La Giralda

click photo to enlarge
The tower of Seville Cathedral, La Giralda, is with the Patio de los Naranjos (a cathedral quadrangle with orange trees), the principal remains of the Moorish mosque that was built in the late 1100s. From the early 700s to the early 1200s the southern and central Iberian peninsula were controlled by the Moors. Most was reconquered at the end of that period though Granada remained Moorish until 1492.

The tower of La Giralda was built in the 1190s as a minaret. The tower with its Moorish arches and latticework decoration that stretches from ground level to the bell stage is all of this period. It originally was topped by a recessed domed tower. In 1401 much of the mosque was demolished and the building of the cathedral commenced. Various different tower tops were tried but in 1568 the present classical arrangement was chosen. Classical balusters were also installed to embellish the Moorish openings lower down the tower. Interestingly when you climb La Giralda it is not up steps. Instead ramp after ramp takes you to the level of the bells where fine views over the city can be enjoyed.

Seville is a city with many fine, ornate street lights, particularly in the old town. For my photograph of La Giralda I stood near one of these and composed a shot that included the pair. The different temperature and technology of the lighting in tower and lights produces different colours on the stonework. The smaller photograph shows the cathedral tower framed by one of the old town's narrow streets, Calle Mateos Gago. As ever photographs at night always seem to work better if a little of the day's light remains in the sky. Incidentally, what looks like water on the cobbles of the street is in fact nothing more than the shine produced by the feet and wheels of countless people and vehicles.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: La Giralda, Seville
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 25mm (50mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:800
Exposure Compensation: 0EV

Canary Wharf at night

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This isn't the first night time photograph I've taken of the financial district of London called Canary Wharf. And it probably won't be the last. However, if you live in the Lincolnshire countryside, where the brightest light around is probably a security light on the side of a farm, then the opportunity to photograph night views with plenty of lights is one not to be missed.

There was a time when I used a tripod quite regularly, particularly when I photographed more interior church architecture than I do now. These days I reserve that kind of camera support for macro photography. I've always thought one of the best developments in camera technology in recent years has been image stabilisation (or vibration control or whatever term your manufacturer uses). A close second has been the improvement in the high ISO abilities of sensors. Put those two together and the tripod is no longer quite the necessity that it was. Even a pocket camera with a relatively small 1 inch sensor like the Sony RX100 is capable of producing pretty good images after the last light of the day has disappeared.

I had the ISO on Auto for today's shot and it chose ISO 5000 to keep the shutter speed up to 1/60 second, a necessarily high speed given the focal length was 56mm (35mm equivalent). Nonetheless, old habits die hard and I rested the camera on a handy lifebelt point for my photograph and I braced it firmly. The result is a shot that I wouldn't have thought of taking this way with this kind of camera only five years ago, and it's one that is, I think, technically pretty good.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20.6mm (56mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:5000
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Night photography

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When I used a film camera the photographic day was shorter than it is now. By that I mean the film that was widely available wasn't at its best when light levels started to drop away. If you used a tripod with a static subject you'd got a chance of a reasonable shot, but hand-held it was a different matter. So, I rarely shot in the early morning or in the evening after sunset. And, of course, those are the times when you can make some great photographs.

That slowly changed with the arrival of digital. As sensors improved we started to use ISO numbers that were unheard of with film. From a film-days maximum of ISO 400 or so we soon progressed to the point where 800 and 1600 were regularly used to good effect. The arrival of in-body and lens stabilisation allowed us to hand hold these numbers quite comfortably at speeds down to 1/15 or 1/8 second despite the fact that often the lenses were not as bright as the 50mm 1.8 or 1.4 that we routinely used with film. Then technology moved on and ISO 3200 and 6400 became viable. Today we see cameras offering 12800 and even 25600.

Consequently, when I'm in London I think nothing of hand holding my camera for night-time shots. Sometimes, if I'm away from street lights and strongly illuminated buildings, I'll brace the camera against a wall or on some railings. I never - thankfully - need to consider carrying a tripod because the results I get hand-held are quite acceptable. We passed Canada Water Library the other day. I first photographed this striking Piers Gough/CZWG designed building at the turn of the year during daylight hours. The night offered a different take on the structure and the opportunity to use highlights on the adjacent water of the old dock.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO: 640
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Billingborough church at night

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Driving in the dark over the low hills between Folkingham and Billingborough the other evening, the church tower of St Andrew came into view. It caught my eye as its illumination made it glow like a golden lighthouse, a beacon for travellers heading down onto the Fens. As we drew into the village the tall, fourteenth century tower and spire seemed to be brighter still against the mottled sky, and appeared to be in competition with the moon to see which could best catch the eye of passers-by. It was a contest that, on this particular night, the church was winning. However, the effect of the full moon on the broken cloud was so pleasing we parked up and had a brisk walk to find some photographs that included these two sources of light. It was also, I thought, a good opportunity to try my new compact camera's iAuto+ mode, a setting whereby it takes several shots very rapidly and then merges them to make a single image with reduced noise and motion blur.

