Sometimes ...

... photographs don't turn out quite as you hope or expect!

This is a case in point!

The weather here has been quite variable. In some ways it's been a bit like that expected for April with showers and some sunshine. So sitting in my usual place at the kitchen table I looked out at the rain streaming down the window glass and saw our weeping willow tree simply covered in flowers of the Clematis, 'Montana Alba'.

Interesting! Go grab a camera. Try to take a shot and realise that the automatic focus locks onto the window pane rather than the garden tree!

Looking at the result I rather like the streaky glass but I would have had a bit more definition to the flowers. Do they look too much like 'balls of cotton wool'?

And as I sat there wondering how to kid the camera into focusing on the tree I realised that I really needed to 'manually focus' the camera - and I didn't know how because I had never thought I needed that feature. 

'It's bound to rain tomorrow' - the thought went through my head.
'Go find out how to manually focus your camera'.
'Take another photo tomorrow'.

Now I do know how to manually focus my little Lumix LF1.

It did rain today.
But the light wasn't the same - it never could be!
And the rain didn't beat across the window! 
Opportunity gone!

And what am I left with?

You Never Know ...

... just what to expect when you are out walking with a camera. Always a good idea to have one with you just in case! Maybe that camera on the mobile phone will do and it probably will if you are concerned with capturing incidental experiences. But if you want that extra bit of detail perhaps a 'proper' camera is more suitable.

Here is a such a situation. 
It's any easy choice for me - I haven't got a camera phone so I have to take a 'point and shoot'. And looking at the results I got on this particular afternoon I'm glad I had what I did have, a Lumix LF1.

Charlie is a builder.
Charlie has an open space he uses as his yard. Perhaps he shouldn't as its only a piece of scrub land at the side of a public road.
Charlie has an incinerator. 
It's best described as a sheet metal cube with the top missing. 
Over years of use it's got battered and bent, rusted in the sun and roasted in the heat of many fires. Looking over the edge with afternoon sunlight making hard shadows the colour and general scaliness is revealed 'in all its glory'. Best captured I think with he sort of camera I was carrying.

And moving round the bin the variety of iron oxide colours showed up so well.

Just looking at the pictures without any explanation would you have guessed the subject?
And if you weren't interested in just looking at what there was around you would you have ever considered looking at Charlie's bin, let alone thinking that it might make a good photographic subject?

I just love finding unconsidered objects like this and then trying to realise the photographic potential. I'm even considering getting large prints made, framing them, and hanging them as 'abstracts', with the knowledge that they are more than that!

Went Back!

I thought the last photograph I posted showed an interesting location and one worth visiting again. So on a sunny day, with camera in hand, off I went walking up the Lane to find the same spot.

No trouble in identifying the tree and the gate but as for getting in quite the same place it just wasn't possible. Of course it was a different time of year but there weren't leaves on the hedge so that shouldn't have been the issue. I guessed that the hedge must have grown that little bit so looking over it I wasn't going to get the same view. But perhaps I had shrunk a bit in height too, and supposing the bank that I was trying to balance on had settled a bit.

It certainly seemed to be the case of 'never again' being able to get in quite the right place to replicate a photo. So I gave up! It had been a good idea while it lasted.

Instead I had another look - never mind what I had intended. 

- and in the end I was rather pleased with what I had captured!

Looking Back

Been going through a lot of the photographs stored both in my computer and as back-ups in two external hard disks. This hasn't been just a random search because I thought I would collect together seven photos with a common theme, have them printed, then uniformly mounted to fit in a hand made box. That was the idea when I started out. Now I'm beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea after all. I'm finding it difficult to spot photos that fit together and I get side-tracked into looking at something that suddenly catches my eye. Perhaps it would be better just abandoning that approach and taking seven new photographs to fit my specific theme.

Inevitably though I've come across photos initially discarded and that when  looked at again now I rather like. Obviously I suffer from the common photographer's syndrome of being over enthusiastic with photos just taken and where the emotions swamp a more clinical appraisal. I know its been suggested before that a good strategy is to leave photos for a month or so before a careful look. Perhaps this needs more discipline with digital photography than in the 'film days' when you had to wait for a roll to be developed. No instant looking at results then.

So here is a recently discovered 'find'! Or is it?

Taken a year or so ago only a few hundred yards away up the Lane it typifies the sort of weather that the valley has during Winter months. The surrounding hills have disappeared and there is a view over the newly pletched hedge to a misty entrance gate into an unknown world.