Photographing water reflections

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"It looks like it's swimming in paint", said my wife, when she saw this photograph on the screen of my computer. And so it does. Yet, when I took this shot of the cygnet (not far off adulthood) on the canalised stretch of the River Witham in the centre of Lincoln, my eye saw little of these striking colours and patterns. The wildly distorted lines of the river-bank buildings and the blue sky were lost in the flickering sheen of the water's surface. However, the photographic experience that I've gathered down the years told me that the camera would present the water in a way that made a bold, colourful, semi-abstract backdrop for the swimming bird.

In the past I've photographed reflected branches, clouds, tree trunks and even steel fences. The way that the shutter freezes movement that the eye doesn't see, or echoes the tangible intangibly, is something that I like, and I make a point of looking for good water reflections whenever I'm out and about with the camera.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 66mm (99mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: 0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Birds and their perches

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Avian vantage points vary from species to species. In my garden the jackdaws tend to stay high, favouring chimney pots and roof ridges. The blackbirds are often seen on top of the clothes posts, on the security lights, and on middling branches of the trees. The mistle thrushes are almost always on the topmost branches of the tallest trees, particularly liking the poplar and eucalyptus. Out in the countryside buzzards are commonly on the dead branches of large trees such as oaks, though kestrels prefer telephone wires and posts of any kind.

But what about gulls? In coastal towns where there are no cliffs the tops of houses and their chimneys provide good places to survey the land. So too do tall street lights. However, on a recent trip into Boston, Lincolnshire, I spotted a gull on a sculpture. Nothing unusual about that I suppose; gulls can often be seen perched on the heads of statues erected to the great and good making them look slightly ridiculous. And even when they are absent from these favoured positions their presence at other times is evident from the "deposits" that they leave behind.

However, this gull had chosen a sculpture of a different bird species on which to perch. The former Fogarty Feather Factory is surmounted by a large mute swan in recognition of its role as a centre of the manufacture of pillows, eiderdowns etc. Today the factory houses flats, but the swan remains, and on the day I passed by it offered a vantage point for a solitary gull. The sight of it immediately suggested that my two earlier photographs of birds on bird sculptures - see this one from Southport and this one from London - could be complemented by a third. It's not a great photograph, just a bit of fun to brighten a cold February afternoon.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 282mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

River Welland scene

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I sub-title this blog, "Photographs and reflections from Lincolnshire, England", so it's perhaps about time that I featured a photograph from the county where I live. The trouble is, I haven't got too many photographs that were taken locally in the past month. Here's one, however, that I took it on a shopping trip to Stamford. The River Welland runs through the town and this section often has a small boat or two moored under the trees. It's enough to give a point of interest around which to build a composition. I posted a shot a while ago of the same area of river, though with a wider perspective.

As I walked over the bridge I noticed a few mallards and mute swans in front of the pair of rowing boats. After something of a wait as the birds swam here and there, never quite getting into a compositionally "right" location relative to the boats, this solitary bird obliged me by positioning itself in the area of dark water on the right of the frame and I pressed the shutter.

In one of my early posts on this blog I reflected on photographing swans, and in particular the slightly apologetic note with which enthusiast photographers often accompany such an image. There is the feeling that swans are "corny" subjects, photographed to death. I've always been of the view that if we excluded subjects that have been heavily photographed there'd be precious little left to photograph, and that the approach you adopt is more imprtant than the subject itself. Evidence for my belief in that assertion can be found in the number of photographs of swans on this blog and my different treatments of the subject! See here, here, here, here and not least, here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 140mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A swan, a wire, a death

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In my early teens I was a keen birdwatcher and the fascination with birds has stayed with me since that time. In fact, I consider it to have been a life-enriching activity. It's fair to say that my interest was never as deep in later life as it was in those early years, but I have always been alert to the bird life around me, and I remain so today. As well as recording the number and species of the birds I saw, I plotted nest sites, photographed birds and collected a few artefacts - feathers, the odd wing and skull (including those of a curlew and a heron). The latter activity may sound a touch macabre, but I never considered it so. I used to periodically come across dead birds and they provided the materials for my small collection. Skulls were sometimes clean and bleached white by exposure to the sun: others could be made so by leaving them near an ants' nest! I'd probably been inspired to collect these things by the displays of stuffed birds that seemed to feature in every museum I visited, and by the stories in the Victorian and early twentieth century bird books that I posessed.

