This image is part of an ongoing project I pursue, called “The Country in the City”.   In this case, a set of identical cows, facing different directions, placed in a large open area right in the financial district of Toronto.  

          I’ve photographed these cows, singly and together, in all seasons, over quite a few years, but this image seems to best portray what I visualize here ... cows, lying in a field, surrounded by a city. “What are we doing here?” 

          One just doesn’t visualize a cow lying in the middle of a snowy field, so it captures the imagination. Use of the fish-eye lens emphasizes the feeling of “being surrounded”, and both of these techniques together certainly give the photograph a different look! As with many images made with wide-angle lenses, getting up very close to one major element in the composition emphasizes it.   The foreground cow, in this case, creates a very nice leading line that pulls the eye further and further into the frame... don’t step in the cow flops!

While wandering in the Thames area of London, England, some years ago on a gloomy afternoon, I happened on this Chelsea Pensioner, a retired military man, taking the air. 

          “That uniform would photograph beautifully, in this subdued light, sir,” I suggested to him.   “Would you mind if I photograph you?” 

          He fixed me with a stern eye, a frown on his face.   I expected to be soundly rebuffed, in a parade-ground bellow that would be heard halfway across London. 

          “It’ll cost you a shilling, sonny!”, he replied.   I didn’t know what a shilling was, so I set the camera for f2.8,   did a number of exposures, and gave him a pound.

During the summer, student bands from the Boston area perform on the beach at Lynn, MA.   I had to get up on the roof of a building behind the performance area, to make this “bird’s eye view” photograph, and still, a 24mm lens just captured the complete group. This was a case of “visualizing” the image before it was made, and then finding the right vantage point to implement the vision.

My dinghy sailing club is next to one that caters to larger boats, including both keelboats and multi-hulls.  In winter, I take my boat home and put it in the garage, but  these large vessels are all stored outdoors. 

          Even the bows of sailboats, all lined up in a row, offer interesting opportunities for shots of repetitive pattern. I positioned them so as to form a diagonal across the frame,  not placing any lines horizontal to the frame. The negative space at the top left of the frame balances the diagonal of boats in the other half of the composition. A polarizing filter ensured a strong blue sky.  

The Detroit zoo has this wonderful underwater viewing area, where you can observe the polar bears both under and above the water surface.   I could see it was a natural place where kids would be excited,   and I “waited in ambush” for the right moment.  

          I had to use fill flash to capture the people, as they were totally backlit, and I set the flash for one f-stop less light than the bright ambient sky. This was one of those occasions where the modern camera and flash technology came through for me, as everything was  balanced and exposed perfectly, as I had hoped it would be, using an automatic exposure mode.   The ambient light was changing rapidly, and my older manual equipment would not have allowed this kind of balanced fill flash, when timing was important.

One of the photographic advantages of living in a large urban area is the chance to work with reflections in buildings. Like many modern cities, Toronto builds with glass, so that every downtown street becomes an imaging adventure on a sunny day. 

          For years, I used to walk the downtown areas for an hour at lunch time while carrying a camera, then go back to my office and eat a sandwich at my desk!   This image was made using a 28-90mm zoom lens, hand held, in the area of Yonge Street and Dundas. Since I had to tilt the camera up, I emphasized the “lean” this would cause in the composition, by tilting the camera horizontally as well.

This image was made at a ruined abbey, in southern Scotland, while I was on a hiking trip.   From the floor of the abbey, you could see that the shadows were strong,  but I had to climb up to a balcony to obtain this “bird’s eye view”.   A popular spot, I was lucky to catch a moment when the abbey floor was clear of tourists.  

          I shouted at one of my fellow hikers, until I had her placed perfectly, in my 24mm lens.   Three exposures later,   a large group of tourists entered the area, and my shot was gone.

More.....

Return to the article

Return to the home Page

I made this photograph in the dome car, while travelling on the Amtrak train between Santa Barbara and San Francisco. 

          Because the car is lined (on both sides) with the plushy seats, there is little room for pedestrians and photographers.   Use of the fish-eye lens was dictated here by the fact that no other lens could portray the scene without violently cropping it ... and besides, I love the effect of the distortion. 

          While I could have used some fill flash here, I was afraid it would reflect in the glass, ruining the shot (an image where use of a flash is obvious is, to me, a technical failure).  I hoped there would be enough light bouncing around to fill in the shadows in the middle of the car, and that proved to be the case. case. case.