PhotoReflect

The appeal of Regency buildings

2012-01-30T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

I like Georgian buildings. In Lincolnshire they are relatively common and their good sense, fine proportions, and the way they fit comfortably into a streetscape or the countryside is always a pleasure to behold. I'm more choosy about Victorian buildings. The innovation for innovation's sake is sometimes fun but other times wearisome. The heaviness of a lot of the buildings and details can jar. As can the machine-like details of stonework, terracotta etc. However, when a Victorian architect is on song the muscular vigour of a building can be very winning.

In English architectural history there is a short period between the Georgian and Victorian ages, the Regency, that is longer than the period from 1811-1820 when the Prince Regent ruled in place of his unfit father, George III. In terms of building style it is usually thought of as spanning the years from about 1800 until around 1830. The characteristics of the fashionable buildings of those years owes more to Georgian architecture than the Victorian that followed but clearly differs and is very easily spotted once your eye has learnt what to look for.

"Elegant" is the word that, for me, best describes Regency buildings, especially town houses. They have a spare, stripped, light look where fine details contrast with smooth, blank (often light coloured) areas. Doors and windows that are round-topped are common, and often these are set into a larger, recessed round-topped blank arch. Shutters were fashionable and still remain on many buildings. Balconies with delicate iron-work railings can often be seen at first-floor windows. The Georgian tradition of the size of window indicating the importance of the rooms behind continues, and the top of the buildings are usually "closed" with smaller windows. Flat columnar pilasters frequently divide or frame building facades, though the simplified "capitals" that surmount them would be as foreign to a Georgian architect as they would be to one from ancient Greece or Rome. Tall, shallow, bow-fronted bays are a fairly sure sign of a Regency building, as are strongly projecting eaves on long brackets. There is a great emphasis on the main facade at the expense of the back of the building, though that is a feature of most Georgian and Victorian town houses too.

Many of these characteristics can be seen in Rutland Terrace in Stamford, Lincolnshire (above and yesterday's post), and those that don't can be found in the buildings of this period elsewhere in the town. My criticisms in the previous post of the builders' changes across the whole facade during the years in which they built the terrace notwithstanding, I do like much that is on offer here. There are certainly many worse solutions to relatively high density urban living.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 120mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Speculators and Rutland Terrace

2012-01-29T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

In theory there's nothing wrong with the idea of speculatively built private housing. The notion that someone puts up the money, has houses built, then advertises and sells them to members at the public for a profit has much to commend it, and most new housing does follow this model. However, in practice - and I speak only of the UK here - it can leave much to be desired.

The danger, as I see it, is that the pursuit of profit leads the speculator to produce housing that is sub-standard in materials and design, and aesthetically banal or just downright bad. It's not difficult to find examples that display one or more, and sometimes all, of these features. In fact, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) last year called much new UK housing "shameful shoebox homes" because they are simply too small for people to live in comfortably, and lack the space to hold both people and the furnishings and possessions that are common today. That's not to say that all housing is bad, there is plenty that is well-built, commodious and looks good. However, too much is none of these things. When you look back at the history of housing you find that speculative building often resulted in this mix of good and bad, with bad being far too common. New, low-cost, privately built housing was so bad in the early years of the twentieth century that in 1919 parliament passed the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act, a provision of which required local authorities to build housing. This they did, usually to a higher standard than the private sector, showing what could and should be achieved with limited funds.

I was reflecting on this when I was photographing Rutland Terrace in Stamford, Lincolnshire, recently. This row of twenty houses was speculatively built for a relatively wealthy clientele between 1829 and 1831, during the period that architectural historians refer to as the Regency. (In architecture the period extends to the onset of Queen Victoria's reign). What struck me was that the builder(s) started at the east and created a white stucco facade with a balcony at each first floor window, then built a middle section faced in Ancaster stone with a tall, covered balcony, and finally completed the western end also in stone, but with balconies that spanned the first floor windows of each property. In other words within architectural constraints - type and size of doors and windows, overall size etc - they deliberately introduced difference in the long facade. Was it whim or the following of fashion that caused this change? Whatever the reason it makes for a rather odd appearance, and is a departure from the usual co-ordinated, overall design of such terraces. In fact, it reminded me of the way builders today often construct the same house design across a site but differentiate one from the other by the colour of bricks or the shade of roof tile that they use.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 60mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Seeing what I see

2012-01-27T17:00:00.000Z

click photos to enlarge

Due to my power supply failure I've been publishing blog posts from my second computer for several days now. When I've been looking at earlier posts produced on my main computer I've become very aware of the slight but significant difference in the way many images appear. My main computer is calibrated with an electronic device made for the purpose. The computer I'm currently using isn't. I could calibrate it, I suppose, but then I'd have to go through the process of adjusting my screen again when I receive and install my new power supply. And, to be blunt, calibration is a real pain, something that I do reasonably regularly anyway, and the prospect of doing it again unnecessarily doesn't appeal to me.

The upshot is, some of my earlier posts have "blown" areas in them when viewed on this machine, and I suppose those prepared on this machine will appear to be a touch dark when I get back to viewing them on my main computer. Does that matter? Well, yes and no. It matters to me in that I want to prepare photographs to the best of my ability and in the way that suits me. However, I have always been aware that other people viewing them on their computers may or may not have their screen calibrated and consequently may or may not see what I see regardless of whether or not I calibrate my computer. Even those with a calibrated machine may not see them quite as I see them, such are the dark arts of of this process.

All of which is my way of saying that if you detect a deterioration in the quality of my photographs that may account for it. On the other hand they may look better for you and you could be wondering what on earth I'm talking about! And with that remark I'll be quiet and say that today's trio of shots of St Helen, Brant Broughton, Lincolnshire, show the exterior and interior of a church, the architecture of which, I hold in high regard. I've posted a couple of images of this church before (this roof and this tower vaulting), and if you'd like to know more about the building have a look at those earlier posts.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Low key teapot

2012-01-26T17:00:00.000Z

click photos to enlarge

My high key photograph of hydrangea petals made me think that I should complement it with a low key photograph that consists mainly of dark tones. And, since we bought a new stainless steel teapot recently that still retains the perfect lustre of its newness, it occurred to me that would make a suitable subject. So I took it to a spot that was lit by a single window, set it up on a piece of black vinyl that I curved up the wall behind to create a shadowless background, and took a few shots. As you can see, I dialled EV -1.33 into the camera to make the dark parts of the reflected steel merge with the black background and I made the subject of the photograph the light reflections as much as the elegant shape itself.

The difficulty in photographing shiny surfaces is that the photographer and/or the camera tend to be seen in the reflections. The first shot largely overcomes that problem by having the camera above the subject, though my legs and two tripod legs can still be seen. However, you wouldn't have known that was what they were if I hadn't told you, would you?! The other photographs have several colours in the reflection that give clues to what the room contains. But the conversion to black and white masks those distractions quite well. One method of avoiding reflections of this sort is to have a large flat sheet of card, paper, plastic or some such material that you stand behind, with a hole in for the camera lens. That way the reflection is pretty much a uniform surface.

Incidentally, when we bought the teapot our main concern was that we should buy one that pours well. You'd think that after millennia of making containers designed to pour properly this was a problem that mankind had cracked. But no, as we found out with a previous teapot, what is learnt can be unlearnt and it is perfectly possible to buy a teapot that pours badly. Fortunately, this one pours perfectly.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 2 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Wilson Street, Newark

2012-01-24T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Today's photographs show the quite "industrial" looking Wilson Street in Newark, Nottinghamshire. It is not the sort of street that you usually find alongside the graveyard of a large medieval church, and its presence there is all the more remarkable when you consider that there was once a matching terrace on the other side of the road where I took my shots. This oddity is explained by the fact that the houses were built (in 1766) by the vicar of the church, Bernard Wilson.

My curiosity about this Georgian cleric was piqued when I read Pevsner's summary about the terrace in "The Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire". He describes him as "an extremely wealthy pluralist of questionable character." A little digging uncovered the following. Wilson acquired his position and fortune by befriending wealthy men. His job he got through his contemporary at Westminster School, Thomas Pelham, who later became the Duke of Newcastle. His wealth came to him from the member of parliament for Newark, Sir George Markham. It seems that Markham promised Wilson a vast sum of money in his will if the young vicar married the MP's niece. Wilson inherited the money but didn't marry the niece. Further upsets and law suits followed Wilson as he tried to use his wealth to advance his own interests and those of the people he favoured. All this gave him a dubious reputation in some sections the town and society beyond, not a word of which is alluded to in his memorial in Newark church. This includes the following: "a man of sense, politeness and learning, without pride, reserve or pedantry. Possessed of an affluent fortune, his hand was ever open to relieve the necessitous. His extensive charities when living, and ample benefactions at his decease, have raised him a living monument in the hearts of the poor." Wilson did, in fact, use some of his money well, and for the alleviation of poverty. However, unsurprisingly, given human nature, those are not the foremost acts that posterity allies to his name.

The street itself is brick built with hipped pantile roofs. Raised bands separate the three floors. Pavilion-like projections close each end of the terrace and the centre projects by a similar (small) amount. This has a modest, central, arched doorway with a blocked fanlight. The houses were restored and converted around 1980. In some respects, though on a grander scale and earlier in date, they remind me of Nelson Street in King's Lynn. They have that same stripped-down, utilitarian feel. I like them for their unfussy spareness, though I'm not sure I'd like to live in them.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Hydrangeas and high key

2012-01-23T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

My wife spotted one of the detached, dead flower heads of our giant hydrangea as we walked through the pergola the other day and, as she pointed it out to me, I made a mental note to examine it as a potential photographic subject. By the time I got round to retrieving it for that purpose the wind had blown it, tumbleweed-style, across the garden and it had suffered quite a bit of damage. Nonetheless I took it indoors and and placed it on a white background under a bright light, hoping to base an image around the cluster of lace-like petals. But, as is often the case, what I saw in my mind's eye didn't appear quite the way I imagined it when I came to look through the viewfinder. The multiplicity of groups of four petals was simply too much: a simpler composition was required.

I tried a shot of part of the flower head with the edge offering a ragged outline against a plain black or white background. However, whilst better it still didn't satisfy me. So I took to pulling off a few individual petal groups and examining them. The attraction, it seemed to me, lay in the delicate veins of each individual petal and the way they were grouped in fours like the blades of a propeller. So I built this simple composition with three stems and set them on a white background with the light source behind and to the side to accentuate the key features.

My natural inclination is to aim for a "perfect" exposure or to under-expose. I have something of an aversion to over-exposure for reasons that I find hard to articulate. And yet, when I see a good "high key" shot with the main subject appearing out of a blazing white background I often like it. I have it in mind to try more of this kind of shot myself, and have done so very occasionally, as I did with this shell. Consequently I thought I'd try it again here. I haven't gone quite as far as with the shell - all the details are still showing - but it is much lighter and brighter than it would have been had I followed both my inclination and the light meter.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 0.3 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Frosted leaves

2012-01-21T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

At the time of writing this blog entry winter has been pretty average in terms of weather. The temperatures haven't dropped too low but we've had a few frosts, there has been no snow and rain has been scarce but probably sufficient. There have been January gales causing damage to trees and buildings but, as far as this part of the UK goes, on the whole I'm glad to say that the extremes of the last two winters have been absent. I say, "on the whole" because, of course, weather extremes are food and drink for the photographer. The transformations wrought on familiar locations by hoar frost, snow or fog inspires us to take "different" photographs of familiar subjects.

The closest I've come to that recently was a wander around the garden on a few frosty mornings in search of a shot or two. I came back with very little of consequence but was moderately pleased with the two photographs I'm showing today. The first one with the Choisya appealed for the way the frost had given a white border to each leaf. This particular clump was projecting forward out of the main bush and consequently was better lit than the darker background. I emphasised this effect by a little digital "burning", that is to say darkening the areas behind the leaves a little more.

The Cotoneaster franchettii is an evergreen shrub that loses a small proportion of its leaves each winter. I photographed this particular hedge on a bright autumn day when it was loaded with red berries, but I prefer this photograph taken in January dullness for the way the colours glow against the backdrop. I also made this effect more pronounced, applying a dark vignette to the image.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/20 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Oriel window, Newark Castle

2012-01-20T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

"Oriel" is a word whose derivation is difficult to determine. My edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) cites a 1239 usage by Matthew Paris, "oriolum", a Latin version of, it is speculated, the medieval English and Old French "oriol", "euriel" or "oeuriel". Here it is felt to mean a porch, entrance or antechamber. There is some thought that it might derive from aureolum, through the French, and mean golden or gilded, and by extension "gilded chamber". But what agreement there is settles on a meaning that includes a portico, corridor, gallery or balcony.

My first encounter with the word is in connection with a particular type of window, specifically one that projects as a bay from an upper storey without the usual downward extension to the ground of a traditional bay window. The OED's first recorded use of this definition of the word dates from the late 1700s and is in Horace Walpole's, "The Castle of Otranto", an early Gothic novel. However, an earlier definition, of the 1400s and later, for the word "oriel" (though spelt "oryel", "oryall" etc) rather than "oriel window" is summarised thus: "A large recess with a window, of polygonal plan, projecting from the outer face of the wall of a building, usually, in an upper story, and either supported from the ground or on corbels. Formerly sometimes forming a small private apartment attached to a hall, or the like." (My emphasis.)

