Working with animals and children

click photo to enlarge
I've never been tempted by the lure of stage or screen, the bright lights, the red carpet or the adulation of fans. Just as well really because I'd be useless at it all.

In fact the only time I've ever appeared in the media - press, radio or TV (web too I suppose apart from links with photography and architecture) is in connection with a relatively minor news story. That happened to me last week when I did a regional TV interview and was once again reminded of the tedium of doing several "takes" to get a few seconds of footage. I've done that sort of thing before in connection with my job and when campaigning, but not for a few years. Last week reminded me of the unreality of what passes for real.

One of the sayings that actors are known for is, "never work with children or animals". It's a quote that's often attributed to W.C. Fields and it sounds like the sort of thing he would say. I was reminded of it this afternoon when I was photographing a horse. I'd been chatting with a couple of friends and prevailed on them to let me take a few shots of one of their horses because my stock of shots for the blog was running low. Why did the quote come to mind? Well, the horse in question was even less co-operative as a photographic subject than my grand-daughter. It would not stay still, and when it remained in one place it moved its head about. I made a good collection of blurred shots. Very much as I often do with my grand-daughter in fact! However, eventually I got a couple that looked like they might work. I took the opportunity to further test the Aperture Priority mode of the RX100 and took this shot in the dark of the stable. It did a fair job. I'd dialled in some negative EV to give a little "mood" to the shot and for this image I've done some "burning" of the edges to give something of a vignette.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18.5mm (50mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 2000
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tulips, contrast and shadows

click photo to enlarge

My DSLR, a Canon 5DMk2, is set to record images in the RAW format. I do this to give me the greatest flexibility when it comes to processing my photographs and to allow me a better chance of recovering from a poor exposure. My compact camera, a Panasonic Lumix LX3, despite the fact that it can record in RAW, is always set to the best quality JPEG because I take more snapshots with it. Despite that, it has produced some images that bear comparison with any done by my more capable camera (see here, here, here and here for example, or see them all here). I know that if I shot exclusively in JPEG on both cameras my shots wouldn't be enormously poorer for it, but I would find that I couldn't achieve the quality that I required from some exposures because of the restricted ability to post process this format.

In my pre-digital days I never did any post processing of colour negative or colour reversal film, though I did develop slides. I did use a range of filters on my lenses which is processing of sorts. However, with black and white I certainly experimented with chemicals, developing times, and with dodging and burning under the enlarger. I was always fond of fairly contrasty black and white images, and slides tended to have that quality anyway, so deep blacks against strong whites featured in quite a few of my prints. Nowadays I tend to favour the greater dynamic range  and more natural contrast that is possible with digital, though every now and again I like to take a left turn and produce a very contrasty image with deepened shadows.

Today's offering is a case in point. These dark red tulips grow in the shade of a crab apple tree in my garden, and I caught them on a still, cloudy evening, just as the light was starting to tail off. The unprocessed shot is reasonably well exposed with quite a good range of tones. What prompted me to increase the contrast was the dark, shadowy background in the top half of the shot. The red petals were positively glowing against this, and I thought it was an effect that I'd like to enhance across the whole frame. So, with a tweak of the Tone Curve and a few other fiddles here and there I produced this contrasty shot. I quite like it, but it may be a step too far for some

Addendum:
The sale of Instagram for $1 billion brought to my attention something that hitherto I didn't know, namely that people who take photographs on cameras increasingly apply pre-determined effects to their pictures. This has happened for many years in the world of digital photography where the result has been to make photographs look increasingly similar. Apparently that is happening with camera phones too as the mass application of the most popular effects reduces the difference between individual images. I'm not against photographic manipulation, but I do think that doing it yourself by consciously adjusting the basic parameters is more likely to retain any individuality your shot had, whereas applying a ready-made effect inevitably puts it alongside all the others that have had the same done to them.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On