Shallow focus flowers

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I can remember the first photograph that I took where I deliberately sought an out of focus background.  It was of the engraved metal head a processional cross in a church. The camera I was using was the Russian-made Zenit E with its "kit lens" of the day (though that phrase hadn't been invented then), a Helios 58mm f2. Needless to say I took the shot with the lens wide open at maximum aperture from a fairly close distance. I've been reading about the methods that cameras use to overcome shallow depth of field when close to the subject (as in macro photography). Most involve the merging of multiple shots each taken in a different plane of focus. Very clever and very useful if you want everything in focus as some kinds of photography do.

My photography, by and large, involves taking shots where I want a large depth of field but in situations where it isn't difficult to achieve by stopping down; for example when shooting architecture. When it comes to macro photography I rarely want everything to be in focus because this is a discipline in which I like to produce soft, out of focus effects.

Today's photographs are details from a bunch of flowers in a vase in our living room. I could have taken both shots with much greater depth of field, but the dreamy effect of the out of focus areas appealed to me more. The depth of field of the chrysanthemum shot is minimal, with the sharp edges of a couple of petals betraying where the point of focus rested.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1 Title: Lily Stigma and Anthers
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 35mm Macro (70mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Oats, colour and chrysanthemums

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Colours have always fascinated me: colours I like, colours I dislike, colours that I dislike unless paired with a particular colour, the uses to which colour is put, the science of colour, the art of colour and, the subject of today's reflection, the names of colours.

My first introduction to the interesting names of colours was, I think, courtesy of Scott's Porage Oats. Our breakfast table usually had on it the famous box, adorned with the Highland Games shot putter, so I could read about the famous British Army regiments that, for a while, featured on the back. It was there that I came across the names khaki, olive and lovat. The first two will be familiar to most people, but the latter perhaps not: it is a muted green colour named after an area in Invernesshire, Scotland. An interest in painting introduced me to the wonders of burnt sienna, ultramarine, yellow ochre etc, and a passing interest in heraldry that I picked up on the back of a deeper study of medieval and later tombs, revealed to me the particular nomenclature of that discipline's colours (tinctures) - argent (silver), or (gold), azure (blue), sable (black) etc.

These days an interest in computers, photography and the graphic arts generally, requires knowledge of how VDUs display colours and the way they organise, number and name them. It was from that starting point that I searched for a name to describe the colour of these chrysanthemums that I had photographed. Were they purple, pink, violet, rose, fuchsia, cerise or what? To settle the matter I consulted the List of Colors on Wikipedia and decided that the closest fit (though a rather boring name) was red-violet!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Chrysanthemums

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Intermittent rain stopped play today - if wielding a sledge hammer and a crow bar to break up a sheet of concrete can be characterised as such. However, it wasn't sufficiently wet that I couldn't finish the final piece, and move on to marking out the replacement hard area and the adjoining beds for shrubs and flowers. Six mornings of hard labour combined with carting away the debris has broken the back of the work. Fortunately my back hasn't quite broken and I survive intact and ready for the next steps in our landscaping project.

Anyway, by way of a change I decided to have a go at photographing some chrysanthemums that are sitting in a vase on a table in our living room. I usually move flowers around to photograph them, often placing them on a different surface, in strongly directional natural light, and putting a "photographic" background behind them - in my case it's usually a large sheet of card or vinyl. However, this time I thought I'd leave them in situ since the colours seemed to be working well together.

The composition is my usual one - the vase of flowers just off centre with a couple of blooms on the surface nearby, an old painters' trick that adds a little asymmetry and visual interest. One day I mean to really work at a composition involving a vase of flowers, and add a collection of interesting objects to the shot in the manner of the seventeenth century Dutch painters. But, for now, my work is focused elsewhere, so domestic shots and fairly basic still-life images are likely to dominate the blog for the next week or two.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Using complementary colours

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We've been choosing flower seeds for the garden recently. One of the locations we have to cover is a small section of fence behind which are our refuse and recycling bins. In front of the fence is a small square patch of ground that in recent years has grown squash, tomatoes, and various kinds of flowers. Last year we grew a Chilean Glory Vine up the fence, but this year we are trying something different. We'd never grown that particular plant before, but we both concluded that it was inappropriately named - "Glory" it wasn't! In its place we'll have Thunbergia alata (Black-eyed Susan) and Ipomoea tricolor (Morning Glory - "Heavenly Blue"). We hope to have the complementary colours of yellow/orange and blue on display at the same time.