So, what's all this ruminating about word derivation got to do with today's photograph? Well, I was wondering just what the builders and users of this fine oriel window on the exterior wall of Newark castle called it? Will we ever know? And does anyone (apart from me) care? What we are fairly certain is that it was inserted by Bishop Thomas of Rotherham in the 1470s to light a new upper floor in a hall. The early morning sun illuminating the pseudo-vaulting of the ceiling caught my eye and I asked my ever-present photographic model - my wife - if she'd pose in the window to add some human interest and an asymmetrical note to the old weathered stone and more recent railings.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 73mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Newark, a slighted castle

2012-01-19T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

In England the act of deliberately making a castle unusable for its original defensive purpose was called "slighting". It was an act carried out by a victorious army or a monarch who felt threatened by, or was disgruntled with, the powerful owner and occupier. Such "slighted" castles are very common, and this one at Newark in Nottinghamshire is a good example of the type.

The building stands on a cliff commanding the crossing point of the River Trent. The earliest parts were erected by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, around 1133. The very obviously Norman gatehouse, much of which remains, was his work. Subsequent centuries saw extension and rebuilding of the castle. Much of the curtain wall overlooking the river and two of the three turrets are likely to be the work of a later fourteenth century bishop, Henry de Burghersh. Interestingly, unlike most English castles of the period, Newark never had a keep.

The town of Newark was a Royalist stronghold during the English Civil War (1642-51) and the castle was subject to siege by Parliamentary forces on three occasions during the conflict. Only after the capture of King Charles 1 in 1646 did it surrender. The "slighting" began immediately. Buildings were taken down and stonework was removed from towers and the walls. The passage of time carried on the work of demolition until the town authorities and national heritage organisations brought it to a halt. The result is the romantic ruin that we see today. The interior now features a small park and a museum. Our recent visit to Newark coincided with cold, calm, clear weather and I took advantage of the still surface of the river to secure this photograph of the castle with its clear reflection.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 60mm
F No: f7.1Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Living with vapour trails

2012-01-18T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

One recent cold and frosty morning, as I went out into the garden to feed the birds, I chanced to look up and saw a curving vapour trail that was being made by an aircraft heading away from me. It was an odd route for a four-engined jet to be on, and as I studied the sky I noticed the remnants of a couple more such trails slowly de-materialising. Looking closer to the horizon I could see more curved trails whose positions suggested they were part of the same trails nearer to me: clearly one or more aircraft was flying in large circles over Lincolnshire and the nearby sea.

Some of the bigger RAF bases are in the county so unusual vapour trails are a common sight. However, it was immediately clear to me that there was only one four-engined military aircraft that would deliberately fly in circles, at great height. I took a pair of binoculars outside to get a better look and my suspicion was confirmed: a Boeing Sentry AEW1 (AWACS) with its large radome slowly revolving above it was flying in a circle that must have been twenty, thirty or perhaps more miles in diameter. It was clearly participating in some kind of exercise, monitoring and controlling other aircraft and perhaps shipping or land forces below. Either that or we were being invaded!

In one of my first blog posts (actually the eighth, in December 2005) I sounded off about vapour trails, calling them, as far as a photographer is concerned, aerial graffiti, and suggesting that "only rarely do they add something to the image." My view of them hasn't changed since then. I find them an unwanted intrusion much more often than they are an element that I want to include in a composition. But, I have made a few images where vapour trails are, I think, key to their success. This landscape and this semi-abstract of a fairground ride are a couple that come to mind.

However, vapour trails, I discovered recently, aren't always so obviously intrusive. In saying that I'm not referring to those that are so dishevelled that they look like clouds. A few days ago, after I'd taken a speculative shot of the moon through some nearby ash trees and a veil of thin cloud, I noticed near the bottom of the brighter part of the photograph, a wavy vapour trail. As I studied it I reflected that you aren't even free of the wretched things when you're photographing at night!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/10 sec
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -1.00 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blots on the landscape

2012-01-16T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Mankind is responsible for many blots on the landscape. Limestone and other quarries take some beating. They are often found in areas of scenic interest and beauty and invariably produce the ugliest of scars that are not usually healed even decades after they've shut down. Then there are the so-called retail parks. Anywhere less park-like it's hard to imagine. Yes, they usually have a sprinkling of lollipop trees and a few shrubberies that are mechanically savaged yearly, usually at the wrong time, but they are basically a collection of ugly steel and glass sheds surrounded by acres of tarmac. I once opined that, had Breughel and Bosch been living today, they would have set their visions of hell in somewhere like Manchester's Trafford Centre.

Then there are the oil refineries. Mostly located on estuaries to enable the convenient supply of the raw material, and often incorporating other industries and processes based on oil, they are usually particularly bleak places. The forest of towers and pylons, some belching steam or smoke, are visible for miles. They are even, or perhaps especially, a night-time blot on the landscape. Because they are twenty four hour operations, when darkness falls thousands of lights appear and a sulphurous glow that reflects off low clouds marks their location.

And, yet, and yet. Even the darkest, most dismal of these blots, when seen in the right light, by someone in the right mood, can offer a fearsome grandeur. And, in much the same way that Philip James de Loutherburg found a subject for his paintbrush in the mighty furnaces of Coalbrookdale at the start of the industrial revolution, the photographer too can find something today in these places that offers a spectacle worth capturing on film. On my recent visit to Hull, when I was casting around for a subject, it was the distant refinery and power station at Killingholme that offered a detail to place between the darkening sky and the cold River Humber.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 218mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.00 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The sun and The Deep

2012-01-15T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Each winter I try to take a few photographs that include the sun. I don't mean sunrise and sunset shots, though these are easier to acquire at that time of year - you don't have to be out and about early or late! No, I'm thinking more of when the sun is fully above the horizon though low in the sky: early afternoon is a good time.

What appeals to me about such images is the drama conferred by the big glowing white ball, the contrast that results from the deep shadows thrown by objects in the foreground, the flare that the lens often produces, and the sheer unpredictability of the outcome. On a recent day visit to the city of Hull I had little time for photography. However, I did manage to spend a short time around the point where the River Hull meets the River Humber. When I lived in the city I often cycled and photographed in this area so it's always a pleasure to return. On my visit I took a few shots that include the sun on the old High Street and then again from the new footbridge over the River Hull, upstream from the big, futuristic looking aquarium called "The Deep". Regular readers of this blog may remember images taken last year in this location (see this sequence). I was prompted to take today's photograph as much by the glistening mud revealed by low tide as anything else, but I was careful to use the sun as a visual counterweight to the building in my composition. The overall effect is a touch other-worldly but not, I think, unappealing.

For other winter images including the bright sun see this one with a gate and snow, this one also with snow, or perhaps this one with vapour trails.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Great guitar, useless PSU

2012-01-14T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

A couple of days ago I got a new guitar. It's Washburn's version of the Gibson ES-335, a hollow body electric guitar whose design dates back to 1958. Why didn't I get a Gibson? Well, first of all I'm a cheapskate and wouldn't pay the approximately £2000 asking price. Secondly, it's widely held that other manufacturers' "look-and-sound-alikes" give you 90% of the functionality of the original: what you mainly lose is the cachet of the Gibson name. And thirdly, I'm not a good enough guitarist to warrant the real thing!

However, for a short while on the day it arrived I wondered if I'd made the right choice. When I plugged it in and played it I was very impressed by the sounds that it produced and the ease of the action. The workmanship looked very good. The problem was, my study acquired an odd odour. When I asked my wife what she thought it was she suggested a "burning electrical smell". The current in an electric guitar is minimal but I guessed it was the smell that some new electrical items give off when first used. Either that or something inside the body was in the process of failing. Anyway, we had to go out for an hour or so. When we returned I switched on my computer and powered up the guitar and the smell immediately re-appeared. Then my computer screen went black and it shut down. A quick examination showed that the power supply unit (PSU) had failed and that it was the source of the smell I'd erroneously linked to the new guitar. It was a relatively new replacement too, only installed 5 months ago, so I packaged it up and sent it back to the supplier for replacement under warranty. I'm unhappy about the PSU, but the guitar is great!

Consequently I'm using my second machine for all computer related tasks, including blogging. It's an old PC that came to me because it was superfluous to my oldest son's needs. I've installed the basics for photo-processing, but not the full suite that I usually use, and the monitor is uncalibrated. So, for a short while I'll be posting shots that require only minimal post-processing until my main machine is up and running again, photographs such as today's showing my new guitar. It was taken with the macro lens and is presented pretty much as it came out of the camera.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 0.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Turning the plough

2012-01-11T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Before I moved from north west England to Lincolnshire I knew more about medieval ploughing than I did about ploughing today. I still do, but a few years in this most agricultural of counties has widened my understanding of modern methods. I was reflecting on this as, late on a January afternoon with shafts of sunlight piercing the cloud that was moving in from the west, we watched a tractor with its plough turning over the ground in a field on the edge of the village of Bicker.

A thousand years ago the single plough was pulled by oxen, five hundred years ago the horse was more commonly used, but during that long period little else changed in the way the land was prepared. A village commonly had three large, open fields each divided into selions of approximately half an acre (220 yards by 11 yards). These were parcelled together in groups (furlongs) that were often at right angles to each other with the irregular spaces at the edges of the fields (butts and gores) also ploughed. Over time each straight selion became banked higher in the centre and to have a characteristic curve at each end making it into an elongated "S" shape. This came about because the plough always turned the soil to the right and and because the ploughman turned the same way at the end of the selion to get ready to plough back down the strip. Where these medieval fields have been turned to pasture and escaped subsequent mechanical deep ploughing you can still see undulating lines, all with the characteristic curve at each end, especially when the sun is low and casting shadows across the land.

The modern plough that a tractor such as the one above pulls always has more than a single blade; here there are 6. The blades themselves are always made of steel where the earlier plough blades were wooden. In addition, the plough is turned over at the end of each run overcoming the problem of banking and "S" shaped curves. I took my photograph as the ploughman was undertaking this manoeuvre and about to reverse into his starting position. Noticing the camera he gave me a wave before he set off.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Roads, gates and winter views

2012-01-10T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Newcomers to the Lincolnshire Fens often comment on the word "drove" that frequently forms part of the name of a road. Thus, a road leading north out of a settlement may be called "North Drove". I've written elsewhere about the derivation of this word and how it tells us something of the Fens' past. In fact, names of all kinds are often of much longer standing than is generally appreciated and can tell the inquisitive researcher much about the people who lived in an area long ago.

Today's photograph shows, in the foreground, a road that goes by the name of Low Gate. It runs from Quadring Eaudike to the village of Gosberton. In the vicinity are other roads with the word "gate" as part of their name: Sarah Gate, Bow Gate, North Gate, Water Gate, etc. The word gate in this context doesn't usually have the meaning that we would expect today. Rather, it comes from the Old Norse word, "gata" meaning "a way, a path or a road", and was brought to the area by Scandinavian settlers who arrived in the ninth century. Its definition was later expanded to include "a right of passage". Some field names also include the word. When I lived in the Yorkshire Dales, an area that was settled by Norwegian Vikings from Ireland, I knew a street called Kirkgate. This is a combination of Old Norse"kirkja" (a church) and "gata" (a street). In other words the incoming Viking settlers' equivalent of what is now the most common road name in England - Church Street.

I took my photograph from this particular point where vehicular traffic had gouged out depressions to left and right of the road because it gave me some foreground interest. The fact that water had collected here and nowhere else by road sides probably reflects the accurate naming of this road: here the land is likely to be lower than the surrounding area. In the flat expanse of the Fens the early farmers would have been very attuned to the slight depressions and prominences ("holmes") in the landscape. The former would have standing water in winter whilst the latter would be dry and suitable not only for livestock grazing in the colder months but also for siting permanent dwellings.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/50 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Jewels and photographic effects

2012-01-09T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Circumstances have kept us fairly close to home in recent days. Yesterday, after struggling for half a day with an old laptop, trying to install Mint Linux on it - the machine was the problem not the software - I gave up and my thoughts turned to macro photography. I needed a pursuit that wasn't quite as frustrating as trying to make old hardware work with a new operating system.

I don't consider myself to be a macro photographer and yet every now and then I like to do a bit. It's the different view of the world that the macro lens gives that interests me. With that in mind I set about photographing a pine cone that I have on the bookshelves in my study. I took it upstairs into a bedroom where the light was good and set up some black and white vinyl sheets as a curved backdrop. This needed weighting down so I used my wife's jewellery box. I took my shots and decided that, on the whole, they were extremely average. So, I looked in the box to see if there was anything that I could use for a shot. I took out a few silver and black necklaces and arranged them in an "eye" shape and tried different brooches as the "pupil". Today's photograph with a floral, enamel brooch in the centre was the best of the bunch. As I processed the shot on my computer I thought I'd try a few "effects " on it. I don't see myself as an effects person any more than I do a macro photographer: you'll find very few examples in the blog other than a bit of split toning. But, when I tried these radial rays I quite liked what they did to the image and thought they matched the subject quite well. It's a different kind of photograph from my usual fare, an approach that you won't see from me very often.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 2.5 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

New uses for old warehouses

2012-01-07T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The two buildings in today's photograph can be found near the railway station in Sleaford, Lincolnshire. They are, from left to right, a furniture store and a block of flats. However, the former was the old Clover Warehouse while the latter was (and still is) known as Sharpes Warehouse.

Sharpes International Seeds are a company specialising in "the development and supply of cereals, peas, beans, oil seeds (particularly linseed), grasses and root and forage crops." It is a company that can can trace its history back to 1560. Presumably the large Victorian warehouse that now houses 31 flats was part of that business, as was the old Clover Warehouse. I imagine that the location next to the railway was to aid distribution.

