Thursday, April 01, 2010

Another day, another cup of coffee...

click photo to enlarge
...and another photograph. A longer than usual shopping trip for food, concrete slabs and a replacement oven heating element (more DIY!!!) necessitated a break for a cup of coffee in a cafe in Spalding, Lincolnshire. On a recent visit to this first floor venue I'd taken a photograph that quite pleased me, so I thought I'd see if I could find another. This is the shot I came up with, once again taken with the camera resting on the table so that its polished surface would mirror some of the more distant scene.

Photographs of this sort don't come naturally to me, but I've made a mental note to try and secure more of them, if they come my way, because I quite enjoy composing them. I long ago came to the conclusion that I could never be a "street photographer" or someone whose subjects were mainly people, but I don't mind dipping my toe into those pools now and again. You may be wondering why I'm presenting this photograph in black and white rather than colour as I did with the earlier shot. There are two reasons: firstly, I like the medium of black and white, and it's the photographic style that I chose when I first began photography; and secondly, there are a number of Day Glo price labels fixed to some of the items on sale that really don't sit easily with the subdued colours in the rest of the shot, and they draw the eye far more than I would want. Which is interesting considering the subject of a recent post!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On