Recurring photographic subjects

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As the years go by and the photographs accumulate I have become aware that my opus features a number of photographic themes that make regular appearances. There are broad themes such as contre jour shots, boldly asymmetry, deliberate blur and silhouettes. And there are subject themes, for example chairs, church vaulting, flowers and architectural details. Then there are the street lights.

Even before my post of a few days ago of the gull on one of several slender lights at Skegness I was aware that I had a penchant for street lights new and old. As I've been processing the shots from a visit to Seville this predilection has become obvious, and I've already posted two photographs that feature them. Well, here's a shot that features not only street lights but also silhouettes - two recurring themes in one photograph! It was taken on a misty morning as the sun was beginning to burn its way through to yet another deep blue sky. The sun's disc as it briefly revealed itself attracted my attention and I dialled in a little underexposure to emphasise the silhouettes of the ornate street lights, the bell tower, cypress tree and roof top aerials.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Silhouettes - Street Lights etc - Seville
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 39mm (78mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bicycles and pedestrians contre jour

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One of the advantages of winter sun (in the northern hemisphere) is that it is relatively low in the sky. Consequently contre jour silhouettes and deep, elongated shadows are available during the day and not just early and late as at other times of year.

I saw these bicycles in a pedestrianised street in Peterborough when shopping the other day and liked the bold shapes they made. After I'd taken my shots I seemed to remember photographing bicycles against the light in similar circumstances before. A quick search of the blog turned up the image and proved my memory still works reasonably well despite my advancing years. The main differences between the shots is that I used a much wider angle on the earlier photograph and above I used a longer focal length to minimise the elements I wanted in the composition.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Bicycles and Pedestrians, Peterborough
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 56mm (112mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Another Fenland sunrise

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I grew up among the hills, mountains and valleys of the Yorkshire Dales. In recent years, since we moved to the flat Lincolnshire Fens, when I reveal the place of my childhood I frequently get asked whether I miss the uplands. And the answer I give is "Yes and no". Yes, because unlike many of my contemporaries, I enjoyed the landscape, settlements, communities, wildlife etc. No, because I got fed up with the rain that falls steadily across many, many days rather than in large amounts with long spells of drier weather between. No too, because I like to experience living in different localities for reasonable lengths of time, something I've done during my life, and the Fens is different from anywhere else I've lived.

When people ask me about the Fenland landscape, at some point I start eulogising the skies. Lincolnshire is famed for its "big skies", and I take great pleasure in the changing displays that are always taking place above my head. In the depths of winter I particularly relish the sunrises that I see when I open our bedroom curtains. I posted a shot of one a while ago, and here is another from a couple of days ago. The intense colours filled the sky for only four or five minutes and then they slowly quietened down as the sun climbed fully above the horizon. And, though I've seen such sunrises many times, each time is as thrilling as the first time, and I can't resist photographing it.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photograph Title: A Fenland Village Sunrise
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (40mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.3
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spalding station silhouettes

click photo to enlarge

Silhouettes are a reasonably regular feature of my photographic output. This year I've posted silhouettes of pollarded poplars, electricity pylons, rooks and lights, the disembarking Lynn ferry, and the Observatory Cafe at "The Deep" aquarium, Hull. Quite a few other images, whilst not as obviously featuring silhouettes as strongly the examples cited, nevertheless leaned heavily on dark shapes against a lighter background: shots such as this fishing boat and these shoppers for shoes.

In fact, when I look back at my "Best of..." silhouettes figure quite prominently in most of the photographic categories. For anyone who hasn't dipped into my back catalogue here are a few examples: St Anne's pier, roller coaster repair, street lights, ducks and water, Mount Pavilion, Fleetwood, dead tree, promenade seat, and one of my personal favourites, the bait digger's bike.

I find silhouettes appealing for a number of reasons. They are strikingly bold, dramatic takes on reality, a way of instantly turning the mundane into something visually arresting. Their positive/negative qualities, whereby the outline of the subject creates both the flat dark shape and the light shape that intersect like jigsaw pieces, endows images with a semi-abstract quality that I like. Then there's the counter-intuitive fact that a silhouette of an object often leads your eye to linger longer and often results in you taking in more detail than you would from a well lit photograph of the same thing. Don't believe that? Look at the photograph of the bait digger's bike again and consider whether you'd have explored it as much if the sun had been behind the camera.

