Photographic aspect ratios

click photo to enlarge
The world wide web, it seems to me, has increased the amount of confrontation and stridency in photography. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that this outweighs the co-operation and learning that the online world confers on our hobby and profession. However, the early years of my forty odd with camera in hand certainly didn't feature the vituperation I regularly see today. Photography is not alone in this of course, and it's possibly the opportunity to adopt extreme postures and language anonymously that encourages the outpourings of bile.

To stick with photography, I continue to be amazed about the subjects on which people have unwavering views that they broadcast and defend with boorish language. Brand loyalty, sensor size, fixed lenses versus zoom, black and white versus colour, the list is endless when it comes to the subjects that some photographers can get exercised about. I've even seen people vociferously arguing the merits of one aspect ratio over another. Now when it comes to this subject I play the field. I'll use 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 1:1 as the subject requires. Sometimes I'll select the aspect ration before taking the shot, often I'll take it with the largest capture possible but with a different aspect ratio in mind, and frequently I'll crop post-capture. And the idea that one or another is intrinsically "best" or "better" than another seems to me absurd: all are possible, so choose the most appropriate. I've even been known - whisper it quietly - to choose a non-standard aspect ratio where it seemed to fit the subject better.

Today's photograph was one that I shot at 4:3 thinking that it might work well at 16:9. That turned out to be the case and is in fact the best aspect ratio for this image. It shows some of the inshore fishing boats on the River Witham at Boston, Lincolnshire, with in the distance, the tall tower of the medieval church of St Botolph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 34mm (68mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3
Image Stabilisation: On

Failed searches and streamer weed

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Most web searches that I make are successful. A wide range of information is available on the internet, much of it in great depth, and often in at least four forms - text, images, video and audio. Moreover, I've gone out of my way to become familiar with a reasonably wide range of search techniques. Consequently it is relatively unusual for me to fail in a quest for facts about a topic. But failures do happen. Often this is because the subject is arcane. Or it may be obscure or of interest to only a very small minority of people and therefore little documented. Some failures appear to be successes until you discover that what you took to be fact turns out to be someone's unintentionally erroneous posting or just plain wrong through the poster's ignorance.

However, the other day I spent a long time searching for some information and drew a blank. I was trying to find out the name of the plant shown in today's photograph. It is a common river plant that I see regularly in many lowland rivers, and its very prominence suggest that it will be well documented. It probably is, but not in a form that allows me to assign it a Latin name. Fishermen call it (and several other plants that grow in a similar location and fashion) "streamer weed". That is descriptive of the ribbon-like leaves that undulate sinuously in the current. But, to fix its identity with the species' Latin name proved impossible for me. It may be a form of Ranunculus, Glyceria or some other equally common river-growing plant. The problem is that I can't match a photograph that looks like mine with any other reliably labelled image. Then there's the fact that most botanical illustrations use the flower as an identifier and this has clearly passed its flowering season. In fact, I've found very few shots of the plant that emphasise its attractive, twisting form, except a couple by other photographers similarly fascinated

From previous experience I imagine that I'll search again and a route to the right answer that was formerly closed, or which I missed, will open up. Until then streamer weed it is!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A good year for poppies?

click photo to enlarge
One of the good things about the internet is that it's quite easy to find someone who thinks like you do. One of the bad things about the internet is that it's quite easy to find someone who thinks like you do. Consequently, creating an organisation or movement for beneficent change and progress is easier than ever before. But, mobilising a group of people who share the same bigotry, hatred and intolerance is not difficult either. In fact, such is the breadth of opinions to be found expressed on websites, blogs, forums, social media etc, it is possible to find written support for just about any proposition you care to make, no matter how extreme, ludicrous or unhinged it may seem to most people. The days of misunderstood youth or paranoid misanthropes languishing in the conviction that no one feels the same as they do must surely be long gone: a quick search will quickly throw up fellow loners who share their misery and delusions.

On a lighter note, the internet is also a place where you can take soundings. I tried this the other day in connection with my impression that 2013 has been a particularly good year for poppies in the United Kingdom. Sure enough, I found several pieces written by individuals who expressed the same thought. So I'm right. Or am I? Just because, out of the millions of people who have looked at poppies in the fields, roadsides and gardens of our country, a handful have expressed the same opinion as me doesn't mean we are correct. Perhaps the silent majority who haven't expressed a view publicly feel the number of poppies is no more, or maybe fewer, than usual. As a means of arriving at a reliable judgement simply looking for people with similar views is not a very sound method. Helpful though it undoubtedly can be, the internet has the capacity to very easily reinforce wrong thinking.

