Motion blur river

click photo to enlarge
Elsewhere in this blog I've described myself as primarily an "incidental photographer"; that is to say I most often  take photographs when I'm out and about doing something else. I can be enjoying a walk, shopping for the week's groceries, visiting friends or relatives, enjoying my garden, taking in an exhibition at a local gallery or viewing an historic or recent building, to name but a few activities where I use my camera. And, because I prefer to travel light, I'm often without the range of accessories required to secure the photograph that I'm looking for.

Today's shot is an example of this. Ideally I'd have used a tripod and a neutral density filter. But, being in the countryside with only a dslr plus one lens, I had to do my usual work-around for a motion blur of this turbulent water i.e. Manual mode, low ISO and a very small aperture to produce the required low shutter speed for this fast moving torrent. It took a couple of shots to get the right exposure. However, eventually I got the amount of blur that I wanted in this shot of dappled light and rich colours on the River Ribble at Langcliffe, North Yorkshire, when it was in full flow after heavy rain.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Manual Priority
Focal Length: 85mm (127mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f20
Shutter Speed: 1/10 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Motion blur London nightime skyline

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Too many photographers, it seems to me, obsess about how sharp their camera/lens combination is. This is particularly prevalent among those new to photography. The fact is, very few photographs are ever judged deficient because they are not sharp enough. Sharpness is not usually one of the primary requisites for a good image. There are exceptions - macro photography and some kinds of landscape photography, for example, need sharpness to reveal the detail that contributes a lot to the final image. But most genres don't require the knife-edge sharpness that is too often thought desirable.

There's certainly a case to be made for the painterly effects produced by older lenses that exhibit a little softness. They can be useful for portraits, landscapes, flowers and many other subjects. There's also much to be said for blur caused by deliberately defocusing the subject. And then there's motion blur. I have a collection of photographs that I've put together where I've deliberately set a slow shutter speed to blur the subject (see these boots, this river and these reflected trees for example. I also have some where I've purposely moved my hands having set a slow shutter so that the image is traced across the frame. This effect can even occur serendipitously by accident.

Today's photograph is an example of the latter (purposeful) technique where I deliberately moved my hands from left right and up and down as I took the shot. It was taken at the same time as the smaller photograph on this recent post. I had an idea of what the camera might produce but only an idea - one is never entirely sure. What I didn't imagine was that it would produce such sharp motion blur!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1.6 sec
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Motion blur and stained glass

click photo to enlarge
On a recent visit to Gloucester Cathedral I felt motivated to try a motion blur photograph. My recent post where I'd inadvertently done such a shot and liked the result was still fresh in my mind, and I had been looking for an opportunity to try for another, more considered, example. As I photographed monuments, architecture and windows the possibility of rendering some figurative stained glass in a non-figurative manner came to me.

My usual method when trying to achieve motion blur is to either set the aperture very small (say f11 or f22) so that a slow shutter speed results or use a speed priority mode or set the camera completely to manual and dial in numbers that I think will work. However, in those instances I've usually been trying to blur something that is moving. Here I was trying to make something that was static blurred by moving the camera. In theory there's little difference, but when I came to take my shots I was dissatisfied with the outcomes. So, I put the camera on auto and had a look at what that produced. Counter-intuitively, it produced much better results. I think this was due to a large amount of chance and the way I moved the camera. Nonetheless it resulted in today's photograph. I was pleased to transform this rather dark, poorly lit (it was early evening on a dull, wet day) window into something bright and colourful that looked like it had the summer sun streaming through it.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Auto
Focal Length: 36.8mm (99mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/8 sec
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Operator Error!

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Most people's photographs consist of shots of family, friends and holiday locations. And why not? Cameras are good for recording people, their activities and the places they go. Like most enthusiast photographers most of my photographs show a subject that I want to record or interpret. Consequently, only 5-10% of my photographs are family shots. I don't include in that figure those images where my wife - it's usually my long suffering wife - is included for scale or as a focal point.

The other day I broke off from a series of landscapes to take a family photograph of my wife in a small wood by a waterfall. Unfortunately I forgot that I'd got the two second self-timer on. When nothing happened in response to my press of the shutter button I moved the camera down to set it to single shot and, as I did so, the shutter fired. The image that was saved shows the arc of my hand through the air, and recorded for posterity as an impressionistic blur, my wife in her red cardigan among the fallen leaves. When I looked at the shot on the camera screen, thinking to erase it, I quite liked what I saw and decided instead to save it.