Today's photograph was taken on a shopping expedition to Spalding, Lincolnshire. It was taken from a supermarket car park and shows the prominent chimneys of the railway station, a subject I've featured before. Interestingly, as I was writing this piece I remembered that today's photograph is not the first one I've taken featuring silhouetted chimneys, the end of the day and birds flying to roost. This one was taken in Fleetwood, Lancashire, in 2006.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Changing the clocks

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In 1750 the Calendar (New Style) Act brought England's calendar properly into line with that of most Western European countries. The Julian system was replaced by the Gregorian, and the year began on 1st January rather than 25th March. As part of the process of alignment 1751 was a year of 282 days (25 March - 31 December), and in 1752 an adjustment was made that entailed removing 11 days - 2nd September was followed by 14th September. There is a story that the latter device led to protests, unrest, cries of, "Give us back our 11 days", and concern that the government was shortening people's lives. However, this fiction probably arose because historians took a piece of satirical writing and a Hogarth painting too literally.

I was thinking of this piece of folklore when we put the clocks back one hour last weekend, moving from British Summer Time (BST) to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The result of this tinkering with time is that we get an hour longer in bed for one night, then mornings are lighter and evenings get darker sooner. The opposite, of course, happens in spring when the clocks are turned forward. Quite a few people disagree with the current practice: some want there to be no change, whilst others favour a two-hour shift of the clocks. No one, however, feels that we, in any way, lose time! One small effect of the change for this photographer is that the sunrises that accompany my rising in mid-October (and find very conveniently timed for snapping) now happen an hour sooner, and the sunsets move to earlier in the evening. Another consequence this weekend was that when my wife opened the curtains and let in the sun (that would barely have risen the previous day) it created a nicely balanced composition of light, shadows and silhouettes that caught my eye.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rooks

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I recall that on at least one occasion during my childhood the gun club in the market town where I lived took their weapons at the beginning of April and blasted the nests in a nearby rookery. Twigs, adults and young birds were destroyed by the co-ordinated fire of multiple shot guns. Quite what was achieved by this I don't know, but it seemed to satisfy the blood-lust of those involved.

Like most large, black birds the rook (Corvus frugilegus) has something of a bad name. Yes, it can eat newly planted seed, grazes on young plants, and sometimes joins the carrion crow (Corvus corone) in feeding on dead wild and farm animals. But, it also makes great inroads into invertebrates that are destructive to plant life, and deals very effectively with plagues of caterpillars. So it is by no means clear that it has an entirely negative effect on arable farms here in Lincolnshire or elsewhere. Nonetheless, the irregular persecution of rooks continues, sometimes by illegal means.

Perhaps if people knew more of the habits of the rook they might view it in a different light. The species is highly gregarious (just like people), and is thought to be mainly monogamous, often having the same mate for life (also like us!) In the UK it tends to be a home bird, rarely moving more than 60 miles or so from the place it was born, though rooks from Northern Europe do migrate south and west for the winter, swelling the populations of the countries where the weather is milder. It is a colonial breeder, favouring the very tops of tall trees that are located in clumps. My village, very typically for England, has a rookery in the tallest trees of the churchyard. People have long ascribed to the rook intelligence greater than that found in most birds, and have often described an apparently organised meeting of them on the ground as a "parliament." Recent research has proved that it's no bird-brain, showing that in some circumstances it is capable of finding and using tools to secure its food, something that is not observed in other species.

On a recent evening walk we came upon a couple of hundred rooks strung out along some wires. I took a photograph of the birds sitting there in serried ranks. However, as we rounded a line of trees they decided we were too close for comfort and in their fright took flight. The cropped image above shows a small group of the much larger total as they swirled and tumbled off the wires and caught the wind that carried them to a safe distance from us.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 110mm (220mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Thinking about composition

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"It is impossible to give you rules that will enable you to compose. If it were possible to compose pictures by rule Titian and Veronese would be ordinary men."
John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic, social critic, artist, etc

There is much truth in what Ruskin said because for many the art of composition is intuitive, something done without reference to direct learning. For such people the component parts of a painting or photograph are arranged "just so", and are just right. But for others composition is difficult, not at all obvious, and guidance is appreciated. There is no shortage of people willing to give instruction and many who seek to make it a mystery. The danger of following guidance in how to compose is that photographs become formulaic. Photography "experts" frequently come up with a set of "rules" to guide the amateur and when they do you can guarantee that they always mentions the wretched rule of thirds: this then seems to become the only thing anyone remembers. The best advice I can give is to study paintings and art criticism, not photography. However, that's not advice that I expect many to follow!