Both buildings appear to be examples of sensitive conversion to new uses. The basic shape of each building has been maintained, with even the covered loading bays still evident. I bent down low with my wide zoom lens at 17mm for my photograph and used the edge of the pavement and the double yellow "no parking" stripes as leading lines to take the viewer's eye from the foreground to the buildings. Black and white seemed the best option for this fairly graphic composition.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Farmhouse and church

2012-01-06T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The most common type of building to find next to an English church is, not surprisingly, the vicarage. A place of residence for the parish priest usually came with the job in the eighteenth, nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries. In fact it often still does. Another building that frequently sits next to the church is a manor house or other property owned by a principal local landowner. The "living" of a church, that is to say the right to appoint the vicar, for many centuries often resided with such a person, and the twin powers of the church and mammon's local representative were often neighbours. These buildings can still be seen around churches and are present at this one at Aslackby. However, in a rural county such as Lincolnshire a third type of building may be seen alongside the vicarage and the manor house - a farmhouse.

I've photographed such a pairing before at Billingborough. At Aslackby the farmhouse is newer than that example, late eighteenth century, extended in the mid-nineteenth. The improvement of farming techniques and the consolidation of holdings into larger units in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made some farmers relatively wealthy and this is often reflected in new, rebuilt or extended farmhouses. Here the building is L-shaped with gable stacks and has a fashionable mansard roof, a type popular in this part of the county, particularly in nearby Folkingham.The main elevation mimics, on a smaller scale, the country houses of the wealthy landowners. It is strictly symmetrical, of orange brick, with stone quoins, keystones, platband and gable copings. The semi-circular headed lattice-work porch may be original or could be a later addition. That disfiguring drainpipe surely must have been placed there more recently. The metal Xs at the top of the gable wall are the ends of tie-rods designed to control wall bowing or some other potentially troublesome movement that became evident at some point after construction.

I took my photograph on the same day as the previous two blog post images, a day whose photographic potential was curtailed by the clouds and rain that can be seen moving in on the left of this picture. Here I liked how the impending gloom splits the shot into two very distinct parts, one dark and troubled looking, the other bright and quite cheery.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Aslackby church

2012-01-04T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

In a piece about Ropsley church that I posted in 2009 I reflected on the thoughts that go through my mind when I visit a church for the first time. The other day, before the rains descended in what seemed like a permanent way, I photographed the exterior of Aslackby* church. And, though it wasn't my first visit to this building - I've been several times - the first thought that entered my mind was the same as on my first sight of it: what is that arch outline on the tower?

My first thought is that the church tower was originally a crossing tower rather than the west tower that it is now; that the present nave was once the chancel and that the arch was the drip moulding marking the place where a transept had been. I've seen such things before. Or, was there an intention to build in that way, but a change of mind resulted in the current, more traditional layout, and the drip moulding was left on the tower face, a reminder of what was to be, but never materialised. Reading Pevsner on the subject I found that he too ponders along similar lines. Whatever the reason, it adds a little mystery to this small, fairly unexceptional church that dates mainly from the fourteenth century with a few bits from earlier and rather more from later.

I've photographed Aslackby church before, but the light and sky on this January afternoon were very good, so I composed a shot from across the road, near the ford that was filling with the afternoon's plentiful rain. I'd never noticed the old-style, black and white road sign before - perhaps it has been recently been painted - so I used it in my composition as a visual counterweight to the church tower.

* for the local pronunciation of the village name Aslackby, which departs significantly from what it looks like it should be, see this post

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Co-operating with the inevitable

2012-01-03T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

"If at first you don't succeed - give up!"
anonymous modified proverbial saying

Perseverance, they say, is one of the main qualities that produces success. Intelligence, education (not the same as intelligence), aptitude, money, connections and other desirable attributes are all important, but if you haven't got perseverance then there's a good chance you won't achieve your goals. Moreover, if you do have perseverance but are lacking one or more of those other qualities then you may well succeed anyway. I think that's something that many people learn in life. And just as many don't. They are the people who follow the counsel quoted above.

Perseverance can be summed up in a home-spun sort of way in the proverbial saying, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." That's sound advice, and following it can take people a long way. However, there comes a time when perseverance is pointless because you can clearly see that no good consequences will come from it. In these instances the modification of the saying proposed by W.C. Fields has a lot to recommend it: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it."

A variation on this kind of advice that I've always liked says that sometimes it's wise to "co-operate with the inevitable." In other words, don't persevere where success is clearly unattainable: if the alternative is in some way satisfactory, just go with it. It was this kind of thinking that produced today's photograph. I'd gone out on an afternoon that the weather forecasters promised would be "changeable". I expected squally showers alternating with periods of sun with dramatic clouds. Well, I got about thirty minutes of that. Then, as I sat in the car park in the centre of the village of Folkingham a squall turned into a spell of prolonged heavy rain. After about forty minutes I said to myself, "It's time, Tony, to co-operate with the inevitable." So I did, took this photograph of the rain through my windscreen, then drove home. And, yes, as I turned into the road leading to my house, the sun made an appearance.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 360
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Unusual winter blooms

2012-01-02T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The flowers in today's photograph are both common and unusual. How so? Well, they are Peruvian Lilies (Alstromeria) that are often found blooming in English gardens between June and November. When the firsts frosts arrive they usually fall over along with many other summer and autumn blooming plants that develop from rhizomes. However, these flowers were picked in mid-December, such has been the winter in my part of eastern England. What early frosts we have had have not been very hard, and consequently it is unusual to have these flowers from the garden on display in the house in early January.

We noticed another odd occurrence yesterday. Some of the white flowers known as spring snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) are coming into flower before our snowdrops (Galanthus); usually it happens the other way round. I'm told by the Meteorological Office that the weather so far this winter is "normal" and anyone thinking it is particularly mild has had their perceptions warped by the last two winters that were much colder than usual. Maybe, but that doesn't account for phenomena such as these that haven't, to my knowledge, happened in other "normal" winters.

I thought I'd record these late bloomers with the camera, and so I placed them in some filtered sunlight that was coming through a window and put a sheet of black vinyl behind them. The macro lens did the rest.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 100 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

The resurgence of black and white

2012-01-01T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

It's surely true that the avalanche of colour photography that has swept over us for several decades has made us more receptive to the charms of black and white. A new, French film - "The Artist" - is currently getting rave reviews. Not only is it silent, it's also shot in black and white. Would most people have given it the time of day thirty, forty, fifty years ago? Today it's not unusual to see advertising in newspapers, magazines and on TV, often for higher priced goods and services, that features black and white. Is colour's slip from almost total dominance a case of familiarity breeding contempt? Probably not. I think it's more that the distance between the era of predominantly black and white photography (and film) is now sufficiently great that we can once more appreciate its qualities.

What are those qualities? What makes photographing in black and white (or converting a colour image) a positive step rather than a regression into times past? It has been said that the act of the photographer translating colour into black and white in the mind's eye, of itself, makes the older medium one that is more creative. But there's much more to it than that. Structure, tone and texture are stronger in black and white: colour weakens these qualities. Black and white photography has been described as paraphrasing and formalising to a much greater extent than colour, and that undoubted truth is, for me, at the heart of what makes it attractive. Then there's the fact that black and white often dispenses with the decorative allurement and prettiness that colour frequently confers.

Today's photograph illustrates that last point. The rose that I photographed was pink. In its original form the image is mainly about that deep, showy colour. There's nothing wrong with that; such photographs have their place. But, when converted to black and white, the in-your-face nature of the shot changes dramatically. It becomes more subtle, the accent shifts to the understated shades of grey, to the structure of the bloom. The photograph is now much more of a suggestion than a statement. That kind of transformation is only one of the possible directions in which an image travels when converted to black and white. Sometimes it becomes much more dramatic, other shots acquire a graphic quality, etc. And yes, I think these are qualities that a wider audience is once more coming to appreciate.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1.3 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Brick Victorian Gothic

2011-12-30T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The building in today's photograph, the former Christian Association & Literary Institute at Spalding, Lincolnshire, was built in 1874, the end of the Mid-Victorian period in English architecture, when the "battle of the styles" between Classical and Gothic had been won by the Gothicists, and when common brick had been widely accepted as a suitable material in which to build even the grandest, most noble of structures. This particular building isn't grand, nor is it noble, but it does exhibit a feature that was rampant at the time, and which in later years would cause architectural historians to look down their noses at much that the Victorians built in England, namely exuberance!

That denigratory attitude continues in some quarters today. For example, this former institute has not been awarded Listed Building status despite the fact that it remains very much as it was built, is a fine regional and local example of a building style that was once common, and is, to my mind, one of the most interesting Victorian exteriors in the town. If it was the work of a major architect - a Scott, Butterfield, Pearson or Burges - it would have a better overall form, more refined details, and would usually feature cut stone or sculpture that was specifically commissioned for the building. As far as I can see this uses ready-made bricks and stonework that many architectural and building suppliers of the period would furnish. Possibly the datestone over the door was cut to order, but even that was probably part of the ready made piece that surrounds it with the central panel awaiting the final chisel. It seems to me that this building is too "common" - in both senses of that word - to warrant the honour and recognition of Listing at even Grade II. Pity.

My photograph and the Google Street View image show some of the characteristic and not so common features of this style of brick building. The dressed stone is reserved for the doorways, windows, platbands and gable shoulders. Blue-black brick is used to outline openings and for decorative strips. Projecting, stepped brickwork features on the gable and, curiously, on the side elevation. At the top of the tower and above the central first floor window it suggests machicolations. This building isn't especially well proportioned, it doesn't exhibit qualities that can't be seen elsewhere, it has no special historical significance of which I'm aware, nor is it an integral part of a larger scheme in this area of the town. But it is of greater than usual interest in this location, possesses an exterior that remains much as it was when first erected, and it exemplifies that under-rated quality of Victorian exuberance. For those reasons I think it warrants greater recognition.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spalding station silhouettes

2011-12-29T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Silhouettes are a reasonably regular feature of my photographic output. This year I've posted silhouettes of pollarded poplars, electricity pylons, rooks and lights, the disembarking Lynn ferry, and the Observatory Cafe at "The Deep" aquarium, Hull. Quite a few other images, whilst not as obviously featuring silhouettes as strongly the examples cited, nevertheless leaned heavily on dark shapes against a lighter background: shots such as this fishing boat and these shoppers for shoes.

In fact, when I look back at my "Best of..." silhouettes figure quite prominently in most of the photographic categories. For anyone who hasn't dipped into my back catalogue here are a few examples: St Anne's pier, roller coaster repair, street lights, ducks and water, Mount Pavilion, Fleetwood, dead tree, promenade seat, and one of my personal favourites, the bait digger's bike.

I find silhouettes appealing for a number of reasons. They are strikingly bold, dramatic takes on reality, a way of instantly turning the mundane into something visually arresting. Their positive/negative qualities, whereby the outline of the subject creates both the flat dark shape and the light shape that intersect like jigsaw pieces, endows images with a semi-abstract quality that I like. Then there's the counter-intuitive fact that a silhouette of an object often leads your eye to linger longer and often results in you taking in more detail than you would from a well lit photograph of the same thing. Don't believe that? Look at the photograph of the bait digger's bike again and consider whether you'd have explored it as much if the sun had been behind the camera.

Today's photograph was taken on a shopping expedition to Spalding, Lincolnshire. It was taken from a supermarket car park and shows the prominent chimneys of the railway station, a subject I've featured before. Interestingly, as I was writing this piece I remembered that today's photograph is not the first one I've taken featuring silhouetted chimneys, the end of the day and birds flying to roost. This one was taken in Fleetwood, Lancashire, in 2006.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Christmas and tradition

2011-12-24T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

When I was young Christmas card pictures could, by and large, be grouped into three categories: the robin, religious themes and "traditional" scenes. The robin (Erithacus rubecula) was (and still is) popular because it's a bird that is seen more frequently in winter: it visits gardens more often at that time of year because food is scarcer in its usual haunts. Consequently, in many English minds it is thought of as a bird of winter and Christmas, though it is in fact a resident species. The religious themes were drawn mainly from the biblical story of the nativity. Since Christmas is at heart a religious festival it isn't surprising that such cards were, and remain, popular. Then there were the "traditional" scene cards. These showed a snowy Victorian setting, often at early evening. It would be populated with people in frock coats, top hats, bonnets, long dresses, mufflers and the like doing "Christmasy" things - carol singing, wassailing, going to or from a church that had glowing stained glass windows, welcoming Christmas visitors from a stagecoach, carrying lanterns as they visited neighbours etc. Such cards are still available, though not as popular as they once were.

It seemed odd to me at the time that a Victorian Christmas should be the one that we fondly gazed back upon. However, the rise of the modern Christmas owes much to that era. Christmas trees, cards, wrapping paper, multiple presents, and more were invented or popularised in the nineteenth century. Some details, such as mistletoe and the yule log were ancient customs, pre-Christian, but they too were brought centre stage at that time. It's often said that the great English novelist, Charles Dickens, invented Christmas as we know it. I think that is to overstate his influence. Through novels such as "A Christmas Carol" he tapped into a current that was already flowing quite strongly, and, though he certainly made a strong impact on how we see the festival (and is probably partly responsible for the "traditional" scene cards), his role was as a contributor, not an inventor .

Looking at my photograph of the centre of the small Lincolnshire village of Bicker set this train of thought in motion. The orange glow of the street lights, the light dusting of snow, the fast-fading light in the sky and the smoke from a chimney all brought to mind traditional scene cards. But it does need those cars to be replaced by a carriage and four!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/15
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Church memorials and spelling

2011-12-23T17:00:00.000Z

click photos to enlarge

"Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words", definition from "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755) by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), English writer, poet, editor and lexicographer

English church memorials of the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries are very distinctive. They typically feature a debased classical style with the elements handled rather clumsily, large and small scale figure sculpture, heraldic devices, a descriptive text and striking paintwork.

