV) because as far as the passengers go (though certainly not other road users), these are by far the safest vehicles on our highways. Instead I wondered why someone would invest the time and effort to justify himself, using such language, to me, a complete stranger. Perhaps, I thought, it is an extension of the "forum" mentality, whereby people proclaim their own opinions about news articles, etc. and defend them in a completely unrestrained, and often abusive, way. Most odd.

On the day I took this photograph we had hoar frost again, alongside a thick fog and temperatures that never rose from several degrees below zero. During a circular walk I passed a lone tree that I've photographed a couple of times thinking it would make an image, but which thus far hasn't. On this occasion the weather and the frosted white umbellifer in the right foreground made a composition good enough for me to think, "That will do!"

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Morning habits and blog visitors

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I'm a creature of habit. Eating breakfast reading The Guardian newspaper is my start to the day, every day except one. On Sunday I don't get a newspaper because none of the offerings appeal to me. I used to buy The Observer (the world's oldest Sunday newspaper), but it became a bit too "lifestyle" for my tastes, so now on Sundays I dip into the bits of the more extensive Saturday edition of the Guardian that I didn't read the previous day. But, as well as newspapers and breakfast I often have a quick look at the blog. I've done this a little more recently now that I'm using a mixture of Blogger's "Stats" and Google Analytics. It's interesting to see where people come from, what they look at, what search phrases they use, etc.

The other day I used the combined data from the two packages to look at which countries visitors are coming from. The results are, I think, interesting, and pose a few questions. Here's a summary after a couple of months use of this pair of hit counters. So far I've had people from 92 countries/territories. The top ten countries for visitors are: UK (55%), USA (29%), Australia (5%), Canada (4%), India (2%), Germany (2%) - these six countries account for 97% of hits - then comes the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy and France Those four countries plus the other 82 account for a total of 3%. Clearly, as a UK-based blog, you'd expect the largest percentage of visitors to be from the UK. And the USA, a big, affluent country with a large anglophone population might be expected to provide the second highest total of hits. But the remaining eight of the "top ten" seem to be a mixture of countries that have a high proportion of first or second language English-speakers, or have a high population, or are near European neighbours to the UK. This is largely true also of the three countries that sometimes nudge their way into the top ten - Ireland, Belgium and Poland. Unsurprisingly there are no visitors from most central and west African countries, and some of the Gulf States are absent too. The most surprising (or perhaps not) statistic - thus far there hasn't been a single visit from the People's Republic of China, the world's most populous nation.

Today's photograph was taken on a morning when I was away from home, so I had no newspaper over breakfast, and no computer distractions. However, I did have a post-repast stroll in Fineshade Wood and managed to get this contre jour shot of horse riders and a dog as they disappeared up the forest track ahead of us.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blogging and popularity

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Ever since I started blogging I've used a hit counter to give me some idea of the level and sources of the traffic that comes my way. For years I've used a free version of Sitemeter, and found it supplied all my needs. However, for a while the policies of Sitemeter with regard to cookies has been questionable. So, when Blogger introduced Stats* several weeks ago, I thought I'd dispense with my old hit counter and use the "in house" offering. But, the information I am now provided with is slightly different and in some ways less useful: it has more aggregation of results and less information about individual hits. Consequently I've added Google Analytics as well. I've been familiar with this evolving tool for a few years, using it on another website that I have. What both these counters do that Sitemeter doesn't is rank the most popular pages on my blog by All Time, Month, Week, Day and Now. When I looked at the All Time (in this case only several weeks) information it surprised me: the list doesn't include any of what I consider my best photographs or supporting texts, and I've been pondering why these specific pages are popular. Here is then, the current All Time top ten with my thoughts on why they prove more attractive than the rest of my PhotoReflect offerings.

1 Tree shadows and architectural drawings
Surely it can only be architecture students looking for CAD symbols.
2 Lichfield Cathedral
All those vertical lines and arches say "cathedral" to a lot of people, plus, Lichfield is probably less photographed than many other English cathedrals.
3 Promenade silhouettes
It's an eye catching shot - but not much else.
4 The megapixels war and dynamic range
This piece got picked up and referred to by a few online sites and blogs so that accounts for its popularity.
5 The corrugated chair
Making chairs out of found materials seems to be on the curriculum of some educational institutions, and the corrugated chair in question is not particularly widely illustrated.
6 Dog daisies
I have no idea! Perhaps my name for the flowers draws others who also use it rather than the more widely used ox-eye daisy and marguerite.
7 St Leonard, Kirkstead, Lincolnshire
I can only think that this small building in Lincolnshire's rural fastness is not widely covered on the web.
8 Plates of meat
Maybe I'm attracting gourmands rather than people who know that the term is Cockney rhyming slang for feet!
9 The fan vault
Probably another subject with relatively little illustration or text on the web.
10 River Welland landscape
Not one of my best landscapes, though one that is in the English tradition. Perhaps the River Welland doesn't have many such images on the web.

What has all this to do with my photograph of a section of the neon sign that proclaims Skegness Pier? Nothing. The fact is I had little to say about the photograph other than that I liked the colour combinations chosen for the neon tubes and their backgrounds. Oh and the fact that despite my shutter speed being rather slow for the focal length the shot is pretty sharp.

* only currently available (I think) for those using Blogger in Draft

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On