I once went to an exhibition where every photograph looked like it had been taken by the photographer as he walked along with the camera dangling from his hand, or he had thrown it casually into the grass and the shutter had tripped. There were no straight horizons, no attempt at composition, no sharp shots, no main subjects etc. I remember thinking at the time that this looked like deliberate operator error. It also occurred to me that photography, more than perhaps any other art (when the aim of the photography is art), can produce effective images by accident, or when the camera doesn't record what the photographer intended. That wasn't the case in the exhibition: all I saw was the work of a charlatan seeking to impress by his disregard for photographic conventions. Nor is it the case with my photograph, though it will be a fun shot in the family album. Moreover, I'm tempted to try and reproduce the motion blur in a more controlled way to see if I can produce something more worthwhile with the effect. Watch this space!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (32mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.5
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Motion blur and serendipity

click photo to enlarge

Every now and then an accidental photographic exposure produces a result that is more desirable than the ones to which you give careful consideration. This image is a case in point. I was wandering around the garden with the macro lens on the camera, taking a few snaps of flowers, when I noticed a red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) moving from bloom to bloom on the cornflowers. I took several shots of the busy insect, then went inside to have a look at my haul of pictures. Most of them were technically fine, but boring. This one, however, stood out. The bee had just taken off and I'd moved the lens to follow it and snap it in flight. It was a futile task at these kinds of shutter speed, I know, but it was a reflex action prompted by who knows what.

The result pleases me for a number of reasons. Firstly, I like the orange-red of the bee's tail as it buzzes off. Secondly, I like the fact that nothing in the image is sharp and the bee least of all. Thirdly, the overall mix of colours, especially the tones of geen and yellow in the background are pleasing. And finally, without me planning it, I have a further shot in my on-going collection of motion-blurred images!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Evening on the River Thames

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During the early part of my life the Pool of London was a place of commercial river traffic. Freighters would load and unload into riverside warehouses, barges would to and fro bringing and taking the requirements of a variety of businesses throughout the centre of the capital. The nearby docks at Wapping were bustling centres of activity. But no more. London's "Docklands" is now an area of high-rise offices, high-cost flats, and financial services-derived wealth. The water that once held hard-working commercial craft is now either filled in, remain as scenic ponds, or serve as the base for pleasure craft. Today's freighters are largely restricted to the downstream docks and river around Tilbury, Dartford, Thames Haven etc.

In recent years, when I've stayed in London, my location on the river has allowed me to watch the range of traffic that still uses this essential artery. What I see is mainly tourist craft showing visitors the sights, water taxis ferrying people up and down (and across) the river, and a motley collection of small boats - police launches, small power boats, rowing club sculls etc. The occasional large naval vessel and smaller cruise liner sometimes ventures up as far as Tower Bridge. Commercial traffic in the old sense is largely absent, with one exception: a regular sight is tug boats pulling barges loaded with yellow metal containers. These hold Londoners' domestic waste, and they are essentially river-borne "dustcarts", taking their cargo for disposal. In the past year four new vessels have taken over these duties, and from 2011 they carry sorted refuse to a riverside "energy from waste" electricity generating station at Belvedere, rather than to a landfil site.

Looking out over the river one recent evening a tug and its load came slowly into view on the ebbing tide. Further out into the river a Thames Clipper catamaran ferry roared by. With a bit of quick camera juggling, and bracing myself against the balcony wall, I managed to get this shot of both craft motion-blurred against the backdrop of the Thames, its riverside flats and the distant City.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/2 sec
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Leisure, pleasure and reflections

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There are two contemporary leisure activities that I find completely baffling. Actually there are several, but for now I'll restrict my comments to just two - shopping and driving. Like many men I have a very utilitarian approach to buying things that usually follows this basic outline: a need arises, I decide on the product to meet that need, I look for the best price and the place to buy it, I go to the shop, buy it, then go home. This is sometimes called the "surgical strike" approach to shopping because it tends to have the deep focus of a military operation. Shopping as a leisure activity seems to involve going to the shops to see what's for sale, trying a few things on (it frequently involves buying clothes), having a coffee and chat, browsing a bit more, buying a few things that may or may not have been on a "wanted" list, then going home. But it doesn't end there because the leisure shopper then goes back to the stores the next day to return an item or items that turn out not to fit or weren't really wanted in the first place. It's an approach to shopping that strikes me as very strange.