Today's photograph shows all of these things. It can be found in the church of St Nicholas in King's Lynn, Norfolk and is one of several excellent examples of the type adorning its walls. The memorial commemorates Thomas Snelling who died in 1623. He is shown devoutly kneeling before a bible opposite his wife. Below are smaller representations of his children - a very common feature of such memorials. Corinthian columns frame the main figures, a broken segmental pediment tops the piece and at the bottom is a winged cherub's head and classical scrolls. An interesting feature is the crowned, winged skull in the top panel, presumably a reminder of the inevitable triumph of death. However, on this particular memorial it was the dedicatory panel that interested me. At the time I took the shot I'd recently been reading about the genesis of Samuel Johnson's "A Dictionary of the English Language" (1755), and the wayward spelling of the text on this piece clearly signals the need that his work was designed, in part, to address.

The second photograph is a detail from the first that shows the panel enlarged. It makes an interesting read, not only for the way it eulogises and describes the deceased (it is much less effusive than usual), also for the verse that constitutes the bottom half, but especially for that whimsical spelling and the fact that the punctuation comprises a single colon (used to abbreviate Matthew to Matt:) and one full stop. For anyone unused to reading such things it may help to know that J and Y being substituted with I, V instead of U, abbreviations such as YE (THE), W with smaller TH meaning WITH, W with smaller CH meaning WHICH, and the shortened form of ANNO DOMINI were common on such memorials and elsewhere, serving to reduce the amount of text and often to make the line of writing fit in the allotted space.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

King's Lynn street view

2011-12-21T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Strolling through King's Lynn in Norfolk a short while ago I came upon the scene above after walking almost the length of Queen Street. The low, yellow tinged winter sun was creating deep shadows and strongly highlighted areas and the limestone of the twin towers of the medieval church of St Margaret positively glowed. So I composed my photograph with the Romanesque and Gothic church framed by the mainly newer, C17, C18 and C19 brick buildings of the street.

When you take a photograph you are, in general terms, aware of what it contains. But, on the whole, the photographer's mind is fixed on the main things he or she wants to include and those objects that need to be omitted: but the smaller details are sometimes overlooked. I knew I'd have to crop out a white door on the left that would detract from the main subject. And I had to accept the distracting presence of the clutter of cars parked in Saturday Market Place next to the church. What I hadn't noticed, however, was the triangular traffic warning signs in the centre of the shot. They are obviously designed to be seen and in the shaft of sunlight coming from College Lane, with the deep shadow behind them, they shouted their presence. What's a photographer to do? I'm not one for removing objects so I toned them down until they could be seen for what they are but are less intrusive.

I photograph a lot of architecture and I find street signs, lamp posts, telegraph poles and wires, roof and wall mounted aerials and dishes, and parked cars, the bane of my life. They are so common that it's virtually impossible to exclude them from shots. Often they are not so noticeable and I can cope with them, but sometimes they cause me to lower my camera and walk on. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive about these things. But, sometimes I wonder at the planners and conservation officers who allow such things as the grey, utilitarian street light seen above the cars in this photograph: if they can specify "sympathetic" bollards for conservation areas such as this, why not more sensitively designed street lights?

Anyone with an interest in English architecture will have noted the stone Gothic (C15) doorway in the brick building on the right. This is Thoresby College, a building built c.1500 for thirteen chantry priests attached to the Trinity Guild. The elevation to Queen Street has three such doors, one with its original wooden door still in use. The rebuilding of the two main storeys dates from the late C18, but, interestingly, the "Dutch" style dormers are earlier.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ponds, marl pits and pingos

2011-12-19T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

When I moved from East Yorkshire to the Fylde Coast in Lancashire I was struck by the number of small ponds in the fields around where I lived. The geology of the area, the location of the ponds relative to field boundaries, the sheer amount, and the evidence of "spoil" at the edges of some, led me to the conclusion that they were marl pits, holes deliberately dug to find lime-rich clay to spread over a light, impoverished soil to improve its fertility and water-holding capacity. Such pits, which frequently become ponds, are common in many lowland areas of Britain. Cheshire abounds with them, though it also has large ponds the size of small lakes (meres) caused by gravel extraction or the subsidence of salt workings.

Britain's man-made ponds were also dug as watering places for cattle and sheep and perhaps some of those on the Fylde Coast were made for that reason - or served that purpose after the marl had been extracted. The period from 1750 was when many of these kinds of ponds were created. But not all field ponds are man-made. Some occur naturally where soil type and water flow lead to the build up of water. This kind of pond is often dry in high summer, but has varying levels of water at other times of year. Several of the Cheshire meres are thought to have been created thousands of years ago when glacial ice that was embedded in moraines melted. The eastern edge of the Fens and the Brecklands valleys have ponds that have been identified as pingos. These were formed during the last glaciation when ice below the surface caused mounds which collapsed when temperatures rose, creating ponds.

What of today's pond in the Fens photographed on a foggy day? It's my guess that it's man-made. In this area that was once littered with ponds and meres of varying sizes caused by the poor drainage of low-lying land there are, today, hardly any left. Agricultural improvement banished them, and with their disappearance went the wildlife that frequented them. This happened not only in the Fens but right across the country. In fact, three-quarters of our field ponds have been filled in or drained since the second world war. So, examples such as the one above are not only a worthy photographic subject, but are in need of preservation as precious ecological and scenic resources.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.2mm (48mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Early thoughts of Christmas

2011-12-17T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The 17th December is unusually early for me to be thinking about Christmas. In fact, it's unusual for me to be thinking about Christmas at all. My modus operandi in recent years has been to do what is necessary - cards, presents, food etc - quite near to the big day, suffer the event, then forget Christmas and look forward to the new year. But it wasn't always so.

As a child I liked Christmas - most children do. As a father with young children I loved Christmas because of what it meant to them. But, since my children left the nest and embarked upon the long journey that is adulthood, Christmas hasn't been quite the same. Until this year. What is different about 2011 you may ask? The answer is the arrival of a grandchild. So, I've been buying presents with more than usual interest, and I've even bought some strings of flashing LEDs to brighten up the hall and living room. Nothing excessively festive, you'll notice, but I am definitely showing much more willing than formerly.

Mind you, the early onset of Christmas in the shops nearly plunged me into pre-Christmas depression. Today's photograph was taken on 12th November. I don't know when these giant baubles were erected in Covent Garden, or when the large tree in the piazza was erected and decorated, but by my reckoning they will be on display for two months of the year - far too long. And yet on my visit any despondency that might have settled upon me was banished by the sight of my grand-daughter gazing in fascination at the colours, lights, and moving mirror-ball reflections. So, as a record and memory of the event I took a few photographs of which this is one of the better examples.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 104mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/00
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cinema and birds

2011-12-15T17:00:00.003Z

click photo to enlarge

The Majestic cinema in King's Lynn opened on 23rd May, 1928. This event is recorded in the building in a stained glass window. Anyone interested in the architectural history of Britain could easily guess that the decade in which it was built was the 1920s because the style and details simply shout it. The asymmetrically placed tower with a copper-covered dome, the brick with plentiful contrasting stone or concrete, the pared down Corinthian style of the pilasters at first floor level, and the Ionic of the ground floor arcades are familiar from countless town halls, public libraries and other civic buildings that feature a freely treated Jacobean-cum-Baroque style. Here the architects were the King's Lynn team of John Laurie Carnell and William Dymoke White.

Many cinemas of this era have closed and found other uses as bingo halls, carpet showrooms and such. It's good that the Majestic continues as a cinema. I've tried to photograph this building before without much success - it's in a group of fairly narrow streets. Today's prospects didn't look too good either with the sun low down behind the building. However, as I tried a few shots some scavenging gulls came swooping down to clean up someone's spilled take-away food and so I seized my moment and managed to place a couple of them in the empty space at top right.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Stained glass knights

2011-12-13T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

There is not as much medieval stained glass in England as might be expected. Many continental European countries that saw land warfare in WW1 and WW2 suffered great losses. Similarly, those that were the subject of heavy and systematic aerial bombing lost much in the major cities. England experienced no ground warfare, but was heavily bombed. However, though these major wars did destroy some of our remaining old stained glass they were not the main cause of its disappearance. That had happened much earlier in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Protestant Reformation produced national protestant churches that either replaced or complemented the existing Roman Catholic religion. Its clergy and congregations often saw stained glass as idolatrous. It did not fit with the new churches' ideas of what should be found in a building dedicated to worship. Consequently much was broken and disposed of, and much was sold. In England the Dissolution of the Monasteries following Henry VIII's assumption of the role of head of the church of England saw the deliberate destruction of monastic abbeys, priories, convents, friaries etc, with their wealth being seized by the crown and their property sold. In the following years zealots and iconoclasts before and during the English Civil War smashed yet more ancient glass in cathedrals and parish churches. But, this wanton destruction notwithstanding, today it is not unusual to come across re-assembled fragments, some whole windows and a few quite complete schemes.

Today's photograph shows part of a window, one of seven of the fourteenth century, in the chancel clerestory at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire. The heraldry of the knights' surcoats suggests a date of around 1340. The families represented are, from left to right, Fitzroy, de Clare, le Despenser and Fitzhamon. It is thought that the donor was Eleanor de Clare (d.1337) and the scheme was supervised by her son, Hugh le Despenser. Most of this glass is original. Some re-assembled fragments can be seen in the shields of the four shapes across the bottom of the image. The windows were restored to their present beauty by Kempe & Co. in 1923-4.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 161mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographing the commonplace

2011-12-12T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

One of the achievements of photography is to draw our attention to the commonplace - to the everyday, the banal, the humdrum, the mundane, call it what you will - that is part of everyone's experience. Some photographers devote their time to nothing else and produce work that the man in the street often characterises as dull, boring, prosaic, vapid - again, choose your own word. However, framing a selection of our everyday surroundings is a worthwhile undertaking because it allows us to see it afresh, "elevated" through the attention given to it by the act of photography. It's a process that helps us to better appreciate what we've previously taken for granted and can enlarge our understanding and appreciation of our surroundings. Of course one man's commonplace is another man's exotic: what an inhabitant of, say, the Gulf states sees as banal will be viewed as alien, almost otherworldly, by a North European, and vice versa.

I was reflecting on this as I took today's photograph. It shows a view of the edge of a smallholding seen from a narrow Fenland drove road. A couple of small oak trees, the last of their leaves still clinging on, frames part of the smallholder's plot that is ploughed and carries a small crop of brassicas. A couple of home-made bird scarers fashioned out of orange plastic sacks flutter over the vegetables. Beyond is a large field of brussel sprouts and on the horizon a village that is marked by a few houses, a low church tower and a cluster of trees. It's a scene of not a great deal enlivened by its contre jour character. But, I think it is as deserving of a photograph as anything else at which I point my camera.

Today's theme is one I've touched on before, as in the accompanying text to this photograph of a Lancashire seawall and this wet Fenland track.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Games, money, myopia and heritage

2011-12-10T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Our government of political pygmies makes much of the need for cuts in public expenditure and the fact that, as far as the current financial crisis goes, "we're all in it together". However, virtually every day they do something that undermines these claims; that demonstrates it's the poor, women, the old, public sector workers, the marginalised and the cultural community who will bear the brunt of the spending cuts.

Last week the government shot themselves in their collective feet once again. Fearing that the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games might be a touch underwhelming compared with the efforts of previous Games they immediately sanctioned a further £41m taking the budget for this single short spectacle to over £80m. Then, turning their attention to security, decided to almost double that budget too - from £282m to £553m. If, like me, you see the Olympic Games as an optional, low importance expenditure, you can only gaze open-mouthed at the facile way in which sums of this magnitude are found and disbursed. Then wonder turns to anger when you consider what it might have been spent on.

I can think of countless more worthy recipients of £300+m but I'll mention just one. The body that channels public funding into helping to maintain our architectural heritage - including buildings such as the one shown in today's photograph - is called English Heritage. In October 2010 it had its grant cut by 32%. A reduction of that order is not so much a cut as an amputation. Surely, even the most myopic politician is capable of seeing that the few tens of millions it would take to restore the funding would generate revenue year on year from increased tourism. In fact, our politicians don't seem to understand the main reasons why visitors come to Britain and seem to think that the Olympic Games and their increased spending will be repaid by more tourists. Fat chance say I.

Today's image shows the porch on the west range at Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk. This religious site was was closed in 1537 and fell into disrepair and ruin. However it is still possible to see something of what it was from the extant walls, buildings and foundations. Much of the site dates from the late C11 and C12, with additions from each subsequent century until its demise. The porch is a relatively late building with a fine mixture of local styles represented on its facade.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Peterscourt, Peterborough

2011-12-08T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

As I've said elsewhere in this blog much of my photography is incidental. By that I mean the subjects that I photograph are the ones that present themselves to me as I go about my immediate locality and the wider world. So, when I set off on a pleasurable walk somewhere I take my camera and usually return home with some shots. If I go to explore a village, town or city my camera is pointed at anything that looks to be a suitable subject. It is unusual for me not to carry a camera when I'm out and about, and consequently the majority of the images in this blog were taken almost as a by-product of another activity.

However, every now and then I set my mind to photographing a specific subject. Or I shoot a subject and make a mental note to do so again in better or different light, weather or season. Today's photograph is an example of the latter. I've photographed Peterscourt before but only ever produced one shot (in September of this year) that I thought worthy of posting. It's a large brick building in Peterborough dating from 1856-64, the work of the eminent Victorian architect, Sir George Gilbert Scott. Peterscourt isn't a spectacular building, nor is it sufficiently feted to appear in many books about architectural history. Rather, it's one of those quietly competent,visually interesting, well-made buildings that can be found in most cities and which in their own undemonstrative way, grace our streets and make our passage through them a pleasanter experience.

