The point of focus

click photo to enlarge
Walking by the River Slea in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the other day I stopped when my wife took a phone call. As she chatted I cast my eye about to see if any photographic subjects offered themselves up to my camera. The freshly growing water weed below the water's surface was making lovely shapes, but it didn't translate into a photograph because it lacked the movement that made the vegetation so appealing. Newly hatched mallard chicks whizzed hither and thither like miniature speed boats, but they didn't look like photographic fodder - too fast, too random in direction. Then my eye was caught (not for the first time) by the public seating nearby. It was metal, had words worked into the backrest and the bench seat was perforated with holes. Underneath were bright yellow celandines glowing in the spring sunshine.

I took two photographs of this subject, each with a different point of focus. What I liked about the result was the way they differed and yet offered something of interest, and the colour combination of the blue seat and the green and yellow of the grass and celandines. As some readers will know I have a jaundiced view of much that passes for contemporary public seating because it too often puts the ability to withstand vandalism well-ahead of any attempt to provide a comfortable perch for a passing posterior. One of the things my photographs show - I think - is that even the most unpromising, inflexible subject is capable of providing something out of which we can fashion a photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen


Photo Title: Bench Seat With Celandines Below
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A humble Hampton Court

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Humble isn't a word that is usually found in the same sentence as Hampton Court. The reason being that most people immediately think of the royal palace of that name in Richmond, London. This was originally the property of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, was restored by Thomas Cromwell in the early 1500s, and was seized and enlarged by Henry VIII in 1529. Its early ornate brickwork and later extensions by Sir Christopher Wren are ostentatious to be sure, but not humble. Nor can Hampton Court in Herefordshire be so described. It started life as manor house in 1427 but today is a castellated country house, the result of work done in the mid-C19 to make it grander and more comfortable. Today it is well-known for its gardens that are open to the public.

However, when I look through the timber-framed archway of Hampton Court on Nelson Street in King's Lynn, the word humble seems quite appropriate, and not just because of the comparison with its two namesakes. Though parts of it were once owned by relatively wealthy people it has been extended and re-built over the years, and has usually been the home for multiple families. It is today subdivided into 15 flats. My earlier photograph is accompanied by a piece that tells something of its history.

When I came to take the mouse-eye view photograph above I decided not to do the obvious and focus on either the buildings or the nearest cobbles. Instead I set the aperture to f1.8 and focused a metre or so away leaving near and far out of focus.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Hampton Court, King's Lynn, Norfolk
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

New Year Honours and the Limehouse Link

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There's nothing wrong with a society recognising those who make an exceptional, selfless contribution to their community. Unfortunately few societies manage to do this well, and the UK does it exceptionally badly, shrouding the whole process in secrecy and frequently using it as a reward or bribe for politicians and their supporters. This year's New Year Honours List has recently been published and is no different from those of previous years - a mixture of the deserving, the unexceptional who are rewarded with status for doing what they get paid for, and a sickening list of gongs for the establishment's boys (and girls). It's the latter group that the list exists for, and the former are there simply to make the cronyism and paybacks by the government to those who work for it, bankroll it and publicly support it, appear less obnoxious and more legitimate.

The whole system, as I've said before, stinks, and it is only the fact that some principled people turn down the chance to become a Dame, a Lord, a Sir or to have anachronistic letters after their name, that makes the whole thing bearable. So today, rather than despair about the thirty or so members of the Conservative Party who received honours, or Lynton Crosby who "masterminded" the election of the current government and is rewarded with a knighthood (as well as the fat salary he received), or actors, actresses, sports people and the rest who leaven the unsavoury pile with a sprinkling of populism, I await a Freedom of Information Request that lets us know who turned down the baubles of the Queen and the Government in this round of honours giving.

Today's photograph was taken in the Limehouse Link, a 1.1 mile long tunnel that runs from the Tower Bridge approaches to the northern edge of Canary Wharf. It has the distinction of being the most expensive stretch of road in Britain (£50,500 per foot at 2011 prices). Interestingly, this is simply a relief road tunnel constructed, as its rectangular section suggests, by cut-and-cover methods, and not one that passes under the River Thames.

Happy New Year to All.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Limehouse Link Tunnel, London - Out of Focus
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:800
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blurred Blackwall Tunnel, London

click photo to enlarge
Though image stabilisation and improved high ISO performance has greatly improved the low-light and night-time capabilities of cameras, these conditions can still produce shots with motion blur. Low shutter speeds may result in blur caused by camera movement, and this is not usually an effect that a photographer wants (though it can be, and it can be deliberately induced to good effect). On my recent trips through London's Blackwall Tunnel several of my shots taken there exhibited this kind of blur, and it prompted me to try for photographs with the other kind of blur - focus blur - as an alternative to the sharp shots I'd been seeking. I've made quite a few exposures in recent years with the camera deliberately out of focus, and I knew that the night-time points of light against a dark background had the potential to be interesting and perhaps beautiful.

