A compositional echo

click photo to enlarge
When it comes to photography I sometimes don't know what I'm doing. By that I don't mean that I lose my faculties, or cease to be sentient. No, I mean that I'm not fully aware of what my conscious and unconscious mind is accomplishing.

Take yesterday for example. My wife and I were walking past some old farm buildings that I've stopped and looked at every time we've walked that way. Each time I've framed the group with my camera, and occasionally taken a shot. But, the outcome has never proved to be what I want; it's never the composition that I think is somewhere within the buildings. Well, I stopped again, framed a shot, didn't even press the shutter, and walked on saying, "I still can't see that shot." But then, as we passed the last of the buildings, a wooden structure patched with corrugated metal sheets, I stopped and saw a couple of images. They weren't of the whole ensemble, but were details. The photograph above is the best one of the two I took.

It was only when I got the image back on the computer and cropped it to square - something that had been my original intention - that I realised what I'd done. My photograph of the detail of the shed was yesterday's composition, "Snow, Icicles and Frost" turned anti-clockwise through 90 degrees. It even has the "icicles" though this time it's the pointed shapes (damp?) in the corrugation. Somewhere in my subconscious there is clearly a liking for semi-abstract compositions that have (often three) parallel elements. I've been vaguely aware of that over the years: look at my semi-abstract "Best ofs" and you'll see what I mean. What I wasn't conscious of was the extent to which I could see and photograph the same composition within two very different subjects.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 58mm (116mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Thinking about walking

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When I was a youngster the act of donning boots, picking up a rucksack, and walking on the hills, or in the countryside in general, was called "hiking." These days it appears to be called "walking", which is a much less specific word, though sometimes it's also known as "trekking", a grander term conjuring up images of months long journeys in distant lands. During the intervening years walking was often called "rambling", perhaps after the organisation that sought (and still seeks) to promote the pastime in Britain, The Rambler's Association (now, apparently, known as Ramblers.)

Whatever we choose to call walking in the country it's something I've done for pleasure all my life. In most instances I've done it in company with my wife, or as a family when our children were younger and still lived with us. Before I was married I often chose to walk alone. Only on one occasion have I walked in a group with the Ramblers, though at other times I've walked with friends. Today when my wife and I go walking (we never go separately) we usually see walkers who are alone, or we see couples. I've often wondered about this. Do lone walkers choose to walk by themselves, or have they a partner left at home who doesn't care for this activity? And do couples walk together because they both enjoy it, or is there often a reluctant walker being dragged along by an enthusiast? My feeling is that walking alone or with someone you know very well are the best ways to enjoy this activity. In both cases you can get physical exercise whilst looking at the sights, as well as enjoying getting lost in your own thoughts about what you see and experience. Periods of silence are much easier with someone you know well: when you walk in larger groups the problem for me is that chat too often intrudes on the communing with nature - though I know that some find conversation part of the point of going walking.

Recently, as we were passing through the area known as Attermire, near Settle in North Yorkshire, we came upon a lone walker travelling in the opposite direction. We exchanged greetings, then, a couple of minutes after he'd gone by, I turned to see him paused at the top of a steep slope surveying the view, and I took this photograph of him, a small figure in a big space. This is one of those images that completely misrepresents the landscape because out of view to the left are drystone walls, scree and cliffs that rise up high above the path, to the right are the rugged limestone tops of Warrendale Knotts, and beyond the walker the track and the land falls away to a level area of marsh - an unusual occurence in an area of limestone upland - that is surrounded on two sides by more cliffs, scree and caves.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Looking and thinking

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Recently I was talking with my wife about what people used to do in the days before mobile phones. Today, it seems, many people spend a large amount of their walking time either talking on them, texting from them, or checking them. It's impossible to go down a street these days without passing people speaking into their phone, or poking its buttons. So, the question that arose in my mind was, "What have people stopped doing, as they walk about, that they used to do before mobile phones filled so much of that time?" And the answer I came up with was, "Looking and thinking."

Now you might argue that many people were doing very little with that sort of time in the past: that walking around a town was dead time, because the imperative was to get from A to B, and the mobile phone now fills it with something more meaningful. However, I don't buy into that theory. The snippets of conversations that I overhear are mainly chit-chat, the passing of the time of day, so not deeply significant. Moreover, people who engage in this kind of talk by mobile phone are likely to do it face to face too. So, the ability to chat anywhere at any time must have increased the amount of this sort of casual conversation. And that is likely, I think, to have been at the expense of looking and thinking.

One of my favourite Henry David Thoreau sayings (that I've quoted before) is, "What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?" And he might have added, "and reflecting on it." In our busy world, where everyone wants a slice of our time, the ability to look and think must be jealously guarded because it helps to make us who we are, and to make sense of our world. There are so many people, politicians, media, advertisers, etc. who tell us what to look at, and what to think, that the ability and time to do these two things for ourselves is something we should cherish. If the mobile phone deprives us of that time then perhaps it needs putting in its place.

I guess today's reflection marks me out as one of the older generation, to which I plead guilty. However, one of the benefits of age is perspective; the ability to see recent developments in context, and to make more informed judgements of them. Well, that's my defence anyway! Today's photograph was taken as I was looking and thinking in my sister's garden. I peered into this plant, felt like I was looking into infinity, and took this shot of it!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On