Life Observed

I think it is always useful to put a picture into its context. It also helps to include something to add a sense of scale. Here's an uncharacteristically stormy sunset from Cyprus.  The sea and the shore need the mountain to establish the context of the picture. The ensemble also needs the single human figure to give a sense of scale.  Ideally I would have liked a couple walking on the sand, but you have to work with what you have got.

Clearly this afternoon sunshine won't last long. There's a storm brewing. This is the art of counterpoint, the business of placing one thing against another to emphasis context and contrast. In this case the west facing end wall of a 19th century coaching inn in Marlborough shines against a threatening sky. It is always a good thing to keep your eye open photographically for little moments of contrast like this one. Half a minute later the moment was gone and the sunshine vanished.

Make your pictures make sense. Decide on the subject, isolate it, and throw in a little bit of context. So. It's a floor tile. But with the out of focus East Window in the background, it suddenly becomes a floor tile in a church. All is explained Edit. Hmm. I suppose there is a reason why this uploaded picture looks so awful. Is that you, Blogger dot com?

Make your pictures tell a story. Try to place the subject in some sort of context and give the viewer a hint of what is going on. It doesn't matter how slight the hint is. In fact when it comes to hints, sometimes less is more. Make your audience work. Click on the Context label to the right to see moron this subject.

What could be worse than being locked in a prison cell and fed once a day while the guards display great piles of food just down the corridor. I tell you, if horses could work out how to undo door bolts they would be off and away to feasting and liberty. This is, of course, another context picture as discussed on these faded pages before.

Today's post is all about the highs and lows of images, and grabbing the attention.  When constructing an image, you need to consider what your subject is. So much is obvious. You also need to think about the background, and select your viewpoint and lens to produce the best combination of the two. This first image involved a lot of walking around in a rural car park so I could get the contrasting colours balanced with the dark background. I was shuffling around while peering at the sky, waiting for the gap in the cloud that produced the fleeting splash of sunlight. This second image offered itself without all the shuffling. Inside the bars a solitary shaft of light from the window in the roof fell on the straw bales. I picked a position that gave me a dark background and composed this shot. Both examples needed exposure compensation to achieve the desired result, as discussed before.   Here we have another hay store next to the farm yard...

A contre jour image of Weymouth featuring the rule of thirds and a leading line .  Theoretically this should also have a Swan in the foreground to complete the photographer's list of standard requirements, but Swans were in short supply on this occasion. I say: If you can't be creative, be derivative.... BTW. Winter is coming, and they say it might be another hard winter .

Here's another context picture for you.  Walking down what passes for the village High Street I saw this fuchsia flowering by the side of the road. Now it would be a simple thing to snap a picture of the flowers and move on, but what would you have? That would just be another flower picture.. My approach involved a lot of shuffling in the hedge, some crouching down and a certain amount of risk, as traffic does use this road. Context is important. Consider this: A picture of a Cat is just a picture of a Cat. But a picture of a Cat with the Acropolis in the background is a completely different animal. So: You can see it was taken on a nice day with pretty thatched cottage in the background. I checked my depth of field before I took the shot: I wanted the cottage to be recognisable but still sufficiently out of focus that it didn't draw the eye away from the flowers. So it is the out of focus cottage that provides the all important context.

I liked the look of these back lit leaves, some of the few remaining green leaves at this tail end of Summer. I decided to emphasise the sunny nature of the subject by positioning it against a darker background. In this case I chose the North wall of the village Saxon church. You need to be careful with exposure in counterpoint compositions like this, the camera needs to be told to underexpose quite a lot in order to make the background dark enough. (There are several posts here that deal with exposure compensation). Very soon all these leaves will have fallen and we must face dull and dismal winter. I assume our government doesn't have the courage to do away with the annual changing of the clocks, so we must all descend into darkness down south at 4pm.

While wandering around Southwold recently, we came across the Casino . This is not a Gambling den but a small round lookout style building. Last time we were there it was empty but this time we find it hosting Blyth 105, a local micro radio station. Bill (The Midweek Country Show with Bill) invited us into the studio and we chatted while the records played and were quiet during the spoken links. It's quite a novelty, being in a radio studio live on air. "All the news that is news from Walberswick to Reydon"

Hmm. Southwold in September. As you see, it's full of character... and thunderstorms. This is part of the British Way: Making the best of things. OK, it's been a wet summer, and September is chilly rather than warm, but - it's a break eh? Despite all, I do recommend Southwold. Small and perfectly formed. Go and visit, and take the ferry to Walberswick , also very pleasing...