I've struggled in the past to get a shot that shows the whole of the building. Parked vehicles, roadworks, the position of the sun and much else has conspired to get in the way. But, on a recent visit to Peterborough to do some Christmas shopping I took this shot in more favourable circumstances. It shows the asymmetrical nature of Peterscourt, the prominence given to the chimneys and dormers, the unassuming and functionally positioned main entrance and the dark brick detailing. Anyone interested in English architectural history will have noted the awkwardness of the white painted Georgian doorway within the Gothic, pointed arch of the entrance. Scott did not design the building this way. The doorcase was brought to the city from the London Guildhall when it was damaged during the second world war. Its prominent placement here detracts from Scott's overall conception but at least conserves an interesting piece of history.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Oysters and porter

2011-12-06T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

In recent years I've visited Borough Market in Southwark fairly regularly, often to grab something to eat or to have a drink. I've developed a particular liking for the pork, stuffing and apple sauce sandwiches from a stall that's been a regular fixture since I first went there. As a place to watch people, browse for food, listen to street musicians and generally soak up the character of London few places can beat this market and the surrounding streets.

However, one thing I have noticed, and found curious, is the way in which up-market eateries and high-price fast food joints in this part of London often affect a beat-up, artisan look. Places where a coffee costs £3 think that price will be more easily prised from the punter if the tables have an artfully battered look, the seating consists of communal benches and the decor harks back to what a costermonger of c.1910 might have experienced. Or so it seems to this provincial.

Take the oyster and porter house shown in today's photograph. There may have been a time when such an establishment used barrels instead of tables - but I doubt it. Yet today many people see this as desirable attribute, "authentic" in some way or other, and a reason for paying high prices. I think it most strange, but then I suppose I'm not the target market, either for the oysters or the barrels.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

An orrery

2011-12-05T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

I've said elsewhere that I welcome the increasing number of sculptures and monuments that the past twenty years or so has brought to the public spaces of Britain. Even when they are of no more than routine quality they often add a focus and some interest to a location. Good examples do more than that, of course, contributing high quality art and lifting not only the spirits of those who see them but also lifting the place and its surroundings. But what about the less than admirable examples? Few of these actually make a completely negative contribution but some leave you wondering what they do offer - or indeed, quite what they are.

I came across an example of the latter in the Market Place at Grantham in Lincolnshire recently. On first inspection the piece has something of Soviet era "heroic" sculpture about it, though it would need to be several times its actual size to be from those days. After further study it's clear that the big reflective ball rests on a polar axial mount and therefore probably represents the earth, and consequently the adjacent, smaller sphere must be the moon. Unless of course it's the sun and the earth. The visitor is left to suppose that it is here at all because the King's School, Grantham, is where Isaac Newton received several years of his early education, and the physical laws that he first stated are in some way referred to through the sculpture. If the sculpture had a descriptive panel all might be clear to the inquisitive viewer, but such a simple expedient seems to have been overlooked. A quick search online found the sculptor's site and his statement that it is "based on Sir Isaac Newton's First Law of Motion...celebrates his work", and takes "the form of an orrery". I also came across comments by local people, very critical of the piece which was, apparently, the most voted for of three offerings.

The fact is, this unexceptional piece is lost in the expanse of the market place, and when one finds it some of its limitations become more evident. Foremost, from a photographer's perspective, is the fact that the shiny ball that has the potential to nicely reflect the surroundings is marked by rain and anything else that falls from the sky and pigeons. It needs to be cleaned regularly, but doesn't seem to be. Consequently in my photograph it has had to be digitally cleaned to the best of my ability.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 82mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Copper coloured leaves

2011-12-04T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Quite a few plants have so-called "copper" leaf variants. One of the most noticeable in the UK is the copper beech tree.Usually seen as a single specimen, sometimes in the form of a hedge, its shiny brown leaves catch the eye when it's planted next to ranks of green leaved trees and shrubs, and it can bring welcome contrast and interest to a scene. But not always.

Sometimes you see a situation where people have been bitten by the copper leaf bug, and every third tree has them. Then the effect is gloomy and grim: darkness replaces the lightness of sun-dappled and translucent green leaves. The worst example I know of being seduced by copper-leaved trees can be seen on the perimeter of a large rural garden some miles from me. The owner has alternated dark conifers with copper-leaved trees. In spring and summer when other trees look at their best this row looks very depressing.

The other common copper-leaved tree is the maple. These can look great in spring, summer and autumn because of the way the leaves change and produce interesting hues. However, my feelings about them are coloured by the fact that I lived in a house where the neighbours' garden had one close by the boundary fence between us and them. Only when all the other trees had shed their leaves and they'd been collected would this maple drop its own: and then only if the wind was blowing towards my garden!

Plenty of smaller plants have copper variants. I particularly like the dark brown heuchera. I have some of these in my garden, as I do an example of that other favourite, the copper/red-leaved berberis (Berberis thunbergii atropurpurea). This plant looks great when its yellow flowers are alongside the leaves and also when the red berries are showing. But, it's late autumn when the leaves change colour that it looks at its most radiant. Then the red/brown disappears to be replaced by yellows, pinks, purples and almost-blues. When seen against a background of blue-green leaved plants these colours look magnificent.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm (macro)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Rotten apples and Gothic novels

2011-12-02T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Horror is one of the genres of film that I pass by. I can't take it seriously nor can I accept it as a tongue in cheek exercise. The plotting is often puerile, the acting awful and the photography feckless. Even where this isn't the case I'm invariably unwilling to suspend my disbelief. I feel the same about the Gothic novel too. Many years ago I read Horace Walpole's, "The Castle of Otranto" (1764), the novel that is credited with initiating this branch of fiction, and went on to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818), a few Edgar Allan Poe stories and sundry other examples of the type. My experiences didn't encourage me to look further, something you may find surprising in someone who spends so much time photographing Gothic architecture.

It's not the core elements of the Gothic novel - terror, death, gloom, decay, darkness etc - that I take issue with so much as the fact they are the centre and totality of the experience offered: there is no light against which to contrast the deep shade (to use a vaguely photographic metaphor). In fact, decay is something that I do like. That's perhaps not surprising since it is claimed to be a feature of the English psyche that recurs in literature, painting and architecture down the ages.

I've posted quite a few images of decay on the blog, for example these hydrangeas and water lilies, and I've even got a few involving death, such as these moles and a swan. Last November I photographed some windfall apples as they started to discolour. Today's photograph is another attempt at this subject, a little later in the year and with, perhaps, a little less focus on decay and a touch more on semi-abstract pattern making. I particularly liked the effect of the interloper willow leaf that had settled like an acute accent over the very decomposed apple on the right.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm (macro)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

The Angel and Royal Hotel

2011-12-01T17:00:00.000Z

click photos to enlarge

Several establishments claim to be England's oldest inn. The Old Ferryboat at St Ives, Cambridgeshire, proposes a date of 560AD and Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans says its origins go back to 795AD? Many would think the most ancient was Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham, a building that includes construction of around 1189 and a cavern excavated in a cliff face. Today's photographs show The Angel and Royal Hotel at Grantham in Lincolnshire. The earliest date it claims is 1203 though cellars and foundations are reputed to stretch back to the 800s. So though decidedly venerable it probably can't be called the very oldest inn. However, what is indisputable is that there can be few with so much history attached to them as this Lincolnshire hostelry.

The building started life as a property of the Knights Templars during which time, in 1213, King John thought it would make a good stopping off point for his court during its tour of the country. Then the building came into the ownership of the Knights Hospitallers who, like the Templars, were known for offering hospitality to travellers. In the fourteenth century Edward III and his queen visited. The gilded angel holding a crown is said to be a tribute to his patronage. In 1483 Richard III stayed at the hotel and in the Chambre de Roi (now the King's Room Restaurant) set in motion the order for the execution of the Duke of Buckingham. Charles I stayed there in 1633 and in 1643 Oliver Cromwell was a visitor following his success in battle near Grantham. In the eighteenth century The Angel (as it was then known) became a notable coaching inn offering accommodation for travellers, including George IV, on the Great North Way. The name of the inn was changed to the The Angel and Royal after the visit in 1866 of the Prince of Wales. He later became Edward VII.

The main elevation of the building we see today is stone-faced, two storeyed, with bays, buttresses, a parapet, rather fine grotesques and gargoyles, and dates from the late 1400s. The central carriage arch is now glazed with doors. Above is an oriel window supported by the gilded demi-angel holding a crown. There is an eighteenth century extension to the left (out of shot), and internal rooms show details of, principally, the fifteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

I took today's photographs after, on a cold and clear day, we'd eaten lunch in the King's Room below sagging beams next to a stone fireplace, warmed by a roaring fire.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Southwark Cathedral chandelier

2011-11-29T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Lanterns and chandeliers began to appear in churches from around 1600 to supplement the candles and small oil lamps that had been used for centuries. The first, quite plain, English chandeliers were soon supplemented by more ornate models imported from Flanders. Drooping arms fixed to rings featured in seventeenth century examples and highly decorated finials were favoured at the top. By the eighteenth century they had become very ornate with scrolls, brass balls and often a flame as a finial, though doves were popular too: opened winged and feathered was the London style, closed winged and smooth if originating in Bristol.

The example shown in today's photograph is suspended under the crossing of Southwark Cathedral in London. It is inscribed, "The gift of Dorothye relict of Jno. Appleby Esqe to ye Parish Church of St Saviour Southwarke 1680" (the parish church of St Saviour was raised to cathedral status in 1905 though before the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 it was a priory - hence its large size). The design of this particular chandelier is quite forward looking and from a distance could be mistaken for one of the Georgian examples that are frequently to be seen in English parish churches.

The silhouette of the chandelier presented a fine shape to photograph in front of the illuminated Gothic vaulting of the nave. Anyone who has followed this blog's photography and discussion of vaulting might be forgiven for thinking it to be a fine example of Early English architecture, along with the lancet windows and the nave arcades, triforium and clerestory. However, they are the work of Arthur Blomfield and date from 1890-1897. Though quite a bit of Southwark Cathedral dates from medieval times successive fires have meant much rebuilding down the centuries and a visitor can glean quite a bit of enjoyment from working out what is original and what is later but in the Gothic style.

For a couple more of my photographs of chandeliers see here and here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Gotobed East

2011-11-27T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

First names, often called Christian names, originated in a number of ways. Many are simply descriptive. For example, Charles comes from the Germanic for "man", Thomas is the Greek form of the Aramaic word meaning "twin", and Adam derives from the Hebrew for "man" which in turn comes from the word for "ruddy coloured" and links to "earth" (from which, according to the Bible Adam, the first man, came). Names such as Decimus, Septimus and Octavia usually describe the owners position in the family (tenth, seventh or eighth born). Other first names are linked to the circumstances of birth. Boys born over the period of Christmas are often called Noel, and girls are sometimes called Felicity or Prudence in the parents' hope that those qualities will attach to them throughout life. Then there are the invented names such as Pamela (from Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel of that title) or Wendy, a name that makes its first appearance in J.M. Barrie's 1904 play, "Peter Pan". Some first names are created by pressing surnames into service for that purpose, for example Kingsley, Remington or Wilson. I suspect this may be the case with the very unusual first name featured on the memorial in today's photograph.

A Google search for Gotobed used as a first name turns up only a few references to this particular memorial and the person remembered in it. It looks like Gotobed East may have been unique in the possession of this first name. However, search for the same name as a surname and many sources can be found. Gotobed East's memorial can be found fixed to a wall at Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire. This location would only have been open to a wealthy and well-connected individual, and his memorial shows him to have been that as a gentleman and an officer of the Bedford Level drainage body. On his death he "left to the churchwardens of HolyTrinity parish 5 cottages in Newnham, to be occupiedby 5 aged widows of the said parish", so he was clearly a benevolent person too.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/13
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation:N/A

Underneath the arches

2011-11-26T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

"Underneath the arches I dream my dreams away,
Underneath the arches, on cobblestones I lay"
from the song (1931) by Reg Connelly(?) and Bud Flanagan

Everything we experience in the first twenty or so years of our existence is imprinted on us more strongly than most of our experiences in later life. People can usually remember a clear sequence of events and years relating to childhood and youth. But, unless momentous things happened, they struggle to differentiate the years of, say, their forties or fifties. These are often the times where a repetitive pattern is established centred on work and leisure with fewer variations or "first" events of the kind that dominate our formative years. We tend to remember places we visited, people we met, books we read, songs we heard and much else from our youth far better than the equivalents of later years because so many are things that happened for the first time in our lives.

When I was a child my father would often sing songs, either to amuse himself or for the benefit of his children. They weren't usually contemporary songs but were those of his own childhood and youth. I didn't know it at the time but a couple of his favourites were songs made popular by the British singing and comedy act, Bud Flanagan (1896-1968) and Chesney Allen (1893-1982). The duo were at the peak of their fame just before and during the second world war. Songs such as "Run, Rabbit Run" and "We'll Smile Again" were hugely popular. The two I remember my father singing were "Underneath the Arches" and "The Umbrella Man". Though I remember the words of the second song better it's the first that always comes to mind when I walk through railway arches as I often do on my walks along the South Bank of the River Thames in London.

