Looking for beauty

click photo to enlarge
Visitors to photography forums will have heard people bemoaning the fact that the area in which they live isn't photogenic, and that they have to travel miles to get good images. It's hard to have sympathy with this view, or the mindset of someone who wants to take photographs of conventionally beautiful places, but is unwilling to recognise, or look for, the different kind of beauty that will undoubtedly exist where they live.

When I lived in Lancashire I regularly walked along both banks of the River Wyre where it widens into an estuary that flows into the Irish Sea at Fleetwood. It's a flat location that, on one side, has the debris of 150 years spread along its banks - the rotting hulks of wooden ships, old sea walls and their newer replacements, industrial sites that have closed, the wrecked remains of a once thriving fishing industry, newer chemical manufacturing plants and a municipal dump. The other side is more rural, with saltmarsh, pastures, cereal fields, a golf course and nature reserve. As I walked the area I found plenty of subjects at which I could point my camera. Many weren't beautiful in the usual sense, but did offer a harder sort of attractiveness, as well as undoubted fascination. In this sometimes bleak area I usually got my best landscape shots when there was an interesting sky. A photography lesson that it took me a while to learn is that just as a sunset can make any subject look wonderful, a sky with cloud and light can add drama, beauty and contrast to the most unpromising scene, even an expanse of cold, flat winter water and a factory with a tall chimney.

This contre jour shot looking upstream from Knott End uses the factory on the left as balance for the sun on the right. The distant blocks of flats and Blackpool Tower add a few more details to the flat horizon.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 62mm (124mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sunshine of Your Love

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When it comes to Eric Clapton I'm one of those who feel that he peaked in the four albums he made with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in the band, Cream. In my view very little of his earlier work with John Mayall or the Yardbirds, or his subsequent solo and guest work, approaches the sublime qualities found in songs like "White Room", "Strange Brew", "Sitting on Top of the World", or "Badge". Maybe I'm influenced by the total sound of that band, that comprised the very individual driving bass of Bruce, the virtuoso drumming of Baker, and Pete Brown's lyrics, as well as that stinging guitar of Eric Clapton. There are those who feel that there still isn't a better rock and blues guitarist, and I certainly admire the man's technical virtuosity. But for me, there is no longer the excitement, sound, and sheer "rightness" in his playing. Maybe it needs songs of the calibre of "Sunshine of Your Love" to make that happen again, and they don't come along very often.

That particular song came into my mind yesterday as I was out in the garden. Last year, I moved to a new house. I'd only been here a few weeks when I started to notice a male blackbird that sang a phrase identical to the first five notes of "Sunshine of Your Love". Really! I know it sounds unlikely but it's true! It was in the wrong key, but there was no mistaking it. When I pointed it out to my wife she recognised it immediately. Now I don't know if this bird was a Cream fan, or whether it had been listening at the window as someone played "Disraeli Gears", but it continued with the same riff for several weeks as we sat in the sun, pruned the shrubs or picked the fruit. Then I heard it no more. Maybe, I thought, a cat that's a fan of Jimmy Page's Led Zeppelin period got it. But probably the breeding season ended and the need or desire to sing passed. Well, the other day, as I was taking photographs of tulips in the garden I thought I heard it again. In fact I'm sure I did. Now, every time I go out into the garden I listen, hoping that the avian version of "It's getting near dawn..." will spiral down to me from the top of the cherry tree!

Today's photograph is one of the shots I took when I heard that "blast from the past". I placed my camera low down and took a shot upwards, towards the sun. I knew I'd get the tulips and the trees, and I wanted the sun as well, but it was a shot in hope rather than expectation. However, the composition, colour and sunburst came out better than I expected, so I post the result here today.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off