That said, I do know of one succinct piece of writing by a photographer that is brief and reasonably helpful. In eight pages of his book, Photography, Eric de Mare focuses on five aspects of composition (he calls them canons) as a starting point from which to move on to a wider understanding.
CONTRAST , he says, is necessary for variety and interest. Rough/smooth, vertical/horizontal, straight/curved, near/far, dark/light, big/small, plain/decorative, sharp/blurred, etc are examples of devices that can be used as the basis of a composition.
REPETITION makes for harmony through rhythm, though it can become monotonous unless broken in some way.
CLIMAX is the principal area of interest, the subject. Lines will often lead to it, it will usually be near to an edge of the frame, or at an intersection of thirds.
BALANCE is placing values in the image in equilibrium about an imaginary centre line. This is the hardest aspect for the beginner to achieve, because a small object of, say, strong colour can easily balance a much larger, but more subdued mass. Tones, forms and points of interest have to be weighed and carefully disposed. People are particularly "heavy", and when placed to one side can balance whole buildings on the other.
COHESION is about order and continuity, so that each part relates to the whole, and contributes to the story that the image is telling. A complex image, if it is cohesive, will have an overall simplicty and force.

The author of this sage advice adds that "composing can be reduced to fourteen words by quoting Pope's couplet on the landscaping of Windsor Park:
Where order in variety we see
And where, though all things differ, all agree."

Today's photograph breaks the advice that most photographic writers give, namely to seek the power and interest of balanced asymmetry in your compositions. This view, from below an electricity pylon towards sunset, is fairly symmetrical; but symmetry has its place too (rules are made to be broken!), as long as it's not the only compositional device a photographer uses.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

CRT v LCD

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At the end of last year my CRT monitor died. I'd only had it three or four years and had bought it when it was quite difficult to get hold of anything that wasn't an LCD panel. My purchase raised a few eyebrows amongst people I know, because I'd gone against what was seen as an overwhelming tide placing a better product before us. I wasn't blind to the advantages of LCD monitors - lower power usage, lower emissions, more desk-space released and more screen area for the money were what I was denying myself. So why did I buy a CRT monitor? Quite simply, the image I saw on an "old-style" screen was more like a printed photograph than the image produced by any LCD monitor that I could afford. The slight blurring together of the pixels by a CRT emulated the finish of film and inkjet output very well. And, just as importantly, my eyes saw the same colours all over the screen regardless of how I positioned my head in front of it.

However, you can only hold out so long, and when I came to replace my defunct monitor I had to go for the ubiquitous LCD. I've had it for several months now, and I've got used to the very slight pixellation of images, though I think my purchase is better than many in this respect. But what I haven't got used to, and what drives me nuts sometimes, is the way the colours and contrast change if I position my head slightly lower, higher, to the left or to the right. I have to be much more careful in this respect using my new monitor than I did with the old one, and adjusting colour and contrast is a more fraught task. The other thing I noticed is that the LCD panel is much less forgiving of my processing than the CRT was, revealing sky noise, block pixelation and mask edges that were formerly invisible to my eye. You might think that this is an improvement, and in some ways it is, but most of these things were not visible in the printed output (up to 13in. X 19 in.) so it's less helpful than might be imagined. In all other respects I like my new monitor. But, until designers fix the colour/contrast problem I'm never going to see the LCD as the final display solution for photographers.

Today's photograph is what I call a "bits and pieces" photograph. Any good qualities it has come not from a main subject, but from the several silhouettes and lines spread across the frame. It's a shot for the eye to wander over in much the same way as the people are wandering over Cromer beach. Incidentally, the old tractors (ancient Fordsons) and trailers, that look like sea-creatures that have dragged themselves up onto the beach, are waiting for some of the small inshore fishing boats that work out of this small Norfolk town.

photograph & text T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 113mm (226mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Simplifying images

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One way of reading a photograph is to consider it as a story with a narrative: to ask the question, "What is it trying to say to me?" That question can be easy or hard to answer, and the extent to which it is one or the other often depends on its complexity.

Complicated photographs can tell stories well, but it's probably done better by simpler images. In fact, a good rule of thumb in photography is to decide your subject, and then see how you can depict it with the minimum of content. A shot that is constructed on these principles will often be more striking, forceful and pleasing. Over the years I've found that high contrast and silhouettes are effective means of simplifying a photograph, and this blog is littered with examples of both these techniques. Today's image is a case in point.

The subject of my photograph isn't the gulls, rather it's the gulls in their setting and a particular kind of light. The shot depends on the gulls (and the posts, water and colour) for its content, but achieves any quality that it has by simplifying all of these elements, and presenting a semi-abstract, asymmetrical, but balanced composition in silhouette. I could have photographed this location from a different angle, and had a fairly well-illuminated picture, but I think it would have been quite dull. I find that when I'm photographing early or late in the day I actively search out such images, and am often pleased by them. But then perhaps that's just me, and I'm easily satisfied!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 134mm (268mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shooting the sun

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"Always take photographs with your back to the sun." That's the first piece of photographic advice I remember reading as a teenager. And useless advice it was too! Follow that rule when photographing people and you end up with an image of people squinting at the camera. Other subjects look floodlit, flat and boring. I soon learned that much better photographs result when you have the sun falling on your subject from the left or right giving shadows that model whatever it is that you are shooting. Later still in my photographic development I appreciated the value of getting the camera pointing quite close to the sun, and producing contre jour and silhouette effects.