Today's photograph shows the pedestrian tunnel under the south end of Southwark Bridge. It is a popular spot for buskers, one of whom can be seen packing up at the end of his day, and it is one of a sequence of such arches and tunnels in this area. The brick arch is much as it was when first built. However, the ground has been resurfaced and repaired many times, and the walls now carry engraved slate murals of the medieval frost fairs that were held on the frozen River Thames. The very contrasty nature of the subject made me think that black and white would be a good treatment for the subject though it does make the tunnel look a great deal gloomier and more sinister than it is.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ely Cathedral

2011-11-24T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The exterior of Ely Cathedral looks its best, in my opinion, from a distance of several miles as it rises above the small city on a low eminence in the flat Fenland landscape. To someone who is familiar with English cathedrals the exterior of Ely is a decided oddity, and the closer you get to it the odder it looks. A prominent west tower is common in a parish church but rare in a great church such as a cathedral, minster or abbey where the crossing tower usually dominates. The emphasis on embattled turrets rather than pinnacles is even rarer, suggesting a secular castle rather than a religious building. Ely didn't always look like it does today however. It too, like cathedrals across the land, once had a central crossing tower. But, in February 1322, the great Norman structure collapsed, probably due to the inadequacy of its foundations. In its place an octagonal lantern was erected, supported on stone, but constructed of oak, the whole structure making a bristling tower lower than the west tower and very different from the soaring culminations found elsewhere.

You may gather from this that I find the exterior of Ely lacking compared with say,York, Lincoln, Durham, Salisbury or, in fact, most other cathedrals. I do. That's not to say that it lacks interest, but for me the overall form of the building doesn't match the beauty of other major cathedrals. However, the collapse that led to the construction of the octagon produced on the interior one of the finest sights that any English cathedral can offer, one that brings distinction to the building and makes it a place worth going out of your way to see.

Today's main photograph and one of the secondary images show what your eyes behold when you pause below Ely's crossing and look up. At the top left is the painted roof of the very long Norman nave. Opposite, at the bottom right is the elaborate Gothic vaulting of the nave. The other two roofs cover the transepts. Windows fill the spaces between the eight stone piers and from the top of each of the latter spreads a fan of ribs that reach to each of the bottom edges of the octagon itself. This is painted with a ring of angels, has stellar vaulting with Christ on the centre, and the whole is ringed with stained glass that lights the space.

We made the journey to Ely on the back of a weather forecast that promised sun and cloud. The drab photograph of the west tower shows how accurate that was!

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation:N/A

Photography in the fog

2011-11-22T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

When I lived in Hull and the weather was foggy I often heard the sound of the ships' foghorns as they negotiated the River Humber into the port or went out into the North Sea. Living on the Lancashire coast I heard them occasionally: there were fewer ships, fog was infrequent, and technology had advanced compared with when I lived near the east coast. Now that I'm in Lincolnshire I experience more fog than in either of the other locations but I recall hearing a ship's foghorn only once. I suppose I'm too far from the sea and ships in The Wash are relatively few, smaller, and fairly quiet.

In common with much of eastern England we've recently had a few days of mist and fog and I've made a point of going out with my camera to see what I could snap. As I've said elsewhere in this blog, fog is one of those weather conditions - like snow - that transforms a landscape and allows the photographer to make very different images in very familiar surroundings. Unfortunately inspiration seemed to have deserted me on my forays into the gloom and I came back with very little that satisfies me. The two shots I post today are the best of my meagre pickings.

Certainly, to my mind, they don't compare with some of my earlier efforts such as this jetty and yacht, this tree, this cottage or this Fenland "view". The smaller of today's offerings shows a new footbridge over a dyke on a footpath near Donington. The main image is the west end of Donington church. This marvellous piece of medieval architecture has a very interesting west doorway. It dates from the fourteenth century and, unusually for a village church, has a projecting hood with an ogee arch that protects the inner arch and door. Time and weather have eroded the sharp details of this feature, but the sculpted leaves and other mouldings can still be discerned under its current generous covering of moss.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Charing Cross escalators

2011-11-21T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Just over a month ago - October 4th to be precise - it was the 100th anniversary of the opening of the first escalator on the London Underground. The two machines that linked the Piccadilly and District/Circle Lines underwent a one month trial period to establish their safety. They must have passed because between 1911 and 1915 another 22 were installed. Today the network has 422.

I've always been fascinated by the London Underground escalators. Although they all work on essentially the same principles and look pretty similar architects have frequently sought to inject difference through the surrounding architecture and decor. I was impressed by the totally stainless steel aesthetic of Canada Water station when I first saw it. Recently I passed the escalators at Charing Cross (above) and enjoyed their big circles and the mirrors that played tricks with the space. In fact, looking at these examples I felt transported into Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" or perhaps Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner". I definitely got the feeling that the architect (Terry Farrell) had been inspired by cinematic visions of the future when it came to the look at this station.

Incidentally, I'm the only person in this image with the time and inclination to stop, stand and stare. And perhaps one of a minority who was wondering whether it really is possible to fall down an up escalator for half an hour, as the old joke has it.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Autumn at Deeping St James

2011-11-19T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The other evening, with a friend, I gave a talk to a group in the village about photography. We divided the alphabet up between us and we each spoke about 13 of our own images (a couple with secondary images to support the main one). At one point I mentioned a quotation by Aaron Rose that I have always liked and which I first used very early in the life of this blog: "In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary". This observation makes the important point that light has the power to change things, even the most mundane, into objects of beauty and visual interest. I think the author and most people, me included, assume the quote is about the value of strongly directional light, and a lot of my photography - in fact quite a bit of every photographer's output - makes use of this kind of illumination.

However, as I've got older I've come to realise that every sort of light has qualities that can be used in photography, even the uninspiring flat light that is produced by a blanket of stratus cloud. Whereas hard, directional light makes for contrast, drama and in-your-face eye-catching qualities, diffuse, almost directionless light softens the scene, mutes everything and confers a quiet quality that can be very appealing in its own way. I blogged about this in connection with a photograph I took last year of some boats drawn up on the shingle beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk. A couple of days ago similar light prevailed when I took this photograph of the River Welland at Deeping St James in Lincolnshire. I think it's not only the subject but also the light that gives the photograph some of the qualities that I admire in English landscape painting of the first half of the nineteenth century. Who knows, it may be a liking for the work of artists such as Crome, Cotman, Constable, Stark, Stannard and Colkett (mainly members of the "Norwich School") that accounts for me every now and then producing images like the one above.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cleaning the Shard's windows

2011-11-18T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

"A window cleaner you would be,
If you can see what I can see,
When I'm cleanin' windows."
from the song, "When I'm Cleaning Windows sung by George Formby (1904-1961), British songwriter, comedian and actor

When I lived in Lancashire I could look out of my upstairs windows and, across the fields, see a house that once belonged to George Formby. It was called the Illawalla. Formby did a lot of work in the Blackpool area so I suppose a rural retreat a few miles inland was a good base for him.

It was his best-known song, "When I'm Cleaning Windows" that came to mind when I saw these workmen doing just that hundreds of feet above me on the Shard. Not that the subjects mentioned in his ribald lyrics would be likely to be seen at this location. However, the London sights they do see from their various vantage points around the building must be amazing. It takes a particular kind of person to do the kind of work seen in today's photograph, and I can say that it most definitely wouldn't suit me.

If you look carefully at yesterday's photograph with the closer view of the Shard you can just make out the crane, cradle and the bright orange jackets seen in the picture above.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shard November update

2011-11-17T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

It's probably a bit rich to describe this as an update on the progress of the Shard - the low cloud hid the "working" section at the top for much of the time I was in a position to get a shot. However, I did manage to incorporate into my main image some of a lower building that shares the same address as the Shard and together with the taller building comprises "The London Bridge Quarter". The hunk of concrete surrounded by cranes will become "The Place", a name that the workings already carry as it slowly rises above its neighours. It too will be a glass faced structure as its website shows.

It strikes me that "The Place" is an incredibly uninspiring name. It reminds me of "the hub" that is now "nccd" in Sleaford, Lincolnshire. It's a generic name, in some ways redolent of the 1960s (it conjures up a hang-out such as a coffee bar or small music venue), and is one which is unlikely to last very long.

The River Thames view is equally unrevealing of the Shard, and much less so than my earlier photograph from downstream taken in August. Even the night time shots that I took on my last visit show the building partially obscured by cloud. I suppose this is something the workers, visitors and residents of the Shard will have to get used to. Mind you, I bet the view is amazing when there's a temperature inversion.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shoes and fashion

2011-11-16T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

"And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish playwright, poet and essayist

Oscar Wilde's jaundiced observation on fashion will not find favour with those who design, sell and buy it. But, as ever with him, there are serious points within his outrageous and forceful remark. All fashion is transient and consequently, though "looks" re-appear periodically, it is concerned with changing the surface appearance of people and objects and coming up with a "new look". But, the simple fact is you can't do that for decades - centuries even - and always end up with something that is a pleasure to look at: so often fashion is most certainly "intolerable" in one way or another. Many people will object to this and say that fashion is fun, interesting, harmless. I would argue that it is wasteful of resources and, because its main purpose is to transfer money from the pocket of the consumer into those of the manufacturers and sellers, wasteful of our hard earned cash. Moreover, good design (not usually the same as fashion at all) is perfectly capable of investing products with innate (rather than superficial) qualities that will make us choose one thing over another. For more of my thoughts on fashion, style and design see this post called, appropriately enough, Fashion, Style and Design.

Today's photograph was taken near Covent Garden in London. What amazed me about this shop was the way the shoes were displayed like works of art or revered pieces in a museum. I was also intrigued by how similar most of them were. Clearly these are shoes that are designed to be looked at rather than worn in any utilitarian, work-a-day way. Wouldn't it be interesting to return to the shop in six months and test the veracity of Wilde's remark.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 205mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1250
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Floral Street memento mori

2011-11-14T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

At the weekend, once again visiting London, we found ourselves on Floral Street. This narrow road is lined with what I'm told are representatives of the more expensive end of the clothing trade - Paul Smith, Ted Baker etc. I hadn't taken leave of my senses and gone there to buy anything; we were just using the street as a cut through to Covent Garden. But, not wanting to waste an opportunity for a photograph, I cast my eye about for subjects. The throngs of people and the single-track nature of the road made that somewhat difficult. However, when my companions went to look at some merchandise I took the opportunity to give photography all my attention.

As I sauntered along the pavement past a shop with shoes that combined eye-watering colour, ludicrous styling and stratospheric prices, I saw a small window. It didn't appear to be part of a shop and featured a spotlit skull with a necklace on a stand. I suppose it may have been some kind of retail premises with a sales pitch so subtle or so esoteric that it was only recognisable as such by the cognoscenti. However, this passing photographer immediately saw the window display as a memento mori placed there as a countervailing presence to the offerings of mammon that were all around. Not very likely you might think, but it was a basis for coming up with a shot. The one I arrived at has three subjects - the skull, a reflected man gazing at either the skull or the reflected me, and a passer-by - an arrangement that might prompt a few thoughts about what's going on in the image, and whether there is a connection between the subjects. Not my usual approach to picture-making and street photography isn't my usual style, but it was a bit of fun that made a few minutes alone pass quickly.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Autumn at Woodhall Spa

2011-11-13T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

On a recent overcast day, we took a six or seven mile stroll through some woods and lanes in Lincolnshire, a county that is, in the popular consciousness, a treeless place. Our starting point was the village of Woodhall Spa, a place whose very name suggests that it may be a wooded spot. Located between the chalk and the limestone, Woodhall Spa features heather and bracken, many tree types including silver birch, beech and oak, and has soil that can support the widespread rhododendrons that the Victorians and Edwardians planted. Mature woodland adjoins and penetrates the large village and mature trees can be seen in many gardens. For anyone who doesn't know Woodhall Spa the late John Betjeman called it "that half-timbered Bournemouth-like settlement", a description that sums up the look and feel of the place quite well.

The English National Golf Centre and its courses are found here. Apparently - and I'm no golfer so I can't attest to this - the Hotchkin Course is a classic British heathland course and was voted "25th best course in the world" by Golf World Magazine. What I do know is that a public footpath winds through the courses and adjacent woodlands and the semi-wild landscape makes quite a nice start to a ramble from the village centre. On our walk the colours of the autumn leaves were just starting to decline in intensity but were still very attractive, and I managed a few shots as we followed a track through a tunnel of trees. In the one above my photographic assistant - aka my wife - was persuaded to be the focal point in the "tunnel".

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 183mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1250
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Apophenia and remembrance

2011-11-10T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Tomorrow is the 11th day of the 11th month of the year 2011. Some people seem to be making a lot of that even though repetitious dates are reasonably common. Yes, the date is palindromic, but then quite a few years have visual, numerical and other oddities associated with them. The first such occurrence I recall was 1961. Why? Well, if you look at it upside down it still reads the same. I know this because I remember that anomaly being made much of on the cover of a "Dandy" comic (or was it "Beano") in - you've guessed it - 1961.

The press have been making quite a bit of the coming date. I've seen it described as the "corduroy" date (vertical lines!). Yuri Geller - remember him and his spoon bending - has been quoted as saying "11.11 is the pre-encoded trigger and the key to the mysteries of the universe and beyond." Who'd have thought it! The numerical coincidence of the date is, for reasons that completely escape me, felt to be reason enough for choosing it as an auspicious date on which to get married. Apparently the small Scottish town of Gretna Green near the border with England will host over fifty weddings on that day. This compares with fewer than a dozen on any other Friday in November. Seeing meaningful patterns in random numbers or data is known as apophenia, and 11.11.11 certainly seems to have brought the apopheniacs out in force.

