Bad habits and serendipity

click photo to enlarge
One of my bad habits when I was working was occasionally eating my lunch at my desk. As bad habits go it's not particularly awful but it did have an unfortunate consequence. My computer keyboard, over time, became sticky and a little grubby from the unintentional spray of juice from my oranges. Now that I am retired I never eat at my desk, I'm almost always at a dining table, and my keyboard remains free of food liquids and solids. However, since my retirement tablet computers have made an appearance and unfortunately I've developed a different bad habit - often reading my tablet as I eat my lunch.

Recently, as I was indulging my predilection, an arc of juice from my orange traced a path through the air and landed on the screen. And, before I wiped it off, I noticed how each drop of juice acted as a convex lens on the pixels and picture displayed beneath it. I made a mental note to reproduce that effect with water and a dropper to see if I could make an interesting photograph of this serendipitous phenomenon. The other day I had a go and, interestingly serendipity extended the range of images that I took from the experiment.

The effect I was initially looking for is exemplified best in the photograph labelled number 2. The grid of pixels is warped by the droplets of water in the way that I saw with the juice from my orange. An interesting additional feature is a bubble in the centre droplet. But, as is often the way, as I moved the camera and re-focused the macro lens, I got a quite different and unexpected view of the droplets. The photograph labelled number 1 was taken from a lower angle with the circle of my light above. I was puzzled by the tripling in the image of each droplet but then realised it must be due to the layers in the screen each reflecting the water slightly differently. A similar effect can be seen in the main photograph (labelled number 3) and here serendipity has intervened once more because this shot is taken with no screen illumination, the power-saving feature having turned it off.

As I looked at my collection of photographs I reflected that they weren't earth shattering but they did have a certain fascination, and that it once again it derived from the macro lens showing what the unaided eye doesn't normally notice or see.


photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon 5DMk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm Macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation:  0
Image Stabilisation: On

Condensation patterns

click photo to enlarge

Every time I've had a cup of tea recently I've examined the inside of the teapot lid fifteen minutes or so later. Why? Well, shortly after we started using our new stainless steel teapot I noticed that the brewing tea caused condensation to form on the underside of the lid in radial patterns. Unfortunately, this pattern was often disrupted when I took the lid off and turned it upside down to view it. So I determined that I would look at it regularly until I found and saved a good enough condensation pattern for a photograph. It took just over a week but I finally got one as you can see above.

The underside of the lid has fine, concentric grooves as though it has been turned, milled or finished in some way. I assume that the radial pattern of condensation that forms is due to the nature of the surface of the metal. Whatever the reason, I liked it and thought it worthy of a macro shot. Perhaps I can consider it a further addition to my "kitchen sink" collection. For more in that vein, see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/5 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Oh no, not another bench!

click photo to enlarge

"Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before."
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) U.S. novelist

The title of this piece wasn't exactly the phrase that my wife used when she watched me get up from our dry bench and start to photograph this nearby wet one, but it is the gist of what I thought was her rather hurtful remark (I'm a sensitive soul you know :). I've commented before on my predilection for photographing public seating. Some might think this an obsession, others a harmless character trait, and there will be those who see it as a mark of the lack of imagination in the photographer. However, in my defence I offer the quotation at the head of this piece. It is by the famous U.S. author, Edith Wharton, who was the first female winner of the Pulitzer Prize, in 1921, with her book, "The Age of Innocence". I make no claims for art in my photography, but I do think that mining the seam of a defined subject is a good way for any photographer to proceed.

Thinking further about the quotation it seems to me it is truer today than it was when it was made. Certainly many UK artists of the last twenty years have skipped from one subject to another, using a variety of media ranging from paint to concrete to elephant dung to dead animals to...well, you name it. I've often thought the productions of the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin to be shallow, juvenile, the sort of work where what you see is all there is. Edith Wharton's "that common symptom of immaturity" strikes a chord with me.
I used to think that my photographic ouvre was rather wide ranging, and I recall blogging a piece to that end. However, when I stand back and look at my output I've come to realise that I do plough a fairly defined group of furrows. And yes, one of them is public benches!

