Translucent glass...

 ...or frosted glass, or etched glass, or opaque glass, or privacy glass, or sand blasted glass. I've heard all those names applied to the glass in windows that is designed to let in light but prevent someone outside seeing in. Translucent glass seems to me to be the best name because it best describes the ability to admit light but but prevent anyone looking through it seeing details. The example above is in a toilet/wash-room. Outside, when I took my photograph there was evening light falling on a street with, from the top, blue sky, bricks sunlit and in shade, a blue vehicle, yellow heather, green grass and grey tarmac.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Car door sculpture

I'm no fan of cars - nothing would please me more than to see the back of them and then witness their replacement by a comprehensive system of public transport that complemented proper provision for walkers and cyclists. We would gain so much and lose only a little - such as witnessing the work that automobile manufacturers and designers put into making the inside of a car door look like the output of a sculptor. This is a shot I took with my iPhone when I noticed the forms and textures of my car's door.

photos © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

Wet weather semi-abstract

It was a wetter than usual January and February and photography was somewhat curtailed. However, the rain itself added to the appeal of some subjects and today's photograph exemplifies this. It shows the blue painted slats of a bench in a public garden. No good for sitting on after a recent shower, but the water droplets offered the opportunity for a semi-abstract composition.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Domestic 1

The Christmas holiday is always a brake on my photography - the weather is drab, streets are alternately bustling and deathly quiet, visitors and the needs of family are pressing. I don't resent any of this but it does pose a problem for collecting the stream of images necessary to feed the blog. Consequently, this year I searched indoors for some domestic subject matter. The first example will be unknown to many. It shows nested pastry cutters that made an appearance in the kitchen but never got used due to a change of mind on the catering front.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Water surface semi-abstract

There is often a disconnect between what the eye sees when looking at water and what the camera sees. This happens most frequently when a high shutter speed freezes the movement of water or a deliberately slow shutter speed blurs it. Today's example does neither of these things. Rather, the meniscus effect of leaves touching the water surface and the reflections are emphasised, revealing a quite pleasing semi-abstract effect that wasn't easy to see with the naked eye.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon P900

Red oak bark

The first time I came across and identified red oak (Quercus rubra) was in a Lincolnshire cemetery. Since that time I've come across this attractive North American species in many locations, both urban and rural. The photograph above features the trunk of a member of this species. I liked the semi-abstract appearance of the bark with the jagged verical slits that reveal a red inner, and the contrasting, cloud-like pale green and darker patches.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Ceiling lights

Sitting in a local coffee shop recently I looked around for anything that might make a decent photograph. I'd already secured the self-portrait posted on the blog before this one. As I looked around I was taken by the mixture of ceiling lights in the shop. Looking further I concluded that the best selection was directly above my head. I remembered, several years ago, taking a semi-abstract photograph of a lamp, showing its effect on the ceiling, and the lines of the corner of the room. Perhaps, I thought, I can make a similar sort of image. I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

Reflections on the River Avon

The meaning of the word "reflections" includes "thinking about" and "mirroring". I employed both those meanings when I sat down to process this photograph of the reflections in the River Avon of the Borough Flour Mill, Tewkesbury. I reflected that the name "Avon" is one of the most common river names in the British Isles, is an ancient word meaning "river", and hence the River Avon is "River River". I also noted that the surface of the water reflecting the windows and brickwork had been beautifully disturbed by passing mallards making it worthy of a semi-abstract photograph.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Reflected reeds

I've said elsewhere in this blog that I have a particular liking for reflections in glass and water. I also enjoy the plants that grow in and around water and regularly fit them into compositions. On our recent visit to Steam Mills Lake I saw many remnant reeds/grasses from last year standing above the surface at the water's edge. As we walked round the lake I looked for an example that was producing a good reflection. This is the one I settled on.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Out of focus necklace

On a sunny afternoon I decided to do a little macro photography and, after experimenting with a few household articles to no good effect, I turned to my standby on such occasions - my wife's jewellery box. I knew there were a few new necklaces since I last looked so I took some shots of them. Once again to no good effect. Then I remembered that it was a long time since I'd taken any deliberately out of focus photographs. So that's what I did. The best of my efforts is above. The subject is, essentially, a coil of a string of graduated black ball bearings that are biggest at the centre of the necklace and getting smaller at each end.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Shadows and reflections