For much of the rest of the population the date is merely an interesting coincidence that in no way overshadows the fact that it is Armistice Day - the day that commemorates the end of the first world war. And it's with that in mind that I post today's photograph. It shows part of the memorial in Sutterton church, Lincolnshire, that records the men of the parish who died in what came to be called The Great War. This simple plaque, lovingly cared for down the years, caught my eye because overlaying the list of names were the colours of the nearby British Legion flag that was reflected on its surface.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 88mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ladybirds and colour

2011-11-09T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

If this blog and my photographic records are anything to go by it seems I notice ladybirds only out of season: that is to say, at times other than summer. When I was processing today's photograph I was wondering why this might be. It occurred to me that it could be because in summer the bright red/orange of these beetles doesn't stand out against the kaleidoscope of colour that flowers are offering, whereas in spring, autumn and winter the odd bright spot provided by the even odder ladybird foolish enough to brave the cool or cold weather sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I photographed today's specimen in a churchyard as I walked down the stone path to the south porch. The parishioners had planted a variety of annuals and shrubs to line the route. The blue-green of a clump of euphorbia was working well with the dark orange of some fading tagetes and I composed a shot that included these near complementary colours placing the shrub in focus in the foreground and the blurred flowers in the background. As I hunted for a suitable composition I spotted the ladybird and included it for the sharp point of deep colour that it added to the shot.

photograph and ext (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Roadside trees

2011-11-08T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Trees are a part of the historical record that is often overlooked. Quite a few of Britain's woods and forests have existed for several hundred years, often shrinking, frequently changing their outline, but still recognisable in early maps and plans from elements of their perimeter that remain the same. Medieval banks and ditches that marked both the edge of a wood and internal divisions can still be seen. I've come across examples recently in Lincolnshire and Herefordshire. And many of the trees themselves are often much older than people realise. It comes as a surprise to some that in terms of "ancient trees" - those that are several hundred years old - England has more than anywhere north of the Mediterranean except Greece.

Trees are also good indicators of former dwellings. An unexpected couple of apple trees by the corner of a field frequently marks the site of a long gone cottage. In the Fens, where I currently live, apple trees (eaters not crab apples) are commonly found in hedgerows. I've often wondered if they show where the formerly more numerous agricultural workers deliberately set a sapling, or perhaps where a wooden or mud and stud house sat on a roadside plot.

Today's photograph shows an altogether different group of trees that are visible across the local fen. I don't think they were ever associated with houses. My guess is that they are the whim of a local farmer. Perhaps he had some conifers and ornamental deciduous trees left over from planting that he was doing around his farm. Or maybe he thought he'd liven up the local landscape. Whatever the reason, ever since I moved to the area I've looked at this line of trees and wondered. I recently passed it on my bicycle on a foggy afternoon that almost eliminated the background beyond the row of trees and I took this shot. I like it for the way the evergreens provide solid punctuation marks in the line of much more delicate deciduous trees, something that black and white emphasises better than colour.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO:80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sleaford Picturedrome

2011-11-07T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The first cinemas in Britain were built in the years before the First World War. They were generally small with fanciful facade details in a debased Art Nouveau or Classical style applied in relatively cheap materials. The real heyday of cinema construction began in the 1920s, speeded up after the introduction of the "talkies" in 1927, and continued through the 1930s. A theatre for moving film projection was a new building type. However, designers initially based the layout on a traditional theatre, though the area of the stage was reduced and the associated machinery and layers of curtains were clearly not required. The later cinemas were essentially functional buildings overlaid with a decorative style on the facade and in the public rooms and auditorium. These styles were plundered from many lands and periods - Moorish, Classical and Art Deco were popular but in the 1930s a streamlined Moderne took hold featuring cream tiles, fins, windows wrapped around corners and sometimes columns, lotus flowers and tapering pilasters sourced from Egyptian temples.

Today's photograph shows a former cinema - The Picturedrome - at Sleaford in Lincolnshire. Like many such buildings it no longer fulfils its original purpose and is now closed, but it still shows evidence of its recent use as a nightclub. It was built in 1920 in a sort of stripped Classical style. The main entrance is flanked by columns, with a large Diocletian window with a rusticated surround above. The cornice has regularly spaced paterae-like circles and in the centre of the attic storey is a circular window with what look like husk garlands and some Greek key pattern. The inside had a rectangular proscenium arch, a barrel vaulted ceiling and painted panels decorating the walls. It could seat 900 people and it was apparently so successful that a balcony extension was installed to seat a further 80. Who knows what its future holds?

You may be wondering about the colours of this particular photograph. I turned the original colour shot into black and white and then gave it a digital blue and sepia "split toning" effect. In the days of film, when I processed and printed my own black and white photographs, I always wanted to try split toning but the apparent complexity of it put me off. Essentially it involves using two different coloured toners which affect the shadows and light areas differently. Digital split toning mimics this. I've applied the effect once before, and I think it is a very good fit for the subject - the new seafront at Cleveleys, Lancashire. I thought this cinema might also benefit from the treatment.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Smithies and forges

2011-11-05T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Today's photograph is posted in response to an email I have received from "down under", Australia to be more specific. It was from someone doing family history research. One of her ancestors lived in the parish of Aswarby and in her researches she'd come across my photographs of the church, the local landscape and in particular, the old smithy. In 2008 I posted a sepia coloured photograph of this building and wrote something of its history. She wondered whether I had a colour photograph of the building. As luck would have it her email came shortly after we'd had a walk in the area and I'd taken another photograph of the building. Here it is.

I wouldn't have posted this photograph had it not been for the email and, more particularly, the fact that it reminded me of another smithy I'd photographed last year. The former forge/smithy and bakehouse at Tinwell, Rutland is altogether grander and more ornate than the example at Aswarby. It too is a consciously picturesque building in an"estate village", the product of a rich and paternalistic landowner. But, whereas Aswarby's smithy is on a track off the main road in a small, somewhat scattered settlement, the one in Tinwell is in the centre of a larger village near the church, and this probably influenced its scale and decorative qualities. Aswarby has a datestone showing 1846, the year of its construction. Tinwell was built only two years later in 1848. Is it down to fashion that both have horseshoes carved on their facades to indicate their purpose? Tinwell's is massive enclosing a door. Was this a shoeing bay? If so it's certainly a grander entrance than the double doors on the left at Aswarby. The funds and available at Tinwell, and the vision of the landowner and his architect also allowed for the incorporation of a water supply under the arch in the wall at the centre of the composition. Today Tinwell's smithy/forge is a post office.

click photo to enlarge

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Autumn leaves

2011-11-04T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

Flowering cherries must have more cameras pointed at them than any other species of tree. It's not difficult to see why. In spring the trees are covered in showy blossom. In autumn their leaves flicker with fiery colours - red, orange, yellow and purple replacing the lingering greens. Cherries are often planted in avenues or groups, but single specimens abound among plainer trees too, and in these circumstances the oriental species attracts the eye with colours that outshine virtually all its companions. I think I'm probably an exception to the photographic rule that I am proposing because this blog attests to my liking for a wide variety of trees. However, I have photographed my share of flowering cherries, not least because my garden has five examples. Two of them are about as big as they get - approximately twenty five feet high. One is an old, gnarled, very Japanese-looking example with pink blossom like candy floss. The other two are younger trees. None were planted by me.

Last year the autumnal colours of the flowering cherries were the best I have seen. This year I remarked to my wife that they seemed more subdued. But, a few days after I uttered those words, as if to prove me wrong, a couple of the trees produced leaves of very deep and intense hues, such that I had to go in and get my camera. I generally find that flower and leaf colours in photographs are truest when the shot is taken in bright, overcast conditions; there is less reflection from the surfaces of the plants. On this occasion, however, it was the sunlit leaves that outshone those taken under cloud cover. The particular group of leaves I focused on were in dappled light with the background leaves more strongly lit and the colours shown above are those that came out of the camera.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wide angle distortion and innovation

2011-11-03T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

The flood of innovation in cameras and photography in general that occurred following the introduction of digital into the mass market continues, albeit at a slower pace than five or ten years ago. Most recently we've seen developments such as the Lytro camera that allows you to select a point of focus after you've taken your shot, or produce versions of the same shot with different points of focus. Interesting though that is, it's not the first new development that I would wish to see. In fact, way ahead of such things I'd place a means of controlling wide angle distortion.

I was thinking about this the other day as I photographed the church of St Botolph in Boston, Lincolnshire. I've posted shots of the exterior of this building before (for example here, here, and here). These distant views show the tower or details, but not the whole of the church. That is because St Botolph is one of the largest parish churches in the country, its tower is the tallest (that doesn't include a spire), and it is quite closely surrounded by buildings. The only "open" shot you can get of the church is from a space near the edge of the market place. However, from this location a wide angle lens is necessary, and with that comes distortion that changes the emphasis of the component parts of the structure. More specifically, the tremendous tower with its "lantern" top is diminished in size and the nearness of the chancel causes it to assume a bulk approximately equal to that of the nave. Such equality of size is rare in an English church and it certainly doesn't exist at Boston even though its chancel is bigger than that of some cathedrals. If the photographer was able to somehow adjust the distortion that the wide angle lens produces and could bring a building closer to its proper proportions I'd be very happy. You may well think that to do so would break the laws of optics. But wouldn't we once have said that about selecting a point of focus after the shutter has been pressed?

The sharp shadows produced by the clear sky of an early November day prompted this shot. I usually wish for a few clouds when the sky is clear, but the searing blue of this autumn day also had its attractions, and without it those sharp shadows wouldn't have been there. Incidentally, in the photograph Herbert Ingram standing atop his column once again has the indignity of a bird perched on his head. Whenever I pass there's usually a pigeon in residence. On this occasion it was a black-headed gull that had claimed the prized spot from which to survey the world and scavenge for crumbs.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Osbournby church

2011-11-01T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge

There's no easier way to announce yourself as an outsider to this area of Lincolnshire than by pronouncing the name of the village of Osbournby phonetically, just as it's written i.e. "Ozbornbi". For reasons that I'm sure few, if any know, the local pronunciation is "Ozzenbi". In an attempt to get to the bottom of why this is so I delved into the derivation of the placename.

The Domesday Book of 1086 gives two spellings - Esbernbi and Osbernedebi. Also used in the eleventh century was Osbernebi. It is thought that these come from the combining of an anglicisation of an Old Danish personal name - Aesbiorn (changed to Osbeorn) - with the Old Danish "by" meaning farmstead or village. So, the settlement was named after this person who founded it or was of importance within it. All very interesting, but as far as the current local pronunciation goes, not a great deal of help. The elision, contraction or slurring of the "bourn" part and its replacement by a "zz" sound is the interesting change that needs explaining. In fact, Osbournby is not alone in being subjected to this particular corruption. Just over five miles south, down the A15, is the village of Aslackby where the "zz" sound replaces "lack" to give the local pronunciation, "Azelbi" (as in Hazel where the "h" isn't sounded). I'll have to do a bit more digging if I'm to come up with an explanation for all this.

We passed Osbournby's church the other day as a light wind was blowing the chestnut and beech leaves of the churchyard trees on to the closely cut grass. This particular building, that dates mainly from the fourteenth century, is quite hard to photograph in summer from the south east with sunlight on it because of those tall trees. Their shadows fall across much of the aisle, nave and chancel. However, on this autumn afternoon the trees had shed enough leaves for light to filter through and give the scene both illumination and interest, so I took my shot.

For a photograph of the fine medieval bench ends that the church is famous for see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.00 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Lynn Ferry

2011-10-31T17:00:00.000Z

click photo to enlarge
In the UK there has been, for many years, a discernible drift away from the principle of narrowing the gulf in weath between the poorest, least advantaged in society and the well-off by taxing the latter and redistributing the money to the former. This approach was universally supported by all the major political parties for a long period after the Second World War. However, for the past thirty or so years the Conservatives have sought, through their policies, quite the opposite; to transfer resources from the poor and the middle classes to the richer sections of society, business, commerce and the City. The recent financial crisis has allowed them to accelerate what they are doctrinally disposed to favour under the guise of "necessity." The Labour party during its time in government, though making some efforts at redistribution, were so half-hearted that the effect was nowhere near what was possible given their duration in office and the resources that they commanded. Today's Liberal Democrats will have to speak for themselves on this matter because I find it very difficult to discern what, if any, principles they now espouse.

Part of the problem is that politics and politicians have eschewed principles and philosophy in favour of managerialism. Dealing with immediate issues has become an end in itself rather than a means of achieving a vision. The problem with most managers, of course, is that they know the price of everything but the value of nothing. So, instead of universal provision and the equalising across the country of the prices of essential items such as utilities, healthcare and transport in the interests of affordability for all, but especially the less well off in society, we are seeing the growth of regional pricing structures, the decline of cross-subsidisation and unitary pricing.

One consequence of all this is that enterprises such as the Lynn Ferry (see photograph) that regularly crosses the River Great Ouse to link the small, relatively deprived community of West Lynn with the large market town of King's Lynn face the possibility of a loss of subsidy at a time when its users face declining incomes. The ferry subsidy is £25,000 per year which allows the operators to charge fares of 80p single and £1.40 return (reduced to 60p and £1.00 for children). There is a need for fares to remain competitive with the cost of either driving round by the nearest bridge and paying for a parking space or using an infrequent bus service. More than that, there is every reason to ensure that the residents of West Lynn remain in regular contact with the major part of their community, one that they can almost reach out and touch. And, there is a need to recognise that West Lynn grew, in part because of the existence of the river ferry and to cause its closure would be iniquitous.

