Holiday Snap

Fishing boats in Whitby Harbour, Yorkshire, England. Such a simple shot, but one so easy to mess up for so many reasons. Note, the vertical pole is parallel to the side of the frame—this is not adjusted, I managed to get the camera actually level for once! There are no passers-by wandering in front of the lens, there’s no ubiquitous garbage can, no bird dipping suddenly into the shot, no sun glaring off a window somewhere. It all came together, probably by accident, but I remember taking my time, being patient, and waiting for the elements to gel. It’s a bit deceptive too, the river is so calm, generating those nice ripply reflections, and the blue sky looks warm, but this was the November of 2007 (during my second UK trip, when I did some field research at a cemetery in Leicester toward my PhD) and the Christmas decorations were already up. Out beyond the breakwaters there was surf running—I got pictures from the west cliff of white waves coming in, the same afternoon. Nearly twenty years ago—but like yesterday in my memories. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Reflections in a Mountain Lake

You need to be where the picture is to get the picture—that’s a truism of all photography. You can visit the same place a dozen times and get a dozen different results, down to the weather conditions, time of day and time of year (thus light angle and intensity) and so forth. This is Loftier Gardens, the botanical gardens behind Mount Lofty summit, above Adelaide, South Australia, and I’ve shot the lake many times over the years. But on this day –January 24^th, 2025—the angle and quality of light were just right. There was little breeze, so the lake was quite calm, thus the potential for mirror-like reflections was there. I shot a series of frames from the hill walk on the east side, near the public shelter, and the quality of the colour was quite amazing. At altitude the gardens remain green despite South Australia’s harsh summers, and are a haven from conditions on the plain. This is a simple snap, no cleverness involved, other than an eye for composition, and while it could be better—less clutter at the foot of the frame perhaps—it’s satisfying as a snap goes. Minor adjustments to colour, contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Placid Waters

A simple shot but it has the feel of a classical painting—the composition of the far shore and island, reflected in the barely-rippled surface... This is Playford Lake at Belair National Park, South Australia, a frequently-shot destination, and though the scenery remains more or less the same, time of day can dramatically change how the lake looks. Light, is, after all, everything, and the lake can often demand to be photographed by the sensitive observer. I captured this frame during a hills meander on May 9^th, 2023, looking east from the top end of the lake. Frame-up and keeping the image level were the keys here. Minor adjustments to contrast and sharpness in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

 

Photograph of the Photographer

Sometimes life presents you with an irony, like shooting yourself in a mirror. Here, the photographer becomes the study. This was the 15^th of November, 2011, in the British sea town of Whitby, and I had gone exploring on the rocky shore below the cliffs eastward. Among my studies of the grey weather, of sunrays through cloud and reflections on wet mud flats, I found such a study on offer, when I noticed this photographer who had taken his equipment out across the rocky platform at low water to shoot back west toward the breakwaters and lighthouses. His pictures were probably pretty spectacular, while mine was simply opportunistic, and smile-worthy. It’s not often one photographer captures another in pursuit of his craft! Minor adjustments to colour and contrast in Irfanview; Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike. Mm

Fun with Reflections

You can get up to all sorts of tricks with reflections, but sometimes you find the reflection is the whole image. This is a 1926 steam locomotive, preserved in the National Railway Museum, York., UK., which I photographed on my visit in late 2011, and the lighting conditions in the sheds were tricky—soft enough to make blur a constant hazard with the light gathering ability of the cameras of the day. (Now, no problem, they handle low light like magic, but then? It took ingenuity.) The engines on display are polished to the nines, and the interplay of artificial light and gleaming surfaces did all the work in this image. It’s not even enhanced, in any way! Just metal, paint, a lot of hard work with polishing tools, and the interplay of light, creating a machine-as-art situation. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Geometry and Reflections

 

My eye is always caught by the interplay of straight lines in perspective. That pays into my fascination with vanishing point symmetry—all parallel lines have that element, but only extended lines display it in an eye catching way. This is the outside steps of the Medical Sciences building at Flinders University of South Australia, photographed on 5^th August, 2011. The building was new at the time, if I remember correctly, and this accessway is on the outdoor route for walking from the university down to the hospital to connect with the bus home. This was late afternoon, and the interplay of the shade slats, the stairs, the reflections in the plate glass to the left, and the general afternoon light, created a striking image that made me pause, pull out my camera (not sure why I had it at the Uni on that day), and take a whole series of frames. This one seems to capture the best balance of all elements. No to minimal enhancement was needed. Fuji S5600. Image by Mike.

