Vespa GTS 300

click photo to enlarge
My interest in scooters began and ended with one that I used to push along with my foot, up and down the hills of my home-town as an eight year old. Even today, if someone says "scooter" I think of the child's plaything rather than the chrome, curves and pop-pop-pop of the sub-motorcycle (or is the step above the bicycle?)

Scooters of the lightweight, folding variety, with skateboard-size wheels, have enjoyed a popularity with children and youths for a number of years. These modern incarnations of the type I knew (in those days by manufacturers such as Triang - today by myriad companies) look like fun. Which is more than I can say about the motorised scooter of today's photograph. I'm sure many would disagree with me on this point, seeing style, convenience and relatively inexpensive transport that can be used wearing work clothes rather than leathers.

So why, you may be wondering, am I photographing something in which I have little interest. The answer lies in the colours, the tactile qualities of the shiny metal, and the way its curves are framed by the yellow, angular lines of the car park. Without its surroundings I wouldn't have photographed this scooter, nor would I have given it a slight vignette to emphasise it in its setting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Vespa GTS 300
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm (90mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yellow, red and blue doors

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I think of the three colours, red, yellow and blue as the long-recognised primary colours associated with, not only painting and design, but also children's toys. Sometimes, however, they can be the perfect threesome to enliven a narrow, shadow-filled road in a big city. I photographed these three colourful doors on an interesting modern terrace, during a walk near the River Thames in Greenwich, London.

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (60mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A good year for poppies?

click photo to enlarge
One of the good things about the internet is that it's quite easy to find someone who thinks like you do. One of the bad things about the internet is that it's quite easy to find someone who thinks like you do. Consequently, creating an organisation or movement for beneficent change and progress is easier than ever before. But, mobilising a group of people who share the same bigotry, hatred and intolerance is not difficult either. In fact, such is the breadth of opinions to be found expressed on websites, blogs, forums, social media etc, it is possible to find written support for just about any proposition you care to make, no matter how extreme, ludicrous or unhinged it may seem to most people. The days of misunderstood youth or paranoid misanthropes languishing in the conviction that no one feels the same as they do must surely be long gone: a quick search will quickly throw up fellow loners who share their misery and delusions.

On a lighter note, the internet is also a place where you can take soundings. I tried this the other day in connection with my impression that 2013 has been a particularly good year for poppies in the United Kingdom. Sure enough, I found several pieces written by individuals who expressed the same thought. So I'm right. Or am I? Just because, out of the millions of people who have looked at poppies in the fields, roadsides and gardens of our country, a handful have expressed the same opinion as me doesn't mean we are correct. Perhaps the silent majority who haven't expressed a view publicly feel the number of poppies is no more, or maybe fewer, than usual. As a means of arriving at a reliable judgement simply looking for people with similar views is not a very sound method. Helpful though it undoubtedly can be, the internet has the capacity to very easily reinforce wrong thinking.

Today's photograph was taken in my garden. I posted a shot of "wayward" poppies earlier this month. I see the contre jour image above as one that shows them growing more typically.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 168mm
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wayward red poppies

click photo to enlarge
The flowers that, I think, feature most on this blog are the tulip and the poppy. I haven't actually counted the number of occurrences of each type but my feeling is that these two will predominate. That isn't surprising because they are two of my favourite flowers and we have many examples of each in our garden.

In some ways the tulip and the poppy are similar: both feature large and small varieties; both have single, large, striking blooms held high on a stem; both tend to flower in clusters; and both are very eye-catching. However, there are differences. Where the tulip is prim, tidy, firmly upright, everything properly in place, the poppy is much more wayward. Often they straggle, the stems bend and dip, the petals flop about and flutter in the breeze, and some varieties produce a tangled accumulation of foliage and blooms. Given those contrasting characteristics it's perhaps surprising that I like both plants. But I do, and it is the root of this antithesis - the somewhat bedraggled versus the orderly - that appeals to me. I think there is a place for both these qualities in a garden.

Today's photograph was taken contre jour in the morning when the sun was still comparatively low. The way it emphasised the tissue paper-like translucence of the petals and edged the stems with highlighted hairs appealed to me. I took a few shots of the subject but this one, with the dark shadow of a shed behind, seemed to emphasise these attractive qualities best.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

1500th PhotoReflect blog post

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The other day, looking at Blogger Dashboard, the place from where I begin each new offering, I noticed that the post count had reached 1,498. It's a wonder that I spotted the approach of the milestone of 1,500 posts because 1,000 sailed by unseen. What, I wondered, could I present on this auspicious occasion? The answer came to me in a flash - multiple raspberries!