Then there are men (it's usually men) who do something called "going for a drive". Not anywhere in particular, just for a drive. For the pleasure of it. They are the kind of men who can sit through a whole episode of "Top Gear", who can discuss into the early hours of the morning things such as "ride", "understeer", "torque" and whether a Porsche Boxster offers a better driving experience than a Mercedes SLK280. When I'm within earshot of such discussions (which isn't very often) I want to shout, "They're all cars, tin boxes with a wheel at each corner, they all get you where you want to go, they are a form of transport." In fact I sometimes do, but to little avail because anyone who can "go for a drive" or discuss the merits of sports cars is impervious to both ridicule and reason. And anyone who suggests that slinging a camera bag over your shoulder and going for a long walk simply to find some photographs to take, is not too different from either of these activities is clearly not thinking straight!

The location where I took today's photograph - the Springfields shopping outlet at Spalding, Lincolnshire - prompted this reflection. As a purpose-built retail centre with acres of parking, rows of clone shops, and piped music everywhere, Springfields is very much like anywhere else, and is clearly a leisure shopper's paradise. From my point of view it does, however, have one redeeming feature: the adjoining Festival Gardens with its ponds, water features, woodland walks, flower beds etc. My wife spotted the the silver birch reflections in one of the formal pools as we had a stroll after buying a couple of things, and it seemed a useful addition to my ongoing collection of motion blur images.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 249mm
F No: 7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

These boots are made for blurring

click photo to enlarge

The best way to improve your photography is to take photographs. Even when you feel no inspiration, are disatisfied with your output, and can't see an image to save your life, keep taking photographs. As I've observed before, in time the shots will come to you without you having to chase them.

Another strategy that you can adopt is to set yourself a target or project. This blog is part of my ongoing attempt to improve my photography. The simple fact of having to come up with frequent images that are good enough for you to present to the world without feeling too much shame or embarrassment, is an excellent motivator. It has made me search for images in places where I might otherwise not have looked, and consider styles of photography that don't come naturally to me. Ultimately it has driven me into a range and type of photgraphy that I feel comfortable with, but which is fairly wide-ranging. And, it has helped me to understand what I am doing when I make images.

But, sometimes you have to be a little more specific. In recent months I've made a conscious effort to try and photograph more contre jour subjects. Many of what I consider to be my early successes came from this approach and I felt I'd neglected it in the past couple of years. I've done some, but perhaps not as many as I would have liked. Recently I've given some thought to motion blur shots. My most recent iteration of Best of PhotoReflect (version 5) has a section with this title. It was always my intention to mine this seam for a while and fill out this category. However, I've done precious few such shots since I put it together. So, that's my latest aim - more motion blur. Today's photograph is the first of my recent attempts that I'm sufficiently happy with to post. It shows booted feet ahead of me as, with my companions, we ascended some steel stairs at Tate Modern in London. I liked the colour, repetition, simplicity and interesting blur of this shot. We were on our way to see the latest work to fill the old turbine hall, the gallery's main space -it is Ai Weiwei's "Sunflower Seeds" - and I found it an underwhelming experience. Of which more later!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 67mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/4
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Catching your eye

click photo to enlarge

A couple of evenings ago, during the course of a talk I was giving about photography, I made the observation that the human figure placed in a photograph will usually catch the viewer's eye before anything else. This is something that seems to be part of our natural makeup, and probably has its origins in the hundreds of thousands of years of our development when there was no rule of law. If you lived in a world where other people could be a mortal danger to you the ability to spot humans was one that you developed and honed as a matter of self-preservation.