Converging Reflections

Anywhere there’s water, there are reflections, and Playford Lake, at Belair National Park, is a place one can photograph over and over, as the changing weather and differing times of day and year conspire to make the precise nature of the pictures different every time. I took this one on a fairly blah day, May 9^th, 2023, an expedition that took us a few interesting places in the Hills region. The weather had been cloudy and the light soft until the sun broke through at this point, and I was able to grab some studies with far more substance—better colour and contrast, with defined shadows and, above all, reflections. These are the trees on the small island in Playford Lake, a haven for waterbirds, and surely one of the most-photographed islets of its sort. Minimal enhancements, via Irfanview. Fuji FinePix S5600. Image by Mike.

Bending Light

 

Almost exactly thirteen years ago, I took this photo in Hyde Park, London. It was Tuesday November 2^nd 2010, and I was staying at a small hotel near Paddington Station. I had done the Victoria & Albert, and Natural History Museums the previous day (which I reached by Underground), and on this day explored Hyde Park south to the Albert Memorial and Albert Hall, on foot. Had I known my London geography better I would probably not have bothered with the train the previous day, though, to be fair, I was quite ill on the 2010 trip and the extra legwork to get from Paddington to Cromwell Road was probably not welcome. I came upon this curious piece of public art, one of two massive reflectors in the park, and was fascinated by the way the curved surfaces capture the world around them. I'm visible in the distance, wrong way up, on the concave surface. The image was not modified in any way. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Angles and Reflections

 My sense of composition can't resist the effects created by a built environment. Here are reflections in modern plate-glass architecture on a clear sunny day—taken downtown in Adelaide, South Australia on February 23^rd, 2011. I remember being on some errand or other, having the camera with me and being captivated by the angles and lighting conditions the day and structures presented. Cities are sterile places in comparison to the natural world, but filled with the abstraction of human inventiveness and notions of aesthetic appeal, and the engineer and futurist in me can appreciate these things as a form of, yes, abstract art. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Reflected Forest

Sometimes you 'see' a potential shot, and do some manoeuvring to make it happen. This is the glass facade of the new wing of Flinders Medical Centre, south of Adelaide, with the tall eucalypts lining the seasonal stream that runs by the foot of the building reflected clearly. I saw this image from the parking lot on the opposite slope and picked the right spot, zoomed in hard on the effect I was interested in and grabbed several frames. The time of day was crucial, had the light been from a different angle the reflection would not have been as clear: the trees had to be catching direct light but not the facade. April, 2009. Sharpened and contrast-enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. mage by Mike.

Autumn Mirror

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This is a delightful study of the lake at Loftier Gardens, east of Adelaide, taken in April, 2009. Viewed from the south side, this was a zoom shot of the northern bank. The image was cropped to draw the attention tightly to the trees and their reflection, and create a palette of pure fall colours. Sharpened, colour- and contrast balanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic, telephoto. Image by Mike.

Fish-Eye Reflections

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Christmas trees can be very hard to photograph. For their lights to be seen at their best the ambient illumination should be low, and flash pretty much defies the object of the lights. You can snap away for ages before you get a decent shot, and this macro closeup is delightfully sharp. The red orb is a perfect spherical mirror in which the camera itself can be seen, along with the photographer. Sharpened only. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Reflections in a Rippled Lake

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The subtly-shifting surface of a calm lake makes an amazing reflector, and while a glass-smooth lake at the foot of a fall forest in New England or wherever makes for the ultimate in reflection shots, the infinite variability of the interplay of light with the surface of water makes any such scene visually interesting. This is the lake at Flinders University, south of Adelaide, on a bright, calm day in April, 2009. Note the mixture of both Australian eucalypts and European willows. Telephoto was used to exclude unwanted background and frame the trees and their reflections. The image was sharpened only for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Stone and Glass

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This is a building in Adelaide, 69 Currie St., a modern business edifice. I was waiting for a bus one Sunday morning in April 2009 and the reflections and symmetry struck me as very art-nouveau . Note the classical column reflected at lower right, part of a building a hundred years older than this one. I framed and shot several times but without a tripod it was impossible to align the camera with the symmetry of the subject, so this was a case of custom rotation in software later. I used a half-degree rotation to match the alignment of the verticals to the axis of the image, then cropped inside the resulting background wedges. From that point the image was scaled and enhanced as per normal for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

