Pictures Just Pictures: LOOKING UP AT THE BLUE LAMP

Thursday, January 22, 2009

LOOKING UP AT THE BLUE LAMP

Lucy Corrander - Looking up at the Blue Lamp - 13th January 2009

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8 comments:

Hermes said...: I really like that. Abstract but works so well against that sky.; January 22, 2009 at 11:00 AM
James Golden said...: I don't ofter comment, but I watch these every day via my Google reader. This is particularly nice.; January 22, 2009 at 12:31 PM
The Weaver of Grass said...: Love it. Did you have to lie on the floor to take it?; January 22, 2009 at 3:27 PM
Barbee' said...: Isn't that beautiful! What a blue sky. When I look at it, Lucy, I see a pen that has drawn a cherry with stem. Wonder what others see.; January 22, 2009 at 7:46 PM
Lucy Corrander said...: I'm glad you like the Looking Up at the Blue Lamp photo, Hermes. I'm always a little nervous about apparently abstract pictures when I post here. I specially like many of them but I also realise people either definitely like them - or don't see the point of them at all. There seem to be no middles.

Lucy; January 29, 2009 at 11:34 AM
Lucy Corrander said...: James - it's good of you to let me know you follow these photos through your reader. Otherwise, I wouldn't have known and to know really is very encouraging.

Best wishes

Lucy; January 29, 2009 at 11:36 AM
Lucy Corrander said...: Weaver of grass - I didn't have to lie on my back to take the photo of the underside of The Blue Lamp. In fact, I held the phone above my head!

It's a very tall lamp - having to cast light down a flight of steps and in the area around the top of them - but, as you know, if I had had to lie on my back to get the shot . . . well . . . !

Lucy; January 29, 2009 at 11:38 AM
Lucy Corrander said...: Barbee - I like the image of a cherry with a stem being associated with this photo. It adds something.

And the blueness of the sky . . . people often comment on the blueness of the sky in my photos. In part, this is because we are very fortunate where I live and really do have a lot of blue skies. In part it is when the skies are blue that I go out to take pictures (!)

But there is another reason too. - Lots of my photos are taken with the lens pointing directly upwards.

When we look straight up like that (which we don't often bother to do because it gives us a crick in the neck) there is less interference from the atmosphere we look through than when we look along the surface of the earth and into the distance.

(This, I think must be the answer. I think it is also why the moon looks bigger at different points in the sky.)

Indeed, so many people have commented on this blueness that I began to wonder if it were something to do with my camera rather than with how things truly are so I went and checked.

If I look straight ahead on the phone screen . . . the sky looks pasty or murky. If I angle the lens slowly upwards until I'm looking right above my head, the view of the sky grows bluer and bluer.

This is one of the advantages of a phone instead of a proper camera - with this photo, I wasn't even looking through the screen - I stuck the phone under the lamp with the lens pointing up - and pressed the shutter - and it worked!

Lucy; January 29, 2009 at 11:59 AM