Of the cluster of photographs I took the main one is the image I like best. It was taken through the gateway of Billingborough Hall, a large house built in 1620 and modified in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This building is now a care home for the elderly. For my purposes it provided not only more lights in the form of lit windows to punctuate the darkness, but roof and chimney silhouettes and foreground illumination spilling onto the drive from a nearby streetlight. The tower of St Andrew glows in the photograph in just the ethereal way it did at the time, a dominating presence now at night just as it must always have been in the village during the day.

There is a pond near the west end of the church so we walked round to see if there was a photograph to be had that included a reflection of the church in the water. I came away with the smaller photograph and a few failed shots that included sleeping ducks on the pond's island. Billingborough church is an imposing building that is a fine exclamation mark in its village setting. It's a subject I've photographed several times - see, for example, this shot with the nearby Church Farm. I've photographed the pond before too.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: iAuto+
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 2000
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Living with vapour trails

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One recent cold and frosty morning, as I went out into the garden to feed the birds, I chanced to look up and saw a curving vapour trail that was being made by an aircraft heading away from me. It was an odd route for a four-engined jet to be on, and as I studied the sky I noticed the remnants of a couple more such trails slowly de-materialising. Looking closer to the horizon I could see more curved trails whose positions suggested they were part of the same trails nearer to me: clearly one or more aircraft was flying in large circles over Lincolnshire and the nearby sea.

Some of the bigger RAF bases are in the county so unusual vapour trails are a common sight. However, it was immediately clear to me that there was only one four-engined military aircraft that would deliberately fly in circles, at great height. I took a pair of binoculars outside to get a better look and my suspicion was confirmed: a Boeing Sentry AEW1 (AWACS) with its large radome slowly revolving above it was flying in a circle that must have been twenty, thirty or perhaps more miles in diameter. It was clearly participating in some kind of exercise, monitoring and controlling other aircraft and perhaps shipping or land forces below. Either that or we were being invaded!

In one of my first blog posts (actually the eighth, in December 2005) I sounded off about vapour trails, calling them, as far as a photographer is concerned, aerial graffiti, and suggesting that "only rarely do they add something to the image." My view of them hasn't changed since then. I find them an unwanted intrusion much more often than they are an element that I want to include in a composition. But, I have made a few images where vapour trails are, I think, key to their success. This landscape and this semi-abstract of a fairground ride are a couple that come to mind.

However, vapour trails, I discovered recently, aren't always so obviously intrusive. In saying that I'm not referring to those that are so dishevelled that they look like clouds. A few days ago, after I'd taken a speculative shot of the moon through some nearby ash trees and a veil of thin cloud, I noticed near the bottom of the brighter part of the photograph, a wavy vapour trail. As I studied it I reflected that you aren't even free of the wretched things when you're photographing at night!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/10 sec
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation:  -1.00 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Evening photography

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One of the tasks I periodically set myself is to take more photographs at night. However, since I moved to rural Lincolnshire I've found that is much harder than it sounds. When my home was on the Fylde Coast of Lancashire, in close proximity to the coastal towns of Blackpool, Fleetwood, Cleveleys, St Annes and Lytham, the opportunities were much greater. Blackpool, in particular, is ablaze with light at night, particularly along its miles of promenade, photographic opportunities are plentiful, and the light levels make hand-held shots relatively easy. But, in a rural village a few street lights and the glow from the windows of houses is about all the light that is available. When you live in a city, a conurbation, or a big town, it makes more sense to be out and about in the evening, and photographs can be snapped routinely. However, for the rural dweller a trip of several miles to the nearest town solely for the purposes of photography has less to commend it. Or at least that's how this photographer sees it.

Sunset, of course presents opportunities regardless of where you live. Today's photographs are a couple of shots taken in an incidental sort of way, using the camera I had with me. The second one shows (or rather doesn't show) a lane with a farmhouse and a few trees. It is, I suppose, fairly unexceptional. The first image, however, presents some issues that often surround a sunset photograph, namely "Did it really look like that?" and "Are those the actual colours you saw?" The answer to both those questions in this case is, pretty much, "Yes!" In fact, I had to take several shots, repeatedly adjusting the EV to prevent the camera from giving me a scene that was much brighter than the one I was looking at. Someone drew my attention to the fiery glow on the left, and as I took my shots the purple tinge illuminated the low clouds. Serendipity had a part to play in this image too. If I hadn't tried so hard to get the light level and colours right I wouldn't have had a shot that included the car on the road, a helpful detail that adds interest and points of light to the right of the photograph.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 6.8mm (32mm/35mm equiv.), (5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f2.8 (f2)
Shutter Speed: 1/125 (1/30)
ISO: 125 (320)
Exposure Compensation: -2.0 (-0.7) EV
Image Stabilisation: On