The Knight's Helm

This is foremost a study of reflections: the steel is polished, therefore the subject is 'skinned,' in CGI terms, with a mirror image of its surroundings, the sort of things an artist must be keenly aware of to ever realistically paint a shiny object. The helmet was standing on a straw bale in the ready area off the combat arena at the Gumeracha Medieval Fair at the beginning of May, 2009, and offered a perfect still subject in a dynamic environment. I framed and exposed without difficulty, kneeling by the bale, with the sun over my right shoulder, and I'm reflected above the helmet's left eye. Enhancements include sharpness, contrast and colour saturation. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Sheen on Metal

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This, I believe, is what a Jaguar looks like these days, since the revitalisation of the classic British brand. I passed this aerodynamic beauty on the seafront in Scarborough, UK, in November, 2007, just before climbing the cliff trail to the castle, and couldn't resist the elegant lines and the fascinating things the afternoon sun did with reflections from metal and paintwork. Look at the tonal variance between the sun highlights on the flank and the reflections of the sky in the hood: that's subtle, the kind of things it takes a student of reflection dynamics to understand and reproduce correctly in artwork (I'm thinking Syd Mead's classic work for Ford and US Steel). Enhancements include 5% sharpening and colour saturation, but contrast was not adjusted as the image contains true black and true white, and the highlights are already burned out. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Reflections

This is a reflecting pool. You are now about 15 metres underground in the Alexandra Cave at Naracoorte. The water depth is between 1 to 3 centimeters. In order to get the natural colours of the calcite flowstone to show properly, you need to be at least 10 feet away, a masked flash, and a good zoom. Very difficult shot, but if you know how to mask the flash then it should come out right. Don't worry about the pool drying out, the cave's humidity is 98%.photo by dave

High-rise Living by the Waters

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This is another reflex shot. I was getting pretty good at it with all those bridges and urban vistas in eastern London as I rode the Docklands Light Railway in November, 2007. Watch for a bridge coming up, frame out over the water of the next canal or dock and shoot whatever appeared. The finished shot looks like it was purposefully staged, but it's actually entirely opportunistic. Only the dark area at top right gives away the fact it's shot through a train window, that's either a bridge stanchion or part of the window surround, otherwise I was lucky with a clean window. Enhancements include sharpness, contrast and colour saturation, though I keep my adjustments subtle: I like to preserve the 'feel' of the original frame, reproducing the visual atmosphere of the time and place as much as possible. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Fossils, front and center!

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Palaeontology week at the South Australian Museum of Natural History offered some fantastic opportunities to pit oneself against a slippery opponent: glass. The exhibits are all behind (or under) glass, of course ... and it's daylight, which means that trying to get a good photo of an amazing fossil entails finding some way to get the "glare" out of the shot! You can find yourself taking an excellent portrait -- of the photographer, reflected in the glass. There's no real trick to it, but there's a few guidelines to follow, if you're wondering how in the world to get a usable shot. First: observe. Use your eyes. Don't let your brain merely "tune out" the reflections -- see them! Second: use your feet and knees. Move around and duck down, till the reflections are either minimal, or gone. The camera might try to focus on the glass itself, so be vigilant ... make sure it focuses where you want it to. Lastly, the light levels will be low, so set your virtual film speed at 800 or higher, if you're working in Manual mode; and if you're working in Auto mode, take a great number of shots till the camera gives you exactly what you want -- and erase the dross! Photo by Mel, 2009. (Palaeontology Week, late March 2009; in the foyer of the SA Museum. The major skull in the case is Protoceratops.)

Aspects of the Journey

"Inward, Looking Outward" could have been the title of this post. This was one of a batch of frames I took late one evening in November, 2007, at Heathrow Airport, London, while waiting for my outbound flight, a Qantas Boeing 747-600, the Longreach, named for the original headquarters of the company in Queensland. It was delayed four hours due to weather on the flightpath, a great many disgruntled people could only sit around and wait. At least I had photography to help pass the time! Had lighting been less bright maybe shots through the plate glass could have been managed to create an outside perspective such as with my shots at Newcastle Airport earlier the same evening, but that was never going to be possible here, and this time the reflections tell their own story: two images, superimposed, the travellers in the lounge and the plane they are about to board, interleaved, thus two aspects of the journey. Sharpened and colour-saturated for publication; Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic exposure. Image by Mike.