On a recent cycle ride I came upon a sight that brought back those early days. The farm track upon which I was travelling was littered with wings, bunches of tail feathers and smaller, downy feathers. All were white, though the wings had a hint of brown too. The death of the bird must have been quite recent because the remaining bone and tissue where the wings had been parted from the body were still quite red with blood. I immediately knew that the bird was a young mute swan (Cygnus olor) and that it had died or been seriously injured when it flew into the wires above the track. This happen all too frequently to swans, and I've come across them before in similar circumstances. What I couldn't deduce from the evidence before me was what had eaten the rest of the bird. Perhaps it was a fox, maybe a stoat, possibly rats or a domestic cat, certainly carrion crows or magpies: probably, however, a few or all of these had a meal or two off it.

Not being one to pass up a photographic opportunity, even one that's a touch grisly, I took out my compact camera, set the aspect ratio to 16:9 and took this "scene of crime" shot.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The bridge chapel, St Ives

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Today's photograph shows the old bridge over the River Great Ouse at St Ives, Huntingdonshire*. It is one of only four bridges in England that still have their complete medieval chapels (the others are at Rotherham, Wakefield and Bradford-on-Avon). This crossing was built in the 1420s, replacing a wooden bridge that dated from around 1100, which itself superseded the shallow ford on the gravel river bed - the original method of getting from one bank to the other. Traffic used the single lane of this ancient bridge until 1980 when a new crossing was built on the town by-pass road further downstream.

Bridges have long had religious associations. In Britain many Bronze and Iron Age artefacts have been found deliberately placed in rivers next to fragments of wooden structures that may well have been bridges. The remains of a Roman bridge has altars dedicated to Neptune and Oceanus nearby. In the medieval period chapels were often built at one end of a bridge, or actually on the bridge. This continued the old association, but was also because the church frequently funded the construction of a crossing and then collected a toll to pay for its upkeep. Travellers would receive a blessing from a priest at the chapel after they made their payment. A few bridge chapels (such as that at Wakefield) were chantries, funded by a private individual, where mass was said daily for the salvation of their souls. During its lifetime the chapel at St Ives also saw use as a private residence, an inn and a doctor's surgery (though never a prison, the fate of some bridge chapels).

St Ives' bridge is unusual in having two newer, rounded arches to the left (as we look at it), and original fifteenth century pointed arches to the right. This came about because in 1645, during the Civil War, Cromwell's Republican army pulled down two arches and replaced them with a drawbridge in case of Royalist attack. The arches were rebuilt in 1716 to a design that reflected the fashion and constructional theories of the time. I visited this location on a late September morning of bright sunshine, and couldn't resist using the mute swans as foreground interest, despite the difficulty that their bright, white plumage presented in terms of metering the scene.

* For a number of reasons I tend to use the historic county names and boundaries that preceded the local government reorganisation of 1974. Consequently I assign St Ives to Huntingdonshire rather than Cambridgeshire in which it now resides for administrative purposes. For more information on this see the Association of British Counties.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Mute swans and multiple lives

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When I first became aware of Second Life, the virtual world where people "live" an alternative existence and interact with other "people", I thought that the inventors of the software had chosen the wrong name. It seemed to me that "Third Life" would be much more appropriate because of the increasing tendency for people in the affluent world to already be living two lives.

The "first life" that people lead involves the daily reality of existence; looking out and interacting with the world in a straightforward way. The "second life" that many also live, and are encouraged to live by the forces of society and affluence, is one where they constantly exist outside themselves, always looking at their actions and reactions in terms of how it fits with who they want to be, how they see themselves, and, particularly, how they want others to see them. For people who have been seduced into this way of living no action seems to be undertaken for its own sake, they're always looking at the profit and loss it generates for their self-image and projected image. Work, hobbies, partners, purchases, education, friendships, holidays - everything is seen in terms of this second "virtual" person that they create both for themselves and in order to impress their friends and the wider world whose recognition they crave.

I've read a number of defences of participation in the online Second Life - it's harmless fun, it lets people be more than they are or can be, it's part of the future of the world, it's an alternate reality, it allows the housebound to step beyond the confines of their infirmity - there are probably more. I remain unconvinced. I think that those who "live" in this online world are likely to be a self-selected group for whom it will certainly be a "Third Life". For them, and for the many others who live the "second life" I describe above, my suggestion would be to make the most of the reality that is "first life" - it's all that matters!

This reflection was prompted by a search of Google to discover whether the mute swan (Cygnus olor) had ever been known to produce a second brood in the same season. I found the answer (yes) amongst a number of irrelevant links that were about people in Second Life who had the word "swan" as part of their virtual name! Why did it come as no surprise that none were called "mute swan"?

I photographed this adult bird by the River Slea in Lincolnshire. It was one of a family group who were resting and loath to move as we walked by. This one kept a watchful eye open until we were well past.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On