Not, I hasten to add, the sort produced by sticking your tongue a short way out and vibrating it noisily with your bottom lip. I'm not SO rude. No, the first real picking of the season's fruit had appeared from our garden, and I thought they could be the subject. As I write the raspberries in my photograph have been eaten with a little sugar and a generous dollop of crème fraîche, and my mind is set on covering the strawberries to protect them from the birds because the first few are starting to show faint blushes of red. There's something satisfying about producing and eating food that you grow yourself, a satisfaction that is only increased when it can be turned into the subject matter for a photograph. Carefully arranging some of these unco-operative raspberries into concentric circles I reflected that I'd be a hopeless food photographer. I simply haven't got the patience for it. But, it seems, I do have staying power.

At the time I began this blog in December 2005 I had no idea that I'd still be doing it six and a half years later. I didn't envisage producing more than 1,500 photographs, still less that number of written "reflections". So I suppose, yes, I must have staying power. It's either that or a mixture of madness and monomania! The other thought that I had as the raspberries rolled in every direction but the one I wanted was this: as long as PhotoReflect continues to provide me with a little regular entertainment, interest, challenge - call it what you will - and offers an outlet for my photography, I'll carry on presenting my idiosyncratic thoughts and images from my small corner of the world.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f10
Shutter Speed: 1/5 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tulips, contrast and shadows

click photo to enlarge

My DSLR, a Canon 5DMk2, is set to record images in the RAW format. I do this to give me the greatest flexibility when it comes to processing my photographs and to allow me a better chance of recovering from a poor exposure. My compact camera, a Panasonic Lumix LX3, despite the fact that it can record in RAW, is always set to the best quality JPEG because I take more snapshots with it. Despite that, it has produced some images that bear comparison with any done by my more capable camera (see here, here, here and here for example, or see them all here). I know that if I shot exclusively in JPEG on both cameras my shots wouldn't be enormously poorer for it, but I would find that I couldn't achieve the quality that I required from some exposures because of the restricted ability to post process this format.

In my pre-digital days I never did any post processing of colour negative or colour reversal film, though I did develop slides. I did use a range of filters on my lenses which is processing of sorts. However, with black and white I certainly experimented with chemicals, developing times, and with dodging and burning under the enlarger. I was always fond of fairly contrasty black and white images, and slides tended to have that quality anyway, so deep blacks against strong whites featured in quite a few of my prints. Nowadays I tend to favour the greater dynamic range  and more natural contrast that is possible with digital, though every now and again I like to take a left turn and produce a very contrasty image with deepened shadows.

Today's offering is a case in point. These dark red tulips grow in the shade of a crab apple tree in my garden, and I caught them on a still, cloudy evening, just as the light was starting to tail off. The unprocessed shot is reasonably well exposed with quite a good range of tones. What prompted me to increase the contrast was the dark, shadowy background in the top half of the shot. The red petals were positively glowing against this, and I thought it was an effect that I'd like to enhance across the whole frame. So, with a tweak of the Tone Curve and a few other fiddles here and there I produced this contrasty shot. I quite like it, but it may be a step too far for some

Addendum:
The sale of Instagram for $1 billion brought to my attention something that hitherto I didn't know, namely that people who take photographs on cameras increasingly apply pre-determined effects to their pictures. This has happened for many years in the world of digital photography where the result has been to make photographs look increasingly similar. Apparently that is happening with camera phones too as the mass application of the most popular effects reduces the difference between individual images. I'm not against photographic manipulation, but I do think that doing it yourself by consciously adjusting the basic parameters is more likely to retain any individuality your shot had, whereas applying a ready-made effect inevitably puts it alongside all the others that have had the same done to them.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Giles Gilbert Scott and the K6

click photo to enlarge

Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), is known as the architect of Britain's largest church - the Anglican cathedral at Liverpool - as well as many other ecclesiastic and civic buildings including the new Bodleian Library, Oxord, and Battersea and Bankside power stations (the latter is now Tate Modern). However, in circles wider than architecture and its history he is best known as the designer of our country's iconic red telephone box.

The first telephone kiosks, erected in the 1920s, were rather dour, concrete structures. They received the designation K1, meaning kiosk design Number 1. In 1924 a competition was held to design something better. Three architects submitted their ideas, and the judges, the Royal Fine Arts Commission, selected Giles Gilbert Scott's entry as the winner. His K2 design incorporates vaguely classical elements and a top that is thought to derive from Sir John Soane's mausoleums at St Pancras Old Churchyard and Dulwich Picture Gallery. The main structure was made of cast iron (though Scott wanted mild steel), and the strong red colour was intended to make it easily noticed. It was introduced across London, and in 1926 a modified design (K3) made of reinforced concrete for low-revenue sites was produced. Fifty K4 derivatives were produced from 1927: they included a postage stamp dispensing machine. In 1934 a plywood kiosk was made, designed to be easily assembled and dis-assembled for exhibitions.