November is the first of the months in which I relish the low sun and longer shadows. All through that month, December, January and February these two factors go some way to mitigating the darkness of the winter period. Recently, walking past a small industrial estate in Abergavenny, I noticed a car standing in a large puddle, the result of recent heavy rain. The deep morning shadows from nearby buildings accentuated the sunlit side of the car and the puddle doubled the effect. This combined with the sheen of the metal and the red of the light made a semi-abstract composition that immediately appealed to me.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Propagator condensation

Sitting at the picnic bench in my grandchildren's garden I couldn't help noticing a pink and clear plastic, domed container with condensation inside it. Curiosity got the better of me and I took the top off to find it filled with soil and child-painted labels/signs. There were also a few green shoots and I worked out that it  was my five year old grand-daughter's plant propagator. When I put the clear top back on I noticed the multitude of different sized beads of condensation, each displaying some of the painted labels. It looked like it might offer a macro semi-abstract image so I took this shot.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Watery reflections, ducks and swans

I think we all, photographer or not, like to see reflections in water. Non-photographers seem to prefer the most perfect reflections, but photographers have just as strong a liking for the less mirror-like effects. This is partly because the camera can freeze the moving water and allow us to see what we can't with the naked eye, something that was most forcefully brought home to me when I reviewed a photograph of a swan on the River Witham in the middle of Lincoln. It appeared to be swimming through paint! To the naked eye the reflection was just a background swirl of colour. I recently posted a photograph of a duck "smearing" a reflection and here is another one of a pair of ducks on the canal in Worcester doing just the same but to more spectacular effect.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Disturbed reflection, Tewkesbury

Tewkesbury's Borough Flour Mills, also known as Healings Flour Mill and Warehouses, stands derelict by the River Avon. The buildings date from 1865 but an earlier mill in the seventeenth century stood at this location, and it is certainly possible that the two mills recorded in Tewkesbury's entry in the Domesday Book (1086) may have been situated here. So, perhaps other people have stood where I stood the other day and enjoyed watching the reflected image of the mill being disturbed by the passage of a drake mallard.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Metal paint palettes

When I looked at our shiny, metal paint palettes loaded with watercolour, brushes resting across them, it occurred to me that they would make a good subject for a painting. Or even a semi-abstract photograph. So I took them to various locations in search of good light, reflections and backgrounds. After much trial and error the best location proved to be the interior window sill of the study. Here the blue sky, orange of the curtains and white of the window frame brought them to life.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

An icy Peugeot

We once owned a Peugeot. It was a two seater, three at a pinch, and it had two wheels. It was, as you may have worked out, a tandem bicycle. We had it before we bought a car - that wasn't a Peugeot. Why "three at a pinch"? Because when our first-born came along he travelled on a child seat mounted over the back wheel. On a recent cold and frosty day we passed a parked car that was iced up. It had its maker's name - Peugeot - on what I worked out was the back. The vehicle was an RCZ, a sports design, with the back and the front not quite as differentiated as usual. This section is part of the back wing. The lines and colours appealed to me as a semi-abstract composition.

photos © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Sunlit blinds

Sometimes the transformative effect of directional light on everyday objects turns them into something that causes you to stop, stare and see them as if for the first time. So it was with these wooden Venetian blinds in our bathroom. The sun was shining through figured obscure glass throwing swirling lines and shadows onto the repeated flat surfaces, giving them qualities absent in flatter light.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus E510   2009

Five bar chequer treadplate

Five bar chequer treadplate was, I believe, designed as a durable anti-slip surface for potentially hazardous workplaces. Areas that get wet or dirty such as the platform of cranes, ship decking, factory walkways etc, could be made safer by its application. But, once it became widely available, man's ingenuity took over and a  wide range of uses arose that the inventors had not anticipated. I've seen it applied as a "modern" facing for walls in twentieth and twenty first century architecture, as door kick plates, as a stand-on surface on 4X4 vehicles, and most recently, as a vandal-proof shell-like shelter over seating in a children's play park, where I took this photograph.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Phone

Stacked chairs

A trend of several decades seems to have accelerated in recent years, at least it has if my experience is anything like typical. I refer to the movement to replace heavy, dark wood Victorian pews with modern, lightweight, often stackable, chairs. Where this happens shiny stainless steel and light coloured laminated wood seem to be favoured - a strong contrast with what is being ejected, and something that brightens the interior of the building. One can see the reason for the change, not least the ability to use the main space within the church for other purposes. And, of course, the modern chairs are usually kinder to the posteriors of those sitting on them.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Watery railings

The fractured reflections that seemingly still water can produce has been a frequent subject of my photography.The shot above shows the white painted railings of the road bridge over the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal near Slimbridge. A clear blue sky and the shadow under the bridge added colours that enhanced the broken regularity of the metalwork.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100