In town I spotted a six-wheel Range Rover and so of course I photographed it. Then a short man and his wife appeared and I thought they might own the car. But it became clear that they were intrigued by the car, just as I was.

The man and the woman were wearing Panama hats. In fact, I have seen more Panama hats recently than in the whole of my life, barring perhaps when I was in Panama.

When the man walked around the car I brought him into the frame, mostly for the Panama hat.

Tech Info

Ricoh GR III at 1/1250th of a second at f4 and ISO 1250. And there’s a lesson there, which is that for years I have fought against bumping up my ISO for fear that the noise would overpower the signal.

But look at these shots – there is no noise to speak of. And what I have learned is that as long as there is good light (as here) then high ISO is not a problem. And I didn’t use any kind of noise reduction – just a RAW file with normal processing. ‘Normal’ means I generally bump the blacks and maybe raise the exposure. And that’s it.

And in this metropolis, each will have a balcony and be able to see the sky and a passing cloud.

Those in lower floors will be compensated for lack of a view the sky and a passing cloud by being able to save time reaching their floor when exiting and entering the block.

This room in the National Gallery is devoid of paintings because the Gallery is carrying out works to its research centre and wants to avoid affecting any paintings that might be hung in this the adjacent room.

A notice said that the works in the research centre are expected to be completed in 2027, so there is plenty of time to see this empty room.

The Barriers

One nice little touch is that the rope barriers that deter visitors from crossing and perhaps touching the paintings, are still there.

Technical Info

I shot this with a Canon EOS R6 at f3.5 at 1/200th of a second and ISO 5000.

I shot at ISO 5000 because of the low light.

The base ISO of this camera is ISO 100, so that’s 5.64 stops lower than ISO 5000.. Each stop means doubling the sensitivity of the sensor to that light. The sensor can do it but at the expense of more noise along with the signal.

To put it another way, the sensor ‘developed’ the scene with less than 1/50th of the light it would have had available if it could shoot at base ISO.

In fact I could have shot at base ISO, but then I would have had to shoot at a much slower shutter speed – and who knows how still I could have held the camera, even with the stabilisation on the lens and in the camera body.

And if the people had moved, then stabilisation wouldn’t have helped.

So I chose a higher ISO on the principle that sharp is better than the risk of blur from camera shake or subject movement, even at the expense of noise.

And just look at the woman’s face and how clean and clear it is. That is a testament to the sensor and processor in the R6 at high ISO.

Mother and daughter looking at La Maternité, Picasso’s painting of a mother and son painted in 1901 in Picasso’s Blue period.

In Greek thought, Heraclitus held that the visible world is not made up of static things but of processes. Everything we encounter is the temporary manifestation of an underlying logos or ordering principle. Fire is never the same from one moment to the next, yet retains its identity. The world of objects is really the visible expression of an invisible dynamic.
This is why he says things like “Nature loves to hide.” and
“You cannot step into the same river twice.” The river is the continuing pattern produced by flowing water.

For Plato, every object in the physical world participates in or reflects an eternal Form. A beautiful horse is an imperfect instance of the Form of Beauty and the form precedes that object. So sad and terminal.

In Kabbalah, all manifestations in the world are products acted up and maintained by the force that drives Creation (with a capital C) the purpose being that man’s purpose in being created it to reveal the force that creates it. (a bit like Heraclitus’ Nature loves to hide,) and the purpose of Creation is for man to enjoy being in touch with the force that creates Man.

The physicist David Bohm said that what we ordinarily perceive as separate objects are not the fundamental reality. They are unfoldings or manifestations of a deeper, undivided whole. “Ultimately, the entire universe has to be understood as a single undivided whole, in which analysis into separately and independently existent parts has no fundamental status.”

Question: What effect would this view have on the photographer deciding what to photograph and how to frame it?