The image above is the one I took that I like best. If you didn't know what the subject was you might not guess it, so you'd judge it solely for its abstract qualities - colour, shapes, composition etc, and here, I think, the convergence on the cluster of bright points of light works well in this regard.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Blurred Blackwall Tunnel, London
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:1250
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Out of focus highlights

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One of the things I like about photography is the "accidental" effects that lenses and sensors produce. Of course they are not really accidental - all can be explained scientifically - so perhaps unforeseen is a better way to describe them. What am I referring to? Well, it can be the way that shooting contre jour sometimes produces a sepia effect. Or it can be the flare that the sun introduces as it bounces around inside the lens elements. But for me the best unforeseen effects are present in out of focus highlights.

In 2011 I was using a macro lens to photograph some glass marbles; shiny, spherical glass balls with colours inside them. I was captivated by the beautiful out of focus highlight effects that I saw before I brought the lens into focus. At the end of the session I decided that these out of focus shots were far superior to the sharp photographs of the subject that I had originally intended to take. The other day, as I was photographing some sunlit steel mesh that filled in the rails at the side of a footbridge, I noticed some unusual out of focus highlights, examples that looked positively three dimensional. The small photograph above shows the mesh as I initially photographed it, with it gradually appearing and intensifying as sharpness decreases. The main image is a crop of a shot I took solely of the effect. Not great photography I think, but noteworthy and an addition to my collection of such phenomena.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 2
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 140mm (210mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Weeds and razor wire

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It's odd, the things that attract our eye as photographers. It may be something conventionally beautiful such as a landscape, a sunset or a ship on the wave-tossed ocean. On the other hand, it could be a subject that is generally regarded as ugly, unworthy of consideration or just plain ordinary - such as weed or razor wire. On an early blog post I chose razor wire as a subject and discussed its place in the modern world. And, at various times, I've photographed weeds a.k.a. wild flowers for their unique qualities.

Consequently, when I saw spirals of razor wire on top of an old brick wall that was growing a luxuriant crop of weeds I had to point my camera in their direction. I consciously chose a long focal length to throw a good deal of the subject out of focus, and was pleased with the way the wire, in places, lost some of its hard sharpness - photographically speaking that is!

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 140mm (210mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:220
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The blame game and rain drops

click photo to enlarge
Am I cynical in thinking that our prime minister's exhortation to stop playing the "blame game" concerning the responsibility for, and handling of, the current flooding in England, is simply to prevent people examining the degree to which his government's policies are responsible for the extent of the flooding and the poverty of the response to it? Has he really forgotten that he was only recently blaming the flooding on the previous government's deficiencies. Moreover, I seem to recall him telling us, when he was first elected, that his would be a government that eschewed "Punch and Judy politics", that abandoned the usual name-calling and knock about; that he would usher in a new, responsible approach that raised the standard of political discourse. How soon all that was forgotten. How quickly did business as usual assert itself as U-turns, ministerial resignations, botched policies, missed targets and political embarrassments mounted. Unattributed briefings, back-biting, smears, statistical manipulation - the whole range of dark political arts - was deployed in double quick time, and very soon we were exactly where we have always been, with the public rating politicians among the lowest of the low, somewhere alongside journalists. Now, having said that he has no choice but to make deep cuts in public spending, exhorting us to tighten our belts and chopping services with a relish that borders on the fanatical, he suddenly announces "money is no object" in dealing with the flooding. Worse yet, instead of letting the responsible minister and the professionals who know how to deal with flooding get on with their jobs he announces that he is taking charge. I don't know whether to feel blessed that we are led by this Renaissance man or to despair that we (though not me!) have elected someone so prone to knee-jerk reactions, someone whose every action seems driven by whether or not it plays well in the media and to voters.

That despairing note was prompted by the confluence of the political news and the continuing rain, some of which I noticed on a window as the light started to fail. With my naked eye I could just make out colours in some of the drops on the glass. So, with the aim of revealing it, I mounted my 100mm macro lens on the camera and took this angled shot. I made sure the point of focus was off the left edge of the frame so that all the reflected highlights were out of focus to a greater or lesser degree. Recently I was speaking of how the camera often sees what the eye doesn't. That's especially true when you use a macro lens as some of the patterns in the highlights above show.

* The piece above was written on 11 February 2014
From The New Statesman, 12 February 2014: "After the session (Prime Minister's Questions) had ended, No. 10 briefed that there would be no new money made available and that any extra funding would come from contigency budgets, a clear reversal of Cameron's pledge yesterday."

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5DMk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm Macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Deliberately out of focus photographs

click photos to enlarge

Yesterday's photograph of marbles was not the first shot that I took of the subject. I was using a macro lens, and as is my way (in fact many people's way) I turn off auto-focus when I use such a lens on a tripod. The first thing I saw when I put my eye to the viewfinder was the out of focus highlights on the marbles and the soft shapes and colours around them. So, after I'd taken my in-focus shots I experimented with out of focus shots, adjusting the focus to points in front of and then behind the main subject. Here's a few of the images that I gathered. If the truth be known, I prefer them to yesterday's sharp image. A lot of people obsess over sharpness in photographs. It's good to be reminded that deliberately de-focussing can produce results of interest and beauty.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon

Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/15
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off