Wetter still

Yesterday I'd had a roam in the rain that assaulted Lancashire. There was minor flooding in the village, which was nothing compared to that which occurred not too far away. That still meant that some poor souls had pumps running to keep the water from entering their properties. The big problem here is that the water can't get away. Ditches are higher than I've ever seen them, and when brimful all water can do is back up.

My intention today had been to head for WWT's Martin Mere reserve for an hour or two but on my way there was even more water about than last week. It looked even more like the original Martin Mere was returning. I stopped off and made a few snaps from the roadside. Lacking in time and waterproof footwear I couldn't get any closer to make a better stab at invoking the spirit of the old mere. I think I know how to achieve what I have in mind now. But unless I can get my arse into gear to try out my ideas while the water is still lying I'll not get to find out.

Pressing on I got to the reserve as the light was starting to fail. Unlike just about everyone else who goes to nature reserves my interest lies less in the wildlife than the place and the people. I have an in-built dislike of looking at birds and animal through glass, be that a camera lens, a pair of binoculars or, worst of all, a hide window. It was therefore no surprise when I spotted a kingfisher close to a hide with my naked eye that the hide-dwellers hadn't seen because they were gazing at herds of wildfowl in the distance.

I'd just missed feeding time for the hordes of squabbling swans, geese and shellduck in front of one of the hides. It might as well be a circus as a nature reserve. There were people set up with the obligatory 'big white lens' set ups rattling off fast bursts of exposures attempting, no doubt, to get super-sharp, ultra-detailed photos of the birds. I had a 'long' lens with me (a 70-200) and I didn't bother setting up for rapid fire. In fact I dropped the shutter speed right down and tried a different approach when I noticed that shellduck would occasionally fly towards the hide.

Not an original idea. But a more interesting exercise for me than aiming for detailed record shots. I like the element of chance this kind of technique brings. You can never be sure what you're going to get. There's a lot more misses than hits, but that's no problem with digital. Maybe there's something to explore in this. But probably not much!

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Return of the Mere

Rumours are flying around that changes to the pumping regime will see pumps closed that drain the low lying land of west Lancashire. Whether thee rumours are what is actually going to happen remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, it wouldn't take much for the mere to return. Recent prolonged rain in the area didn't result in catastrophic floods as it did further north, but land that was once permanently under water before the drains were dug is looking rather wet at the moment. One drain system being higher than I've seen it. On one side of the road the drain was almost brimful while the ditch on the other side was at a normal level. Something odd is going on.

This drain was so high that downstream it had over-topped the bank and the field, marshy at the best of times, was now a small lake giving an indication of what would occur were the pumps to be switched off for good. Not being aware of the situation before setting out I wasn't prepared to take 'landscape' photographs, so  did my usual hand-held thing. The weather is set to turn wet again, so maybe I'll be able to have another try with more suitable gear?

These are some of my attempts to suggest a landscape threatened by water. The flippy screen was useful for keeping me from having to kneel down and get soaking knees!

Wet places certainly attract me, but I still can't get a real handle on how to photograph them. As good an excuse as there is to keep trying, I suppose! I'm sure that if I could devote a few weeks to doing nothing but photograph such places it would come together much more rapidly. But that's not likely to happen.

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Daniel Meadows

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A narrower view

Continuing my attempts to love that 85mm lens I set out once more on Saturday armed with that on one body and my wide zoom on the other. It goes without saying that the wide lens got used most. I had no clear plan on where to head but the sandplant beckoned. I'd seen more activity there in passing earlier in the week so thought there might have been changes made. There had. I'd hazard a guess that the reclamation will be over soon.

The bunds have been stripped back to what looks like their final extent. The big gap in one where the plant used to leave the site for the beach has been completely filled and levelled off. The higher level of the main area has also been levelled with posts in place to mark something or other off. The whole place is looking barren. What was a micro-habitat (albeit an artificial one) in the large salt marsh looks set to become just more saltmarsh. As if there isn't enough of it being added year by year to the south. But that's by the by. The wide angle came in useful for 'getting it all in' as above, but it's also good for getting in close, and for forcing perspective to exagerate scale.

The piles of sand provide landscapes in miniature. Look at them closely and there are all manner of geological parallels to be seen. The recent heavy rains had turned loose sand into a deep sludge over firmer ground which in places had run and formed magma-like layers.

While reviewing the results from this trip to the sandplant I think I know the reason that 85 is popular. The images it makes can be quite seductive in the way it produces its out of focus areas. Indeed, that seems to me to be what most people do with it - make out of focus things that look nice with something in focus in the near distance. Most of them don't use a stick as the focal point! More here.

Sunday afternoon, while sunny, provided a pretty fruitless hour or two elsewhere. I'd gone in search of a starling murmuration which I had photographed at the start of the month with mixed results. I'm not sure if I left too early or whether the birds were roosting elsewhere, but I came away empty handed.

The other time, unlike the usual scenario where you see the swirling masses of birds from afar, I was actually right underneath them. That made for a different perspective and an approach had to be arrived at on the hoof. Or should that be on the wing? Having a 'super-zoom' lens on the camera at least gave me a few extra options.

One thing the mist did provide was a wintry atmosphere to the pictures. The close proximity of the birds also, I think, made for a few pictures which convey the sheer numbers of individual birds present in a way in which a 'swirling mass' picture doesn't. Using the lens at a long focal length to compress space also stresses the density of the numbers of birds. Faced without the opportunity to make the expected pictures you have to try to pull something out of the hat. I even tried shooting their reflections in the pond I was stood by.

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The way we see

It's a funny old game this photography lark. Or maybe I should say the camera gearhead game is a funny one. I know I shouldn't get involved in discussing gear on internet forums, worse still offering my advice, because I seem to have a completely different set of values to everyone else when it comes to choosing my equipment. Lenses in particular.

My order of requirements for a lens goes something like: focal length, size/weight, aperture, price, sharpness. Focal length is the priority because that defines how the pictures frame and look. I'd rather have a small, light lens that isn't quite as fast as a big heavy lens. never having used a lens that hasn't been sharp enough I put cost above that in terms of importance. Everyone else's seems to go for: sharpness, aperture (as fast as possible), focal length, size/weight, price.

Someone was wondering which lens they ought to get as a 'walkabout'. The big heavy pro spec 24-70 or something smaller/lighter or maybe with a bigger zoom range. I proffered my suggestion of the 28-300 and got shot down by someone who said it was far inferior in sharpness to the 24-70. Not that he had both to make the comparison because he was self-confessedly very picky about image quality and wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. There's a word for people like him. I've used both lenses and can't see a hole lot of difference between them. Where the 'crap' lens really wins is at anything over 70mm! For a walkabout lens a wide zoom range is more useful to my way of thinking. But then there are a lot of digital age photographers who are happy to 'crop to 'zoom'. Needless to say the guy who had asked for advice had really made his mind up in advance because he went for the big heavy lens saying that image quaity really mattered to him. I feel like an outsider at times!

What prompted this mini-rant (which I think I've had before...) was a lens that is very popular among Nikon users. The 85mm f1.8. It's popular because it's compact, sharp, has good 'bokeh' and is very reasonably priced. I bought mine as I thought it would go perfectly with my 28mm and 50mm lenses to complete my 'dream team'. The trouble is that, for me, it's neither fish nor fowl. Sure it's everything it's praised for being. Trouble is that it doesn't focus very close and I find it is either too short or too long. Usually too short. Maybe if I took a lot of portraits of people it would be useful, but I don't. So it isn't.

I went out this afternoon to try and get into using it. But I had a new toy in my pocket and ended up taking the majority of photographs with that. You see the compact in my pocket has the equivalent of a 28mm lens. Now some people say that is too wide for a general purpose lens. I don't find it so. During my two delves into the murky world of mirrorless cameras I almost always had a lens with that angle of view attached and didn't find it too wide at all. I like the perspective that 28mm gives. You can get in close to things and get stuff in the background out of focus enough to be undistracting yet readable . Or you can take in a wider scene with more in relatively sharp focus.

Looking at some Tony Ray-Jones pictures when I got home I realised that he must have had some influence on me as he made pictures in which there was a lot going on. And all of it in reasonable focus. In fact when I look at quite a lot of older pictures in the street and documentary modes I see that this is a common trait. yet today, even in journalistic pictures, subject isolation through depth of field has become a common feature. This device, like all devices, has its place, but it cuts out information. And I think photographs are all about supplying visual information.

New toys have to be played with. At the end of the pier I had a play with motion blur when I spotted the roulette wheel in the 'penny arcade'. While I was messing about a young lad popped into the frame and peered at the wheel. A little bit of luck turned a technical exercise into a picture.

Why the new toy? I'd used my fishing compact round town a few weeks back and found it more useful and more fun than using a DSLR.The only down side being the 'compact camera look' the files have. Just too much depth of field and an artificial sharpness that I don't mind in my fishing photos, but don't care for in the pictures I take as pictures. It also has that annoying 4:3 aspect ratio which is fine in a vertical orientation, but drives me nuts in horizontal.

I did quite like the Fuji X-E2 with the 18mm lens attached. It had the 28mm angle of view and the 3:2 aspect ratio, but the colours and look of the pics didn't please me so I got rid. I like the colours from my fishing camera which is a Nikon, like my DSLRs. Ever since it came out I'd fancied the Coolpix A, but at damn near a grand on launch it was too rich for me as a 'pocket' camera. Not proving to have been a marketing success, and the silver body less popular than the black, it seemed too good to miss now Amazon are selling them off for less than I paid for my fishing compact. Down in price to less than a third of the launch price!

After just two days with the camera it's too early to say if I'll take to it. There are the usual compact camera handling foibles - like no viewfinder and slowish focusing - but the files can't be faulted. 3:2 ratio, APS size too, ISO 3200 perfectly acceptable for my needs, colours that match those from my DSLRs, a lens that's easily sharp enough. It will enable me to integrate photographs from both compact and DSLR in the same sets without jarring (to my eyes) like the Fuji did. Did I mention that the 28mm field of view suits me?

More from 'playtime' here.

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