Today's photograph was taken in my garden. I posted a shot of "wayward" poppies earlier this month. I see the contre jour image above as one that shows them growing more typically.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 168mm
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Anonymity and cabbages

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A few months after I'd begun this blog I had an email from someone. In the course of comments about photography and the images I was posting he remarked that he found it odd that I was using my real name rather than a nom de plume or "handle". My answer was that I didn't write anything that I wouldn't say publicly, or couldn't defend, nor was I gratuitously abusive, and I wouldn't direct any offensive criticism at an individual. Consequently, I said, I see no need to hide behind a pen name.

In recent years I've come to see anonymity on the internet as a greater problem than I initially thought. There are times when it is clearly useful: whistleblowers and the like would be much less likely to surface without the protection it offers. However, the other side of the coin is the enormous amount of abuse and incitement to hatred that arises because of the ability to make anonymous postings. People will say to strangers on websites things that they would never say face-to-face. In fact, the whole tone of some discussions is at best hectoring, and at worse, venomous; a dialogue of the deaf, that is casually spiteful, sneering and strident. Some websites have little else. Other sites, that feature normally civil discourses often find themselves polluted by crude mischief-makers (trolls) or deranged louts. Would we lose more than we gain by removing the opportunity to be anonymous - if that were possible, which it probably isn't? There are times when I think that maybe we wouldn't.

Today's photograph results from the principle of making the most of what you have. When I cut open my red cabbage I felt there was a close up and a whole head shot in the vegetable, and here's my attempt at the latter. I placed the cabbage on black vinyl for the photograph, then converted to black and white to emphasise the patterns of the unfurled, convoluted leaves. Which brings to mind a variation on the old childhood joke:

Q. What's black and white and red all over?
A. A newspaper?
A. A sun-burned zebra?
A. No, a monochrome photograph of a red cabbage.

Bomm! Boom! Aaagh, that's terrible! After making a joke that bad I wish I was anonymous.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1.3 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Looking back No. 1

click photo to enlarge

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be - it's much worse!

Two of the principal culprits for the current obsession with looking over our shoulders at the past are multi-channel television and the internet. In theory the more TV channels you have, the more choice you have, and the better quality viewing you experience. In practice the expanded air time is filled with repeats of recent programmes or re-runs of ancient ones, because it costs so much less. The internet, via the likes of YouTube and fan sites, enable the nostalgic to indulge the most obscure tastes in music, comedy or drama. You like Bagpuss - there he is, Mouseorgan and all. The Goon Show - easy to find. Obscure and not-so-obscure 1960s rock groups abound, and on the back of this new exposure polish their Zimmer frames and hit the road again. Not so long deceased pop groups are revived after ever shorter periods out of the public eye - was it only 10 years ago that the Spice Girls and Take That were assaulting our ears with their vacuous ditties, and why are they doing it again? Oh yes, the money!

There is an upside to the ready availability of the past. It means you can find a better alternative to today's offerings! A while ago, when the evening's TV offered little but reality twaddle, I discovered the Pogues' excellent version of the Ewan MacColl song, "Dirty Old Town" on YouTube - a Salford man's piece from 1956, covered by an Irish band in 1985, and introduced to me in 2007! But this recycling of the past also means that the current producers of popular culture don't have to try as hard. If pop songs and TV shows are no longer the disposable fodder that we once thought them to be, then there's no need to make as much new stuff, and it doesn't have to be as good - because it can easily be leavened with sprinklings of yesteryear's output.

All of which leads me to this photograph that I took at the end of September. I was looking back through the images that I took during my absence from blogging and this photograph of St Andrew's church at Sempringham, Lincolnshire, caught my eye. This building is the only above-ground remains of Sempringham Priory, the monastery where, around 1130, St Gilbert started the sole English-founded monastic order, the Gilbertines. The order was unique in admitting both men and women, and, far from ensuring its popularity, this fact may have accounted for its relatively poor acceptance!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: Off