Today, in our complex world there are, in countries where peace prevails, few direct dangers from other humans, but there are many other hazards. These range from fast moving cars to electrified rails and bottles of lethal liquids. Consequently societies have had to invent systems that warn people of these dangers, and which draw their attention to them. The other day, during my walk around the Brayford Pool in Lincoln, I noticed one such device. It was a multicoloured vertical chequered strip fixed to a wall just above the level of the water in the river. At the bottom it was white, the central section was day-glow yellow, and at the top it was day-glow red. I assume it was a variation on the depth gauges that are frequently seen by the edge of freshwater, but which more usually measure depth in metres, and presumably the colours showed the level of danger associated with the rise in the water level.

I say I saw it, but that's not strictly true. It was inaccessible to me, and what I saw was its reflection in the water just past the underside of a bridge. The very bright colours, moving from side to side with the waves, caught my eye, and their stark juxtaposition with predominantly earth colours suggested  a photograph. So, adjusting my position, and zooming in on a section, I composed this image.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

Sensor aspect ratios and reeds

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The Lumix LX3 camera, in common with a few others in the Panasonic range offers the photographer different aspect ratios. A switch on the lens barrel allows the user to select 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9. What makes Panasonic's offering particularly useful is that the angle of view doesn't change when you make your selection. So, APS-C users are catered for with the 3:2 setting, Four Thirds (and MicroFT) users will be familiar with 4:3, and widescreen (16:9) is there for anyone wanting to either fill such a display with an image, or who fancies a landscape or other shot with this aspect ratio. I find myself using the 4:3 and 16:9 a lot, and the 3:2 only occasionally.

However, a firmware update intoduced a fourth option - 1:1, that is to say, square. Because it's an afterthought it has to be accessed through the menu system. However, for this photographer it is very welcome despite this inconvenience. There are those who cannot see the point, possibilities or aesthetic value of the square format: but there are others who use it exclusively or regularly. The latter group often includes former medium-format photographers who cut their teeth on square viewfinders and square film. And then there are people like me, who see 1:1 as offering the ideal shape for some subjects. If I were a portrait photographer I'd use it a lot. But even for landscapes, semi-abstracts, urban scenes and the like, it has its place.

You're perhaps wondering why I'm mentioning this in the context of a photograph taken with an Olympus DSLR with a 4:3 aspect ratio that has been cropped to square. Well, many argue that cropping obviates the need for hardware settings of this sort. I disagree. It is difficult (though not impossible) to visualise a square composition when you're framing a shot with a different aspect ratio. I did it here, but I'd love to have been able to place a square frame over the viewfinder rectangle or close it down until it was square. But thats not an option.

Today's shot is a black and white semi-abstract with, I like to think, a Japanese watercolour feel to it. I selected a group of dead reeds around a narrow water-course, including one that arches into the water (with its reflection), others that exist only as motion-blurred reflections, and some nearer ones that are out of focus. The delicate lines traced across the square frame, that look like they have been applied with a brush, appeal to to me, though I think they won't be everyone's cup of tea.

photograph & text (c) T.Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Evening, Bankside, London

click photo to enlarge
Two of the most characteristic subjects in Victorian paintings are the large crowd scene - a station platform heaving with people, a city street filled with carriages and shoppers, a park full of people promenading in their finery on a Sunday afternoon - and moonlit streets illuminated by gas lights with the odd figure hurrying home, a "bobby" patrolling his night-time beat, or a street-trader selling roast chestnuts to the passers-by.

The other day, as I looked down from the top of a double decker bus at the crowds thronging the streets around Borough Market, Southwark, in London, I was reminded of those crowd scenes. Sometimes directors of historical dramas try to capture something of the hectic bustle of the Victorian street, and I've often thought that they get carried away and have just too many people milling about. But, as I surveyed London's streets from my elevated vantage point, and mentally re-cast it into the 1870s, I thought perhaps those directors that I'd accused of adding more colour than was warranted to their films had actually got it right. "Seething humanity" was the phrase that came to mind.

Then, later that day, as we walked along Bankside after enjoying a family meal at a riverside restaurant, we negotiated the cobble and brick tunnels under the road and railway bridges by the Thames. Illuminated not by the glow of gaslight, but by neon and sodium, I remarked to my son that this location, at this time of early evening, was perhaps the nearest London gets to the atmosphere of the nineteenth century. Maybe the Victorian frisson of danger wasn't there amongst the tourists, theatre-goers and workers heading home, but the half-light, echoes, dark corners and engineering and architecture that was built to last, offered a feel of the period that I decided to try and capture.

