Giant cat?

Look at the size of the hand in the background, apparently stroking this cat? If it were really that size the cat would be as big as a pony! How does this work? The cat was very close to the camera and appears large, the hand is my hubby’s, he sat about a foot away and this is his right hand, furthest away from the cat. It’s a bit blurred because it’s at the back. This is called depth of field. If you think of a photo as being in layers from the closest layer to the lens going backwards in slices then the deepest part of the feild of view is at the back. If you have a shallow field only the things at a certain distance will be in focus. With a deep feild all or most of the photo will be in focus. This is most noticeable in the deep field view of the universe with the Hubble Space telescope. In the pictures from that you can keep zooming in to see more and more detail. Sorry for the non technical explanation!

Little paws

His paws look so small. A clear example of foreshortening. Where the image looks bigger where it is closer to the lens. If I had taken the photo from right in front of him it would have been more in proportion. Taken from near his feet and his head would look tiny. Also its about depth of field. If you look at the photo it is all in focus, but if you change the depth of field you can get one section of the photo in focus, and other parts (closer or further from the lens) blurred/out of focus. It’s not something you can do with a phones auto focus but probably if I played with the manual settings I could do something? I finally changed it to a black and white filter to emphasise his fur.

The moon tonight

Two images taken with the phone on my camera tonight. I took both on the manual setting on the camera as the auto choice was over exposing it. I altered the exposure so that the sky appears darker and the moon is more defined. I didn’t know how to do it. I just clicked on the tools and messed about with it. (This was the last time I took a photo of the moon and I haven’t altered the settings since).

I also had to zoom in x 5 to get a big enough image to see the moon. Then I cropped it to enlarge it. In all of that I was expecting some camera shake but its not too bad. I leant my elbow on a large glass jar on the kitchen cupboard to try and make my image steadier and I also held my breath.

 

Ghostly

 

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Have you ever used a pin hole camera? This was me and a friend at our neighbours house. The pinhole camera was a biscuit tin, sealed with sellotape and with a sheet of black and white photographic paper in the base. The lid had a tiny hole created by hammering a small nail through it. I used a piece of card, I think, to cover the hole. In this case I stayed still for about a minute, but my friend moved after about thirty seconds if I remember correctly. The image was created by lifting the flap over the hole, then covering the hole up again after the exposure.

I don’t remember developing it. I’m sure I did, it was part of the coursework at college to do some photography. I did a few more. One of an old man, standing in front of this window, and one of me sitting on a setee inside the house by this window. In it I had turned my head right for thirty seconds and then left. The result was my body was visible, but my head was missing, just a stump where it should be.

That was forty years ago, a long time ago. The dim and distant past.

 

_20191205_114418looking at this photo turned on its side reminds me of an animal with external gills. With tentacles, with tiny eyes. It might be a landscape in reality, but it feels like something much more alien.

I imagine it floating above the land, syphoning up water from the surface of the sea. Eyes staring with disdain at a terrified population. Or perhaps visiting in friendship and hope.

When I was a child I helped with the washing up. I would spend ages stacking plates and cups and knives and forks into ancient or future landscapes. Maybe that’s why I do this to my photos?

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