I took a few shots of this rather uncomfortable bench, including this one that is deliberately slightly overexposed. I was looking to de-emphasise the ground and adjoining wall, and, even though it took the detail out of some of the highlights on the bench itself, it's the photograph I prefer. This sepia-tone finish on a black and white conversion also appealed to me.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A macro experiment

click photo to enlarge
Standing waiting for my wife in a large DIY shed's car park, I glanced at the shrubs that had been planted around its perimeter. Though it was December the Hebe "Midsummer Beauty" was still in flower. "Global warming?" I thought. But when I checked its flowering dates back at home I found that it can continue to November, so maybe it couldn't be advanced as evidence to the deniers. The cotoneasters were in full berry though most of the leaves on the deciduous varieties had gone. Nestling in my pocket was the LX3 so I took a couple of shots of the shrubs.

Wandering alond the border I came upon a spider's web with water droplets strung along its threads. I've posted a shot recently of this subject taken with the E510 and the Zuiko 35mm macro. "How would the LX3 handle the subject?" I wondered. So I slipped it into macro mode and took today's shot. When I brought the photograph up on my computer my answer was, "Not bad at all!" It doesn't have quite the detail of the Olympus, and the bokeh of the lens and the depth of field control doesn't compare. However, the result is I think, quite acceptable.

This is a slight crop of the shot, with some noise suppression and sharpening. The colour and contrast haven't been touched. I have the feeling it would print quite well.

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: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ripples and similes

click photo to enlarge

"The foolish are like ripples on water, for whatever they do is quickly effaced; but the righteous are like carvings upon stone, for their smallest act is durable."
Horace (65BC - 8BC), Roman poet

Similes involving ripples in water are amongst the most overworked of their kind. The classic version involves an action from which ripples spread, that affects other things or people. How many times, in recent months, have I read of the ripples that have spread throughout the world banking system from over-enthusiastic sub-prime lending? Too many!

And yet, when the idea of ripples spreading is used a little more creatively, as in the example from Horace, quoted above, it can be illuminating, and serve its purpose of increasing our understanding and deepening our enjoyment of the prose. Scientists have physical laws and mathematical formulae that describe the effect of the spread of ripples in water, and what happens when they meet a fixed or moving object, or other ripples. Yet, as I stood under a bridge and watched drips of water from above falling into the river, creating this complex intersection of concentric ripples, it was very difficult to see how each changed the others. Was the ripple simile built on sand (to murder a metaphor)? But perhaps the effect was so marginal as not to be visible. And that made me wonder how the simile gained such a firm foothold. However, I didn't wonder too long because it made my head hurt! Instead I enjoyed the play of light on water and the patterns that appeared and slowly disappeared as the energy from each originating drip was dissipated.

My photograph has had the contrast and colour adjusted slightly to emphasise the patterns.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Down among the hostas

click photos to enlarge

Grass, tree roots, flowers, insects, leaves, the kerb edge, paving stones, holes, pebbles, sticks. Like many children I spent much of my childhood in close proximity to these things. One of the regrets of growing up is that you leave them behind. You become taller and much farther away from them. Your view changes, from your immediate, low-level surroundings, outwards to school, to the next road, the next town, next week, and to the rest of the world of grown-ups.

One of the joys of the macro lens is that it can make you feel like a child again. It encourages the exploration of the minutiae that surrounds us, and often takes us down into the low-lying regions that we last looked at when we were small. For some photographers it becomes an obsession, with the camera trained on (particularly) every passing insect. For me, the shapes, patterns and colours that this kind of lens reveals make for exciting compositions without the need to leave my home and garden.

The part of Lincolnshire in which I now live had been without rain for the past four weeks. Plants were suffering. So, when the weather broke, and rain fell, bringing relief to farmers and gardeners alike, the photographer in me also felt relieved that I could now look for shots with glistening highlights. I spotted these wet hostas from my living room window, and rushed out to photograph them as soon as the rain stopped, bending down low and close to get a child's-eye view of the patterns made by the leaf veins and water drops. I fired off a dozen or so shots, and couldn't decide which of these two compositions I liked best.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/60 (1/100)
ISO: 200 (400)
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On