Today's little walk took me along a short section of the Wayfarer's Way in North Hampshire when I spotted this green Acorn on the ground. I rather like the contrast in colours and textures, though I fail to understand what the Oak tree thinks it's doing, throwing away a perfectly good but green Acorn. Maybe it was just in a bad mood.

I took the wrong road to work recently. The right road is shorter but uglier, while the wrong road leads over the downs and through rural fields. I sometimes do this on glorious sunny mornings (remember them?..) when I expect it to rain for the rest of the day. It's a kind of mental recharge before the day's work begins. I stopped with the camera for five minutes R+R and this backlit crop framed by a hedge caught my eye. Lovely!

One of the trees in the village had started turning colour in late August, which is too soon for my tastes. We don't seem to have had a decent summer, and the trees are already thinking of Autumn. Still these fabulous colours are worth looking at, captured with the venerable Olympus E-1. Perhaps that is the E-1's strong point: It does colours and textures well, but its five megapixels can't match the excellent E620 for detail. Equally that has average build quality and a poor viewfinder compared with the E-1.

If you want to photograph a car and make it look good, then I say you should wait until dusk. There's something about the colours and reflection of the sky on paintwork that shows off the shapes and curves particularly well. Here's an example from last year. We took the big Merc SL500 to a corn field on the top of a hill one evening. There were no buildings or trees nearby so wall to wall sky shows off the shape quite well.  I suspect a clear sky would have worked more effectively, however the clouds add a certain drama. Here is another (rather humble) subject photographed against a cloud free sky at dusk. Here the gentle graduation of sky colours work their wonders on the painted steel. In this case I was lazy and left the car near the local trees, which add and subtract from the image in my opinion. Reflections of trees and buildings do give important visual cues in these circumstances, but they can also be distracting.  

Here we are in Stockbridge, near Andover. A small, ancient and perfectly formed little market town. It is home to many a Gallery and sports shop, plus several pubs and hotels. It used to be plagued by the main A30 traffic passing through but that is now carried on the A303, so the pace of life has slowed somewhat. I suspect you need to be well heeled to buy a house amongst the fly fishing community... However if you do pop in, try to visit Houghton Lodge nearby. A very pleasing prospect.. Spotted: This excellent bear, almost 5 feet tall, stands guard outside a fishing tackle shop...

The generic term for cereals here in the UK. This is wheat, I think. here in the South, there has been enough rain for a decent harvest. I guess the farmers will now be in search of dry weather to ripen everything, then more dry weather to be able to harvest it. This constant worry about the weather and the fluctuations in prices and Government policy probably explain why farmers are rarely happy.. .

This was probably my Shot of the Day. Very Monet.. .  Once again I gave this the Orton treatment as I felt it added a dreamy quality to it. This also illustrates my theory, if you have something red in the shot, make sure its near the front, not in the background :-) Here's a little detail from the Pagoda in the grounds. It proved impossible to photograph the building clear of visitors (short of shouting "Fire!" and there's only so many times that trick will work...) The Tropical Glasshouse makes some nice shapes, but I bet this looks better at dawn with mist on the water. BTW: Moron the subject

I do like a picture to have context. This covers ground I have already covered in an earlier blog, but I think it is worth another visit.  While walking around the village recently I saw a wall of blossom near the churchyard, and aimed my trusty 70-300 macro tele zoom at it. There is no problem in capturing the details of the flowers, but the question is, what to place in the background, and how far out of focus should it be? In this case I wanted to emphasise the local context, and I chose to include a corner of the church in the shot. I wanted this out of focus so that it wouldn't distract from the flowers, but sufficiently in focus to be recognisable. This is where you need to find and use the depth of field preview function on your DSLR. The same principles apply to this image as well, I am attempting to preserve the context while keeping the viewer concentrating on my subject. Composition, context, depth of field control. It's all art and science.