In recent years, since the advent of digital photography, I've found myself deliberately including the sun in shots for the striking and slightly unpredictable effects that ensue. The sun in the image acts as a very strong compositional element, and can be a useful counterweight to a more tangible subject elsewhere in the frame, as here and here. I tried it again the other day as I walked through the Lincolnshire countryside below a cold sky filled with the graffiti of passenger jets. I tried a few different exposures, and settled on this one taken with a shutter speed of 1/4000 second, as the best of the bunch. It has quite a strong "starburst" around the sun, a couple of aberrations produced by light interacting with the glass, and an interesting mix of colours ranging from almost black at the top, through blues, whites and orange. It's not a shot that I can say I carefully organised before pressing the shutter, but its unpredicted qualities make for an image that I find quite pleasing.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/4000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

What's in a name?

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I've always found the sources of personal names interesting, particularly those chosen for girls. Flowers have produced Rose, Violet, Heather (and Erica), Daisy, Briony, Iris and many more. Biblical names like Rachel, Rebecca and Sharon have proved popular. So too have three consecutive months of the year - April, May and June - though none of the others are favoured: I wonder why? Jewels and semi-precious stones have been pressed into service - Pearl, Ruby, Beryl, Coral, Amber, Jade etc - though they don't appear to be in fashion at the moment. Colours have sometimes made an appearance as in Blanche (white), Electra and Amber (amber), Flavia (yellow), Aurelia (gold) and Melanie (black).

Names that derive from stars (the outer space variety - Hollywood's effect is too well-known) include Estelle, Stella, Astra and Esther. However, only one time of day is widely used for a girl's name, and that, strangely, is Dawn (and its variations - Aurora, Oriana and Roxana). Now there's nothing wrong with naming a girl after the dawn: it's a fine and special time of day. But is it really better than sunrise and sunset, neither of which get a look in as far as names go despite being the most spectacular times of day? And what about midday (or noon), midnight and twilight? What precludes them from being used for this purpose? And if dawn is OK, why isn't dusk?

All these questions bounced around my head as I processed this shot taken from the bottom of the garden the other morning. Should I caption it "dawn" or "sunrise" I wondered? It was cold and frosty when I took the photograph, but the not-quite-yet-revealed sun's fiery colours gave an illusion of warmth. I was tempted to leave the sky clear to show off the rose-tinted clouds, but eventually decided that I preferred the shot with the silhouette of the branch at the top of the frame. And, as you see, I settled on "sunrise"!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

In praise of the dying

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"When a dead tree falls the woodpeckers share in its death", Malayan proverb

In the past fortnight I have read a couple of newspaper articles lamenting the increasing amount, and persistence, of litter in the UK. In the most recent piece three journalists visited three cities - Edinburgh, Manchester and London - to see if litter was as bad as the original author claimed. Interestingly they reported that they were fairly clean! But these examples notwithstanding, it is easy to find areas that are unkempt, with plastic bags being one of the main causes of pollution.

The Irish Republic recently banned plastic bags with great effect on the appearance of the country. The free-trade flag-wavers of the main UK political parties seem unable to do anything as radical or as environmentally-friendly as this. And yet nowadays they all claim green credentials! What puzzles me however, is how on the one hand we have a litter problem, and on the other we have obsessive tidier-uppers in the countryside. Farmers, it seems, can't wait to trim (or should I say smash) hedges into rectilinear regimentation, and many old trees are grubbed up before they can fall on someone's head precipitating a legal action. Returning to the UK from nearby continental countries one is immediately struck by the orderliness of the countryside. I appreciate that this appeals to many people. However I do sometimes feel that many of our self-styled guardians of the countryside are still too over-enthusiastic in their desire for order, at the expense of wildlife and landscape.

So, when I saw these two old trees near Skippool, Lancashire, hanging on to life despite the seasonal flooding of the field in which they grow, I thought "Hooray". I was glad for the visual interest they give to the spot, for the dinners that their rotting wood gives to insect and bird life, and I was pleased that they had been either overlooked or valued as part of the landscape. Their reflections and silhouettes against the cold morning light cried out for a photograph. I used a zoom lens at 142mm (35mm equivalent), with the camera on Aperture Priority (f8 at 1/500 second), ISO 100, with -0.7EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen