condensed forms

It’s been wet. It’s been really wet, mild, windy, occasionally cold, but mostly just wet. We are not supposed to have a monsoon season in the UK, but this January was very like one – albeit cooler.

All that dampness condenses on glass and makes for interesting opportunities for image making.

A new glass bus stop has been erected near to where I live. I’ve found that at certain times of the day, it provides lovely photo opportunities. A friend of mine thought I was a little strange when I told her excitedly about “the new bus stop”, but the truth is that a little mindfulness of seeing can make even the most mundane items seem interesting.

I’ve taken photos at the bus stop on two different occasions. Knowing the area and how the sun moves helps because, as with many photographs, timing is everything. When the sun is in the right place, the dampness on the glass bus stop diffracts the sunlight making beautiful light, and beautiful light is what helps make beautiful photographs.

The first two images here were taken with a Sony full frame camera and have been processed to black and white but the rest are actually colour and were shot on my usual carry around Olympus camera.

I’m very pleased with the first photograph where the man has his palm against the glass of the bus stop and also the last one. I like that the people in the shots have been made abstract by the “dirty” light and the atmosphere seems sinister. Which is your favourite? Can you see much difference between the two cameras that I used?

I hope you enjoy looking at all of them and will agree that if you just “see the light” mindfully, the world seems to be full of beautiful opportunities.

P.S. I’ve updated the “Melting Pot” page of the site with some new pictures. If you’ve got the time click on the link for a look 🙂

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For the photographers – The first two black and white processed shots were taken on a Sony A7 with the Zeiss 35mm f2.8 lens at iso 200 and iso 100 f8 / 320th sec. and f8 / 500th sec.

The other seven were shot with an Olympus OMD EM1 micro four thirds sensor camera and the 12-40mm f2.8 lens at 200 iso – all at f7.1 / 1000th sec.

I know they’ve been quite highly processed, but other than more dynamic range in the highlights, I couldn’t see much difference between the RAW files from each camera at these low iso rates. I would have expected to see a bigger difference considering that the Sony has a 35mm sensor. I ended up sending the A7 back because I found the build quality wasn’t to the standard that I wanted (there was an awful lot of flex from the lens mount – an issue widely reported on internet forums). It felt like a toy compared to the Olympus OMD EM1.

Hey Olympus marketing people – there’s a story here waiting to be told!

images and words © Miles Pilling