But, it was the K6 of 1935, designed to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V, that put the red telephone box on the map. Thousands were made to replace older models and for use in towns and cities across the country. The red colour was initially unpopular, and other colours (including grey) were used in areas of environmental and historical sensitivity. Eventually, public affection grew for the shape and colour, and it became a familiar and well-regarded part of Britain's landscape. Subsequent designs were made based on Scott's original. However, with the creation of British Telecom as a private company in the 1980s the old kiosks began to be replaced by newer, lower-maintenance designs. The life of these unloved boxes looks like being relatively short due to the now ubiquitous mobile phone. But, many of the original K6 boxes live on as listed buildings. Parishes were given the opportunity to retain the old style boxes providing they took over basic maintenance of the structures. Many did so, though not all treat them with the respect they deserve, and it is not unusual to see a faded box, the red paint now pink and peeling, languishing in a rural backwater.

Today's photograph shows the telephone box in the village where I live. I caught it on a morning of hoar frost and took the shot with my pocket camera.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.5
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

Is perfection overrated?

click photo to enlarge
Surfing the net a few days ago I came across a photographer's tips for taking good photographs of flowers. The very first sentence explained that to take a fine flower photograph you first had to find flawless flowers. That pulled me up short (and not only because of the alliteration!). If he'd said that to take photographs of the sort that are wanted by greeting card manufacturers, calendar designers, seed companies, etc, you must select perfect flowers, then I wouldn't have had a problem: these commercial concerns have a need for images of unblemished blooms that show no signs of age, disease or malformation. But, to assert that imperfect flowers cannot be the subject of a good photograph is nonsense.

Even a cursory knowledge of the history of painting reveals the deliberate and widespread use of flawed blooms by painters for the attractive, melancholic and symbolic qualities that they place before the viewer. And where the still life paintings of the seventeenth and subsequent centuries went in this regard, so too, in the past 160 years have many photographers. A while ago I posted such an image, showing a vase of hydrangeas that were well past their "best", but whose faded qualities attracted my meagre skills.

However, I have a feeling that today's photograph may well have been the sort that the photographer had in mind. It is about as close to perfect as I am able to get in terms of the blooms and the composition. These immaculate red tulips were in a churchyard, and I decided to use a long focal length to achieve sharp flowers at the centre of the shot, with those in front and behind out of focus. It's the sort of trick that photographers use to give a shot depth, and to focus the viewer's attention on a particular part of a composition. Oh, and you perhaps won't be surprised to find that we've selected this image for a few of our home-made birthday cards this year!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Primary and secondary colours

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A tradition of English schooling is that, from the age of 11 children are taught in ability groups, but are also placed in "Houses". Typically, on entry to their particular form of secondary education, they are assigned to one of (usually) four houses in which they remain until the end of compulsory education. The houses are not selective, the aim being to have an approximate balance of boys and girls and abilities. These cohorts come into their own during sports day and other competitive events, form periods, and occasions when there is a requirement to subdivide pupils into mixed groups. It's interesting that a tradition that arose in public (i.e. private) schools where pupils did (and do) live in actual houses, should have been so warmly embraced by state schools.

I was first placed in a "house" in the junior years (age 7-11, Years 3-6 in modern parlance) of my primary education. It was called Penyghent House, and accompanied the three other houses of Ingleborough, Whernside, and Pendle - the "Three Peaks" of Yorkshire, and the nearby Lancashire summit, all of which were visible from where my Yorkshire school was located. For better recognition each house was linked to a colour - red, green, yellow and, in the case of Penyghent, blue. When I moved to secondary school, as luck would have it, I remained a blue, but was assigned to West House. You can guess the other houses and colours! It may be my school experience of these four colours as a group that leads me to use them still in that combination. Or perhaps wider society uses them whe there is a requirement for four colours. Whatever the reason, it wasn't until I'd rotated and tinted this photograph of a couple of pine cones four times that I realised I'd chosen those four colours once again. Though I hadn't placed them in the sequence that I always recall them i.e. red, blue, green and yellow!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Two old buoys

click photo to enlarge

I've always been amazed by the fact that we continue to have traffic lights that use green to signify "Go" and red to indicate "Stop". Given that up to 8% of males and 2% of females experience red/green colour blindness you'd think that we'd have taken this into account in their design, or have long ago changed the colours to ones that aren't mis-read so frequently. Colour blind drivers are known to use the position of the lights to determine what to do, and I don't often read about accidents caused by this reason, so perhaps its not the problem I imagine it to be.

I was thinking about this as I photographed two buoys on the docks at King's Lynn, Norfolk. They were very faded, but were clearly red and green. Pairs of newer and better painted buoys nearby were also red or green, but much brighter. Their juxtaposition made me wonder if sailors experienced the same potential for confusion when steering by these buoys that mark channels. However, in preparing this piece I read that in most of the world (except the Americas, the Philippines and Japan) green buoys are conical and indicate starboard, and red buoys are cylindrical and show port. So, the designers of this navigation aid contrived a system that was legible in high contrast light (silhouette) and by colour blind people. But why did they use potentially confusing red and green? Was it simply to mimic the lights that ships carry? It seems that many of our designs, like the QWERTY keyboard on which I am writing this blog entry, have a life that extends much longer than good sense would dictate, and inertia is as strong a force in our "ever changing" world as it ever was!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (40mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On