I took a couple of straightforward shots that didn't seem to do the trick, so I thought I'd go for a long, hand-held exposure where I deliberately moved the camera. I set the ISO back to 100 to slow the camera down and panned slightly as the shutter opened. The blurred effect, and slight ghosting seemed to capture the atmosphere better, and I included my three companions on the right of the frame to turn it into a family snapshot with a difference.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

All wrong is alright

click photo to enlarge
When it comes to making photographs I usually have very clear ideas of what I want the outcome to be. In fact I have usually "seen" the image before I raise the camera to my eye. After I've pressed the shutter I "chimp" to check the results, and if necessary, take one or more shots, varying the composition, point of focus, depth of field or exposure (usually using the EV facility), chimping each subsequent image to see if if matches my preconceived idea.

This relatively slow, measured, fairly painstaking method isn't everyone's way of taking photographs, but it suits me. I'd say that 95% of individual shots that I keep are secured in this way. That being the case, what about the other 5%? Well, these tend to be images where I visualise the final image but the camera has other ideas and offers me something that I didn't have in mind - but I like it anyway. Or it's where I take a shot speculatively, thinking to myself, "I wonder what kind of image this will produce". Then there are those where I get it all wrong, but end up with something that pleases me: the image above being a case in point.

On this one I wanted to take a photograph of the mix of fairly lurid colours in a variegated tulip I came across in a local park, and thought I'd try a shot that had the whole bloom in focus. But, I was distracted before I framed the shot, forgot to set the aperture to give me a big depth of field, forgot to set the ISO to 400, and reckoned without a gust of wind moving the flower head as I pressed the shutter. Consequently the image has blur from a shallow depth of field and motion blur. However, photography is one of those visual arts where it's occasionally possible to produce something that you like by accident, and that's what happened here. The image has a certain sticky sweets packed with colouring, sea-side rock, candyfloss, cheap plastic toy sort of charm. Sometimes, it seems, when you get it all wrong you can produce something that is alright.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reflecting on the River Welland

click photo to enlarge
You're walking through the countryside and your path leads to a bridge over a river or a stream. You walk forward onto the bridge, and then what? Well, if you're like me, and just about everyone I've ever observed doing this, you stop in the middle and turn to look either upstream or downstream. It feels like the natural thing to do. We don't seem to be able to help ourselves. So what is it about bridges over water that make us stop and look, when discretion might be urging us to keep going until we're back with our feet fixed firmly on terra firma?

I suppose it's the pleasure that comes from surveying a stretch of moving water, no matter how small. And the curiosity about what it might contain - the fish, frogs, rocks, weed and the other things that we can see: and the lurking things we can't see, but wonder about, in the dark, still pools. Could it be a relic of our primitive past when a stretch of water offered the chance of fresh food? Or maybe it's an aesthetic urge to trace a river's course with our eye, following the banks, the depths and shallows, the brooding shadows and dancing highlights, the never still ripples and eddies, as they move towards us, under our feet, and away. Then there's the smell of the air above water, fresh clean and sharp from streams that flow quickly over rocky beds, slightly musty and dank from slow flowing waterways as they meander through the lowlands. And finally, there's the sound that varies from the crashing roar of a rocky river in spate, to the gentle swish and occasional plop of a slow moving stream.

The other day I stood on a small footbridge that spans part of the River Welland at Deeping St James. This is a fairly slow moving, quiet river, but at this particular point it was noisy because there was a man-made weir below me. I'd heard it from a distance as I approached the river, and found it, fast-moving, with spray, swirling ripples, and shooting water. I stopped half way across to take a few photographs, closing down the aperture to f22 to slow the shutter speed and blur the moving water. I've taken shots of this kind before, but here I concentrated on where the water tipped over the edge of the small weir and slid down an incline before hitting the pool below. The differing speeds of the water in each part of its journey gave differing effects, and I reflected that making images like this is yet another reason for pausing when your path leads across a bridge over water.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 106mm (212mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f22
Shutter Speed: 1/13 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reeds, ripples and reflections

click photo to enlarge
I sometimes wonder if I should get a Holga. Given some of the images I'm starting to produce, where colour fidelity, sharpness, clarity and depth are of little consequence, the features offered by a DSLR sometimes seem like overkill. A small, cheap, black box, with a simple, fixed-focus lens, producing images that are all imbued with the same characteristics has its attractions. Of course a Holga uses film, and digital is much more convenient.

