Radial blur then and now

click photo to enlarge

Yesterday I posted a solarized image that achieved through digital means an effect available to photographers using film. For many years I used a 35mm SLR (and rangefinder), and developed my own film and transparencies, but I never once tried to solarize a print. However, I did try to master the effect shown in today's photograph. It wasn't until I'd had an Olympus OM1n for quite a few years that I bought a zoom lens: up to that point my few lenses were all fixed focal lengths. With my newly acquired 70-200mm though, I soon tried zooming with the shutter open, aiming for an effect that I'd seen in photographic magazines. The camera had to be placed on a tripod, and a neutral density filter or low light (or both) was necessary to achieve the slow shutter speed that was necessary. Even then, quite a few shots, trial and error, luck, and an appropriate subject were needed. But I did it. And, having mastered it, I never tried it again! I suppose I couldn't see too many occasions where the zoom effect (we didn't call it radial blur in those days) enhanced the subject.

Today, of course, this effect is very easy to achieve in software. So, I thought, it's twenty five years or so since the last attempt, it must be time to have another go. The section of motherboard is the same one shown in yesterday's image but taken from directly above and with the main microprocessor square in the frame. The ease and flexibility of producing radial blur using a computer program meant that I could adjust the degree of blur, and place the focus of the effect off centre: I chose the middle of the chip.

So there you have it. Not a great shot, but one that was much easier and cheaper to achieve than using analog methods!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/6
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Solarization

click photo to enlarge

Today's photograph is the result of my efforts to reduce the amount of junk we have. During my sifting of the useful, the not so useful and the downright useless that is stored in various rooms and locations around our house I came across an old computer motherboard. It is one that my youngest son had discarded during one of the upgrades that he performed on his machine in recent years. As anyone who has assembled their own computer will know, incremental improvements are possible, but every now and again - say after five years or so - a major upgrade involving the replacement of the motherboard, memory, graphics card and often the hard drive, is desirable, if not necessary. It was the innards that resulted from one such disembowelling that I came across during my tidying. As I held the motherboard up to examine its vintage the sunlight streaming in through the window caught it and, for a brief second, the circuit boards and components had a look of solarization about them.

Anyone with an interest in the history of art or photography in the twentieth century will have come across this photographic technique, usually in connection with the artist Man Ray (1890-1976). Solarization occurs when light and dark areas are partly reversed in tone. It was known during the time of Daguerre, but what Man Ray did was to deliberately use the effect that his assistant, Lee Miller, discovered (in fact re-discovered), when she accidentally exposed an already exposed film to light during developing.

I used software to achieve the effect on a photograph that I took of the motherboard - hence my use of "pseudo" in the title of the image. Digital imaging allows the effect to be applied to shots in black and white or colour: to the best of my knowledge Man Ray and the other photographers who used this effect only applied it to monochrome images. By making adjustments with my software's "sliders" I was able to turn the blues, browns and silver of the PCB and its components into something quite different, and in so doing change the emphasis of different parts of the photograph. I don't use too many "effects" in my photography, but this one suggested itself and it seems to me to suit the subject.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/6
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On