Complementary colours have figured in the work of many painters. Perhaps the best known in this respect is Van Gogh. In a letter to his brother Theo, speaking of his painting of the "Night Cafe" he says, "I have tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green. The room is blood red and dark yellow with a green billiard table in the middle; there are four citron yellow lamps with a glow of orange and green. Everywhere there is a clash and contrast of the most disparate reds and greens...." Red and green are, of course, complementaries, and like all such colour pairings, their juxtaposition makes each appear more vivid and vibrant. Van Gogh is best known for his paintings of sunflowers. He made many studies of vases of these blooms, including some that are orange. Where he paints them this colour he often uses a complementary blue background, as in this example.

Our current living room flowers are orange chrysanthemums, and when I came to photograph them I searched out a piece of blue paper paper for the backdrop. I have a particular liking for the combination of orange and blue, especially a "kingfisher" blue, and have sought it out before in a photograph of cockerel feathers, and used it in an arrangement of Chinese Lanterns (Physalis franchetii).

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Here comes the sun

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The Beatles' Abbey Road album is a particular favourite of mine. Just about every song is a masterpiece, from the driving blues/rock of I Want You (She's So Heavy), to the chug of Come Together and the 1950s-inspired swoop of Oh Darling. For me the inventive brilliance and contrasts wrapped into the 16 minute medley of You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End are the highlight of the album. However, I also like it for George Harrison's two contributions -the peerless Something and the only slightly less well known Here Comes The Sun.

I read somewhere that Harrison wrote Here Comes The Sun when he was staying with Eric Clapton, and it certainly has some similarities to Badge, the song they co-wrote for Cream. Incidentally, the chiming guitar part on the latter song is Harrison not Clapton, and the Abbey Road song features a guitar figure with a similar feel. For an English-born listener the title and words of this song perfectly summarise the feeling you have when, on a bright, March day you feel the warmth of the sun on your back, you take your jumper off, and you know that spring has finally arrived, banishing the unremitting cold of winter.

But, it's only February, and we have yet to experience that feeling. I'm not usually one who yearns, in the way that some do, for the arrival of spring: in fact I find lots of pleasures in an English winter. However, after this year's extra helping of frost, snow and rain, I too am ready for spring. In the absence of the real sun I thought I'd engineer it through a photograph of a single bloom from the vase of yellow chrysanthemums that curently decorates our hall. To give the flower a spring-like glow I lit it from behind and from the side, and put the LX3 on a tripod so that I could use a slow shutter speed and therefore a low ISO. When I compose a shot like this that has a very obvious compositional centre (the flower's middle) I really have a struggle to put it anywhere but the bottom left corner because that location seems so "right." However, on this shot I forced myself to overcome my predilection and put it towards the top right.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/4
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

'mums

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There is a mania today for shortening words. Sometimes these contractions become common currency before I hear them. When someone first used the word "Beamer" in my hearing I wondered why a term I associate with bowling in the game of cricket had suddenly appeared in a conversation about cars. It took a bit of work with the context to figure out that the speaker was referring to a BMW. Another example is "Corrie" for Coronation Street. The last time I watched this long-running soap opera it was the 1960s, I was still living at home with my parents, and Elsie Tanner and Ena Sharples were main female characters. And what about "uni". This coinage, which means "university", seems to have come about since many colleges and polytechnics were re-named as universities, and access to this tier of education was greatly widened. There are many other examples of the shortening of words, but I'll restrict myself to just one - " 'mum."

Before I deal with it I'll acknowledge that this is not a new phenomenon. Many words have been shortened down the years. The perambulators used for carrying young children became "prams", the seaside promenade became the "prom", and the omnibus became the "bus". When I was first introduced to the last mentioned shortening I wondered why the apostrophe indicating the elision of the first four letters had been omitted. Further enquiry discovered that when the abbreviation began to be widely written it was often included, but as time passed it was dropped. The same is true of " 'mums", which is short for "chrysanthemums". This truncated version is not yet as widespread as "bus", but it can only be a matter of time. Today you see it, mainly, on market stalls and in garden centres. The former location is, I suppose, understandable given the reputation for bad spelling that market traders enjoy. But it is a ridiculous shortening with or without the leading apostrophe.

Today's photograph shows the chrysanthemums that my wife bought on our last shopping trip. I quickly snapped them, with the LX3 set to macro, before they were unwrapped and transferred to a vase. On this shot I increased the exposure in post processing to the point where I just began to lose detail in the whitest parts of the image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On