Window on the world

I have always taken the occasional photograph of interesting conditions outside my office window, but I’ve recently had both more time and more cause to observe the changes happening just beyond the panes of glass beside me.

Living in lockdown and working from home for these past few months, the view through my study window has taken on new significance: a view on a world mostly closed off but for one walk each day—and not even that for the fortnight we were self-isolating. 

Now, the main photograph above is of course taken before COVID-19 reared its head but it’s only more recently that I have reached the point of having a small collection of these office window frames that I thought might go well as a small collection here.

It was one of those days where the rain and sun battle each other and occasionally overlap, this time around sunset.

I was in my office with the Fujifilm GFX 50R nearby, having just mounted the Minolta Rokkor 58mm ƒ/1.2 to it in order to take a few test frames. The weather outside gave me an immediate time-based challenge as the rain came down while the setting sun set a glow to the clouds.

I find with reaction shots (whether to events or just something catching my eye), the first frame I take is often either the best or the beginning of a hard slog working the scene to figure out what it was that caught my eye in the first place.

In this case, the first frame was the best: rain drops in focus on the window, a nice soft sharpness to the window frame and just enough detail to the out-of-focus background to be clear about what it is without distracting from the in-focus elements.

Earlier…

Now back a further four months to July 2019 and effectively another test shot: this one of the first frames taken with my X100F, and not too long after we moved into this house.

Nothing too special about this one really, just a mood from a summer’s day with the window open and our cat watching the world go by.

Recent events

And then a similar frame nearly a year later, from last month. Looking out the window while working, the formation of three clouds matching the diagonal of our neighbour’s roof—as well as the angle on the cloud just behind that roof—caught my eye and so again I grabbed the camera on the floor next to me: this time the GFX 50S with 32-64mm F4.

Again, not a particularly remarkable image on its own, but a nice point in a series I can build over time for my own records. I’ve written before about a couple of image series I’ve stumbled into building over time (Tate Modern street photography and the harbour wall), and it seems I have reached either the stage of life—or simply the point in my photography—where I begin wanting to build up vaguely cohesive series of images on some theme or other.

Perhaps I’m finally shifting from hobbyist to ‘artist’!

Finally, we’ve had some interesting sunsets in the past week or so (which triggered this post) that have had me wishing I could be down at the beach with my tripod set up…