Photographic trickery

click photo to enlarge
Trickery has been a part of photography ever since the invention of the medium, and certainly entertained the Victorians. In twentieth century England the Cottingley Fairies became a celebrated example of the art. In fact, the five photographs that cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths took in 1917 were so good that they convinced many that the "the little people" were real and not a product of the story teller's art. The author of "Sherlock Holmes", Arthur Conan Doyle, a confirmed spiritualist, saw them as a genuine example of a psychic phenomenon. Not until the 1983 did the cousins admit that they had faked the photographs.

Today the "selfie" is all conquering, but there was a time when people experimented making illusionistic photographs. A person in the foreground positioned and standing so that they appeared to be holding up a bridge or the moon, people adopting the "Harry Worth" position at the corner of a shop window, and car hub caps tossed in air to be passed off as flying saucers, were all popular subjects.

On a recent walk on the Lincolnshire Wolds I saw a sight that I just had to photograph for the illusion that it suggested. Looking across some fields and trees I saw what appeared to be a rocket shortly after blast-off, rising out of a massive cloud of smoke of its own making. What I was seeing in reality was the top of the Belmont TV transmission mast, a slender structure 1,154 feet (351 metres) tall, firmly braced by cables, from which the signal to my TV (and the TVs of many others!) is broadcast. It was sticking up out of one of the banks of mist and cloud that periodically blanked then revealed the sun as we set off on our walk. Looking at the "rocket" I recalled that the date was 1st April.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 52mm (78mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Signs and sentience

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Over the years I've posted quite a few photographs of signs. Some of them, such as the recent one of the London Underground roundel show specimens displaying exemplary design, others, as is the case with this old road sign, illustrate how signs in the past emphasised the message much more than presentation. However, it is those signs that say more than the writer intended that I enjoy most of all.

I particularly relished the sign I came across in Williamson Park, Lancaster, that proclaimed, "Danger - Shallow Water" and I had to drive carefully and look behind every tree and bush when I came upon the sign at Bleasdale, Lancashire, that said, "Slow - Children & Dogs Everywhere". Then there was the sign on a Blackpool pier exhorting visitors not to attach bicycles to the railings because to do so was a fire hazard. I felt I had little choice but to give that blog post the title, "Incendiary bicycles?"

When I decided that my garden shed needed its security improving I took a few basic measures to make it more difficult for a burglar to enter. I also cast around for a sign that would increase the deterrent effect. When I saw this one I simply had to buy it. I loved the idea that my shed is sentient and has feelings just like you and me, though every time I see it I do wonder what I could have done to cause it such consternation.

Incidentally, this image shows a photographic optical illusion of a kind that I've noticed before. The writing on the sign is engraved, yet sometimes it appears to be embossed depending on how you visually interpret the shadows in the indentations. Another example of the phenomenon can be seen in this old graffiti on the medieval stonework of the tower of St Botolph in Boston, Lincolnshire

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 100 sec
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reality and illusion

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In the days before the dark arts of digital manipulation through programmes such as Photoshop many people held the view that "the camera never lies". It was taken as self-evident that a photograph was a factual representation of a scene. Yes, if it was in black and white then clearly the colour had been drained from it, but if it retained colour then what you saw was, people believed, the truth. In fact, "the camera never lies" was never a particularly useful statement because the meaning carried by every photograph is, in some way, altered by both the photographer and the medium. And of course, even in the days of film, deliberate deception was possible in photography. Multiple images could be blended into one, tricks with people and objects near and far could be constructed, people could be erased from photographs, and much else could be done to deceive the viewer.

Today almost anything is possible and "Photoshopping" of one sort or another is widespread. Sometimes the viewer is aware of the alterations, at other times they are not. Yet many photographers - I count myself one of them - prefer to limit their manipulation to essentially those things that were possible with film: tricks such as dodging, burning, adjusting contrast, removing dust on the film/sensor etc. Such people also often prefer to find real scenes that have the ambiguity necessary to deceive the viewer, to make them scratch their head and wonder quite what is going on, rather than spend time altering a photograph using the computer to achieve that effect.

The other day I walked past some wooden fencing in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. It screened a site that is earmarked for development. The fencing has been there for a while, and the economic downturn seems to be extending the period that it is needed. There are painted patterns on the plywood boards and photographs of local scenes, devices that aim to make the utilitarian structure a little more palatable and a little less grim. When I stood and looked at different sections of the fencing the possibility of a few "deceptive" or ambiguous shots came to mind. The first photograph that I took is shown above. It doesn't take long to work out what is going on, but at first glance it is a little puzzling - rather like the bull in the lorry of a few days ago.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f7.1 Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Trompe l'oeil

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In a recent post I talked about illusions in photography. The art of painting has, of course, revelled in illusions since the time cave-dwellers' daubs were first committed to stone. The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, a place that I visited a few times when I lived in the north-west of England, is currently showing an exhibition of Bridget Riley's art. In her well-known "op art" phase during the 1960s she sought to create optical vibrancy and the illusion of movement through very geometric, repetitive designs. Many other painters as disparate in time, place and style as Arcimboldo, Magritte, and Mantegna, have produced works whose intention was to deceive the eye during that moment of initial viewing.

It was probably the Italian Renaissance's discovery of the rules of perspective that instigated the greatest burst of illusionistic painting. Ceilings representing heaven, painted domes incorporating balustrades intended to look real, arms in portraits that "project" out of the frame towards the viewer, windows painted on walls that (from a specific position) appear to be real and show a view outside, and many other such devices were painted with the intention of surprising and delighting the viewer. The term trompe l'oeil (French for "trick the eye") has come to describe these painterly devices.

On a recent visit to Peterborough I saw such a work, clearly an amateur's endeavour, in the window of a Nepalese restaurant. It uses a subject found on many Italian Renaissance frescos; columns, vaulting and paving receding to a centrally placed vanishing point. The perspective isn't quite right in places, but it achieves the desired effect of suggesting depth, distance and scale, and (importantly) drawing the eye of passers-by. What made me photograph it, however, wasn't the artistic conception but the repair job on the cracked window! I don't know whether the damage resulted from an accidental knock, vandalism, or was a stress crack from a badly fitting pane of glass, but the temporary patch with lines of parcel tape gave it another, interesting dimension; as though there was an attempt to prevent the illusion being completely shattered.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 7.9mm (37mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Illusions

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I like a good, confusing, photographic illusion. I don't mean the staged sort that shows a man holding the Great Pyramid above his head, or a small (but actually distant) person apparently diving into someone's mouth. No, I mean those "found" images that either show something that looks to be one thing, but is in fact another, or those that confuse us to the point where we can't understand what it is that we are looking at.

I've taken a few examples of this kind of photograph in the past including a fire escape staircase, a giant mirror ball, a theatre's sign, a reflection in a well, a piece of bark, and a bicycle stand. The other day, in Peterborough, I took another one. As I was passing a heavily glazed office block that I've photographed before, I was taken by the reflection of the sky and clouds in the tinted glass of the walls/windows. Approaching the building it appeared as if the clouds were floating from above my head into and out of the walls of glass. So I pointed my camera upwards and tried to capture this illusion. I had to wait a short time until the actual and the reflected clouds seemed to be making the transition, then I pressed my shutter. What I hadn't banked on was that the final image, at first glance, when it appeared on my computer screen, would look like the perfectly still water of an inviting swimming pool into which - if it really existed - I'd be tempted to jump.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On