Solar eclipse seen from Lincolnshire

click photo to enlarge
I can remember precisely when I first heard the word "confluence". I must have been about 13 years of age, sitting in a geography lesson, when the teacher used the word to describe the meeting and joining together of two streams or rivers into one. Over the past several days I've thought about that word, not in the geographical sense, but as a metaphor. Why? Well, several activities that I'm involved with have come together into a stream of work, all with approximately the same end date, forcing me to drastically curtail my photography in order to complete everything satisfactorily. Apart from the essentials of day-to-day existence, such as shopping for food, I've been focused on these activities to the exclusion of all else.

With one exception. Today, the sky being relatively clear, I set up my bird-watching telescope in anticipation of the coming solar eclipse. I read that at about 9.30am the eclipse in my part of Lincolnshire would achieve about 85% coverage of the sun's surface. So, at about 9.00am I set up a piece of white card, pointed the telescope at the sun, and began projecting the image of the partial eclipse.

I've done this before with eclipses, particularly when my children were young. I find it's by far the best way to safely view this phenomenon without risking damage to your eye. There are two disadvantages: firstly the image is inverted, and secondly and it's quite tricky to find the sun and keep it aligned and focused because you have to move the telescope in the opposite direction to the one you think is required. The revolving earth causing the image to drift out of view is a relatively minor problem. Interestingly, for about half the time I was projecting the sun's image a prominent sunspot was visible. I stopped at the point of maximum coverage (main photograph) because we had other things to do, but a neighbour came round to enjoy the experience and I was glad I'd taken the time to record the event.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen


Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28.8mm (78mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  - 0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sunset thoughts

click photo to enlarge
"The sky is the daily bread of the imagination."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. poet and essayist

I've said elsewhere in this blog that sunsets are undoubtedly one of the most photographed subjects. But it's not just photographers who are seduced by the blaze of fire in the sky at the end of the day: poets and painters frequently press the sunset into service as metaphor. When, in 1839, Turner painted his picture of the old warship, "The Fighting Temeraire," being towed by a steam tug to be broken up at the end of its life, he depicted the scene against a fiery sunset to emphasise that its days were ended. Shakespeare uses the sunset in a similar way in these lines, "In me thou see'st the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away".

The challenge for the photographer, the painter and the poet is to use this well-worn idea of the sunset as representing an end, in a fresh and revealing way. And, as far as photography goes, that is a major aim in photographing any subject. The past 170 years have seen so many photographers capture most subjects in myriad ways that it's a real challenge to present a shot that steps outside a genre, and a way of seeing, that hasn't been done before.

Today's photograph makes no claims in that department. It's a shot of the sky after the sun has set. A particularly lovely combination of clouds and colours caused me to take yet another sunset image. The one thing I very consciously did in my capture was to move so the trees at the bottom right became silhouettes on the horizon. Their insignificance, when seen in this way, seemed to magnify the majesty of this very conventional subject.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 29mm (58mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The world in a puddle

click photo to enlarge
"...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."
Douglas Adams (1952-2001), English author and satirist

If mankind is to disappear from this world perhaps it won't be, as some imagine, a gradual decline with pockets of people hanging on until finally the last Adam and the last Eve expire. Maybe, as Douglas Adams' quote that uses the water in a puddle as a metaphor for mankind suggests, it will be sudden, a surprise, something we don't see coming. However, I don't foresee the earth being destroyed by part of a Vogon constructor fleet making room for a hyperspace bypass, as in Adams' book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: rapidly accelerating climate change, a pandemic or a meteor impact seem the current favourites!

I came across the above quotation a while ago, quite incidentally, when looking for something else. But it stayed with me, like many of the best quotations, because it offered a different perspective on a familiar idea. The way Adams plays with and extends the metaphor is clever, humorous and thought provoking. It also shows, in a small way, how good prose and fiction can make powerful, perhaps even more telling, contributions to a debate that most think of as the province of science and politics.

But enough of all that doom and gloom, and on to the gloom in which I took this photograph! The blueness comes from the fast-fading light of evening. As I passed the puddle the yellow of the leaves seemed to glow against it, and I grabbed the image. A wide open lens and a touch of negative EV gave me just enough speed to maintain a sharp shot and keep the camera at 100 ISO.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ripples and similes

click photo to enlarge

"The foolish are like ripples on water, for whatever they do is quickly effaced; but the righteous are like carvings upon stone, for their smallest act is durable."
Horace (65BC - 8BC), Roman poet

Similes involving ripples in water are amongst the most overworked of their kind. The classic version involves an action from which ripples spread, that affects other things or people. How many times, in recent months, have I read of the ripples that have spread throughout the world banking system from over-enthusiastic sub-prime lending? Too many!

And yet, when the idea of ripples spreading is used a little more creatively, as in the example from Horace, quoted above, it can be illuminating, and serve its purpose of increasing our understanding and deepening our enjoyment of the prose. Scientists have physical laws and mathematical formulae that describe the effect of the spread of ripples in water, and what happens when they meet a fixed or moving object, or other ripples. Yet, as I stood under a bridge and watched drips of water from above falling into the river, creating this complex intersection of concentric ripples, it was very difficult to see how each changed the others. Was the ripple simile built on sand (to murder a metaphor)? But perhaps the effect was so marginal as not to be visible. And that made me wonder how the simile gained such a firm foothold. However, I didn't wonder too long because it made my head hurt! Instead I enjoyed the play of light on water and the patterns that appeared and slowly disappeared as the energy from each originating drip was dissipated.

My photograph has had the contrast and colour adjusted slightly to emphasise the patterns.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On