I've used an SLR since the early 1970s, but for most of that time I've also owned a smaller, fixed lens camera to carry when something larger is inconvenient or inappropriate. Of all such cameras that I've had the one I look back on with most affection is the Ricoh 500RF - a 35mm rangefinder with a fixed 40mm f2.8 lens that I used for about 15 years. This produced images far better than it had any right to, and served me well shooting slide film and black and white for architecture, and colour film for family snapshots. The discipline of the fixed lens was good - zooming involved walking - and the rangefinder focussing was very easy and convenient. It was a camera that forced me back to photography's basics, and helped me see images where previously I hadn't. I was sorry when it died. Today I have a Fuji E900 that I picked up a few years ago, fairly cheaply, after it had been superseded by other models. It has a 32-128mm (35mm equiv.) f2.8-f5.6 lens, offers RAW, and is capable of producing some pretty good images. I use it less than I might, but perhaps winter shots of the sort posted above are within its range. My self-imposed Olympus burden that accompanies each walk is probably due for some time off.

Today's semi-abstract photographs show more reflected reeds shot with deliberately slow shutter speeds to introduce blur. Not everyone's cup of tea I suppose, especially those die-hard DSLR users who seem to value sharpness in an image above most other qualities. But I like them!

photographs & text (c) T. Boughen

Top Image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Bottom Image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 110mm (220mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f14
Shutter Speed: 1/3
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The wind in the reeds

click photo to enlarge
Here's another image in my recently begun quest to capture movement in nature using motion blur. Regular visitors may remember shots of the wind stirring some unripe barley and the waves on a shallow, stony-bottomed river. Today's photograph shows wind passing across a reed bed.

During a recent walk on a bright but quite windy day at Surfleet Seas End in Lincolnshire, I came upon this stand of reeds near the outfall of the River Glen. The low afternoon sun was offering some good contre jour shots of the feathery heads of the common reeds (Phragmites australis). However, the wind had other ideas. Each shot I made of selected heads using a long focal length lens was slightly blurred. So, rather than fight it I thought I may as well co-operate with the inevitable and do some deliberately blurred images. Looking at the wind passing over the reed bed I could see rippled lines being formed in the vegetation so I made these the focus of my efforts. It took about 6 shots to get this, the best of the bunch, with the lens stopped down to its maximum to produce the shutter speed of 1/10 second. I was pleased to get the blurred "waves" and at the same time some leaves and stems that were fairly sharp.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 102mm (204mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f22
Shutter Speed: 1/10
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Turbulent river

click photo to enlarge

I've said elsewhere in this blog that some subjects are best captured with video. Water is a case in point. The attraction of moving water lies in the eddies, swirls, undulations and waves, and in the way the light plays on the surface. Still cameras simply can't record the beauty of moving water. But that doesn't stop us still photographers from trying!

What we can do is use a fast shutter speed to freeze the movement of the water when, for example, it breaks over rocks, or when the crest of a wave is blown away by a strong wind, or as it slips like a glossy sheet over the lip of a waterfall. We can also select a slow shutter speed and record the scene with motion blur. Some photographers use a neutral density filter to get a speed sufficiently slow to make the water look like ice or fog. But a dark day, a small aperture and a low ISO will also do the trick, though with less blur. When we do this we allow the viewer to see that which the eye normally cannot, and in this respect, we produce images akin to those we make with a macro lens, which also reveals things we normally don't see.

My photograph shows the River Ribble in spate at Langcliffe, North Yorkshire, though it could have been taken on any fast moving, shallow, rocky river. Looking down from a bridge I selected a diagonal composition with undulating water and waves produced by barely covered stones, and used the "dark day" technique noted above. The highlights on the surface of the river have produced trails that give a sense of turbulent flow that a higher shutter speed wouldn't have done. I quite like the effect! You might like to compare it with a faster shutter speed used on a much slower moving river here.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 83mm (166mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f10
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On