I photographed the ferry landing on the King's Lynn side of the river at low tide. Unfortunately the number of passengers doesn't make my case very well - two young girls heading for town and a woman crossing to West Lynn. I've tried for this silhouette shot before (when passenger numbers have been higher), but this is my best attempt so far.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Super-size curve stitching

2011-10-29T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

Last year, in a post showing a photograph of church organ pipes, I briefly touched on the subject of curve stitching (often called string or pin and thread art) - that is to say, the assembly of straight lines of thread in such a way that they produce curves. It's an activity that I associate with my own years as a primary school pupil. However, it must still be quite popular because I see from my hit counter that particular blog page being regularly landed on by people searching using the phrase "curve stitching". The activity is, to my mind, a craft. However, the other day at the National Centre for Craft and Design at Sleaford, Lincolnshire, I came upon an example on a giant scale that bridged the gap between craft and art.

The main exhibition gallery was filled with a piece by Gabriel Dawe called Plexus No. 10. Accompanying text by the artist described his arrangement of taut, visible spectrum coloured threads arranged in lines and curve-stitching- style arcs that the viewer can walk between as "materialising the structure of light." To wander into the piece was a fascinating journey because the coloursof the threads changed depending on your position, as did their shape, from some angles resembling the slats of venetian blinds. An interesting phenomenon was the way that the viewer sometimes became disorientated, losing a sense of how near the threads were. We often descend on the N.C.C.D. at a time when we are the only visitors, or when there are just one or two others. On this occasion there were quite a few people and it was interesting to hear and see their reaction. There were lots of smiles, gasps and much careful peering to see how the structures were constructed and why they behaved as they did. In this piece Gabriel Dawe has clearly pulled of that most difficult of tricks by creating a work that is both good, popular and fun. The exhibition opened on 22 October and continues until 15 January 2012. I thoroughly recommend it.

With permission I took several photographs, none of which effectively describe the sight, experience and fun of moving around the installation - fitting three dimensions into two often has that result. However, they do give an indication of what I've been talking about and were interesting to shoot. Here are my best three.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 102mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

hub becomes nccd

2011-10-27T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

It seems that the hub (lower case) has become nccd (also lower case). An improvement, certainly, but wouldn't it have been so much better to have gone the whole hog and made it N.C.C.D.?

Ever since I moved to Lincolnshire I've visited the National Centre for Craft & Design in Sleaford. I've been delighted, bemused, exasperated and despairing as I've viewed their regular exhibitions. And that's exactly how it should be. There's absolutely no reason why I should like everything that is shown. I much prefer to see a wide range of exhibitions that bring me experiences that are new, different and challenging, and that necessarily means, as far as I personally am concerned, there'll be hits and misses. The next blog post will feature the current main exhibition which I think is a definite hit. However, for today let's stick with the "re-branding" exercise.

It makes much more sense to use the initials of the centre's official name rather than the generic title of "the hub". There are too many other places with that name which leads to confusion, and anyway it's become a touch passe. But why keep the lower case? Surely that's a fashion that's had its day too. Moreover, lower case becomes either confusing ot unreadable when written in a block of text. I would rather that capitalized initials had featured in the new advertising and that subsequent updates to the style and signage simply modified them. I do, however, quite like the overlapping angular shapes that accompany the revised name, and the painting of them on one side of the building works well too. So well in fact that I had to photograph them with the window reflecting a nearby tree.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Early 1800s terraced housing

2011-10-25T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

The Norfolk market town of King's Lynn is a mecca for anyone interested in English architectural history. As a measure of its wealth in this regard the Borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk has 1,878 listed buildings of which 111 are Grade 1 i.e of national as well as local importance. Within the town there are a number streets that draw visitors with the range and quality of their buildings. One such is Nelson Street that extends south from near St Margaret's church. From Hampton Court - a courtyard development that has been in use and added to from the fourteenth century to the present day - to seventeenth and eighteenth century merchant's houses such as No. 15 and Oxley House, this short road offers interest in every elevation.

However, it's not one of the more obviously historic or showpiece structures that I photographed on my recent visit. Instead, it is a section of a terrace - Nos. 14-20 Nelson Street. These houses stand out from their neighbours as being rather dour, somewhat industrial, and on a smaller scale. They were built in 1819 at the tail end of the Georgian period when mass housing started to take on a Victorian countenance. The materials chosen for this row are red brick with gault brick for the facades and Welsh slate on the roofs. Each house is two bays wide with the blind window above the door filled in from the outset. Chimney stacks and a raised firebreak mark the division between the properties at roof level. The original doors and some original sash windows are still in use. To the right (out of shot) is a basket-arched carriage arch that presumably gave access to the rear of all the properties.

The gault brick, as is often the case, hasn't aged very well and looks somewhat grubby giving a time-worn appearance even though it is still in pretty good condition. What drew my eye and caused me to take this photograph was the brightly painted doors. I don't imagine that there is a great deal of similarity to how they looked in 1819, but today, given the somewhat drab brickwork that surrounds them, they offer welcome brightness as well as a focus for this passing photographer's composition.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Romanesque and Gothic at Tewkesbury

2011-10-22T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

Today's photograph shows the interior of the nave of Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire. A Saxon abbey founded c.715AD was the first building on this site, but nothing of it remains today. The present church is a Norman foundation of the eleventh century with most of the structure dating from the 1100s, a little from the 1200s, the ambulatory chapels and vaulting the 1300s, and small areas elsewhere of more recent dates.

Looking at the photograph we can see that the drum piers (columns), the rounded arches and the triforium (dark passage with light shining from it) are of the Norman (or Romanesque) period. They were complete by the time of the abbey's consecration in the 1120s and are characteristically heavy compared with the lighter appearance of the later Gothic style. For the student of architectural history there are two particular points of interest in this photograph. Firstly, the piers are relatively tall and plain, a regional characteristic of the Norman style whilst the triforium is quite small, almost insignificant compared with most similar buildings of the period (compare with this example at Peterborough Cathedral). The second thing to note is that the vaulting of both the aisles and the nave dates from 1330-1350, what is stylistically called the Decorated period of Gothic architecture.

The rounded arches of the Norman period were poor at spanning spaces as wide as a nave and consequently most Norman naves had flat timber ceilings, rather than stone vaulting. However, the narrower aisles were often covered with tunnel or groin vaulting. Here at Tewkesbury the Norman nave had no clerestory so the present one was inserted in the fourteenth century when the lierne vaulting of the nave and the quadripartite with ridge ribs vaulting of the aisles was built. To anyone who visits large churches regularly the Gothic vaulting on Romanesque piers looks odd. It also accounts for the half-hidden and relatively ineffectiveness of the clerestory which was squeezed in and then partly obscured by the springing of the vaulting. However, in the middle ages, as today, architects were keen to build in a contemporary way, and the idea of building vaulting or a clerestory in 1340 in a style from over one hundred years earlier was thought ridiculous, just as building today in the manner of the late Victorians would be. It would, wouldn't it?

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Where do photographs come from?

2011-10-21T17:00:00.000+01:00

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The answer to today's title question seems fairly obvious - from a camera, or perhaps a printer. And so they do, but the genesis of every photographic image is in someone's mind. Before it is captured by the camera or printed on paper it is conceived by someone looking and thinking.

I do quite a bit of DIY. I find it interesting, often quite relaxing, sometimes fulfilling, and invariably a money saver. When it comes to embarking on a project I know that the most crucial part of the process is the "thinking time" before I buy the materials and pick up the tools. So too with photography: most of my images are preceded by a period of thought and in that thinking time I'm pondering what I see before me, what I will include in the frame, what I'll leave out, what kind of composition I want, what the subject might look like from a different angle, whether there are any dissonant objects or conjunctions that will interfere with the image, etc. But there are occasions too when I take a shot instinctively; when the elements of an image present themselves, seemingly register on my subconscious and I raise the camera and press the shutter in one quick movement without much conscious thought.

Today's image is one of those shots. I was leaving a service building (a dairy I think) at Audley End House in Essex when I noticed the raking light emphasising the raised pattern on the door. I must have subconsciously taken in the bright areas of the sunlit door, ground and sky, the contrasting shadows and the two people passing in front of the dark yew hedge. Moreover, I must have registered the importance of the figures in the whole composition because I quickly grabbed my shot before they walked out of view. It's not my usual way of working but sometimes I find myself doing it and often liking the result. I wish I could do it more often!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Abbey Mill, Tewkesbury

2011-10-19T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

We recently stayed for a few days near Ledbury, Herefordshire, and during our time in the area took a short trip to Tewkesbury. We've visited the town a couple of times before to see the abbey, and we viewed it again, but on this occasion we also had a walk by the river. Tewkesbury stands at the confluence of the River Avon and the River Severn, and as well as being known for its fine medieval abbey and its delightful buildings of all periods, especially the black and white half-timbered Tudor houses and pubs, it is recognized as a place that is prone to flooding. Mention the town today and many will recall a famous photograph from 2007 which shows the abbey seeming to stand on an island surrounded by water.

Autumn weather has started to make its presence felt in the the UK in the form of stronger winds, lower temperatures and rain, and on our visit to Tewkesbury it looked like we might get a little precipitation. Fortunately the dark clouds passed and the sun made an appearance. But not before I'd taken a photograph under those clouds of a building with which I wasn't familiar - Abbey Mill on the River Avon.

This water mill is an attractive and complex three-storey building with an attic level. It has three mill-races to undershot wheels and a weir alongside. A bridge connects the two banks of the river, running under part of the mill buildings (small photograph). Abbey Mill was erected in 1793 and has nineteenth and twentieth century additions. It is built mainly of brick and weatherboarding with cast iron columns, some with spreader plates. Flour was milled here until 1933 but now the building comprises a number of desirable apartments.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

In praise of blur

2011-10-18T17:00:00.002+01:00

click photo to enlarge

I've said elsewhere in this blog that the technical and technological side of photography doesn't interest me very much. In fact, I engage in it only to the extent that I have to in order to make the photographs that I require. The truth is that I pursue photography because I like making pictures.

I do, however, occasionally visit photography forums and one thing I have gleaned in my surfing is the extent to which many photographers value sharpness above all other qualities in a camera/lens combination. Consequently lens acuity as measured in lines per millimetre seem to be very important to many. Questions about new lenses or lenses that someone is considering buying often solicit forum members' evidence of sharpness. Colour rendition, bokeh, contrast, flare handling and all the other qualities that are desirable in a lens come well down the list of sought after features - if they are considered at all. Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate a sharp lens, and I also understand that a sharp lens can be manipulated to lose some of its sharpness whereas a lens that isn't very sharp is difficult to sharpen. But, sharpness isn't everything, and some subjects are the worse for it. Moreover, using your lens in ways other than to secure maximum detail is often the right thing to do.

I was thinking about this when I photographed a bed of coneflowers the other day. I took a shot of the blooms aiming for sharp examples in the foreground and blurred heads behind. But, as I looked through the viewfinder I found I preferred the out of focus flowers to the sharp examples. So I took a few shots, some that resolved great detail, and others - like the one above - where nothing was sharp. Out of all the images that I gathered it was the out of focus ones that I preferred for their hazy, indistinct, painterly qualities.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 1250
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bad whole, good detail

2011-10-16T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

It's a paradox of many man-made structures (and a few natural ones) that something that you dislike as an overall piece may well have details that you appreciate. Take automotive design. I've never been a great fan of Jaguar styling yet I've photographed bonnet and front details of the marque on more than one occasion because they appeal to me. Or how about contemporary architecture? The development near Tower Bridge in London with the ridiculous name of More London was justly short-listed for the 2007 Carbuncle Cup, an annual award for bad architecture, but I've taken a few photographs of the buildings' details that I really like.

The other day in London I entered a new building and noticed that the ceiling in the foyer above the receptionists' desks had sheets of undulating, perforated, reflective metal fixed to it. I can only assume that it was a styling feature though I suppose it may have fulfilled some acoustic purpose. My immediate thought was, "That doesn't work." In a very impressive and elegant structure this detail looked cheap by association. By that I mean it reminded me of foil covered cardboard packaging of the kind that is sometimes used in a vain attempt to "lift" the appearance of the contents of the box. But then I looked closely at the reflections that changed as I moved beneath it and I saw something that interested me. This photograph of a small part of the expanse of metal has a semi-abstract quality that I like. I rather regret not taking a shot of the whole of the location for comparison purposes, but I was pushing my luck getting this shot, and I think the receptionists might have taken exception to my camera being pointed at them rather than up at the ceiling.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 2000
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shard October update

2011-10-15T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

Perhaps the above encounter between a barge, a Port of London Authority launch, a Fire Rescue boat and a Police launch (departing background right) wasn't an incident as such, more a planned coming together of vessels. However, the flashing blue lights on the Police launch and the speed at which it arrived on the scene suggested otherwise and drew the attention of this passing photographer as he trudged towards the centre of London under a leaden sky hoping for a shot or two to present themselves.

My most recent photographs of the construction of the Shard were posted on 29th and 30th August. I post today's images as my latest update on the progress of this tall and very visible building. Flipping back and forth between the two river views I can see that the glass reaches somewhat higher than it did in August. The concrete core has now reached its final height. There has always been a crane at the tallest point during construction. However, the crane that is now at the top of the Shard, which was put up on September 24th, is the tallest ever erected in Britain. It will be used to complete the "spire" that forms the uppermost part of the building.

The projected completion date for the Shard is May 2012.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 95mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yew hedges and country houses

2011-10-14T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

A couple of weeks ago I was cutting my side of a conifer hedge that separates part of our garden from a neighbour's. It's about 10 feet high and 50 yards or so long. It took me and my wife a morning of hard work to accomplish the task. My relatively light travails came to mind the other day during my visit to Audley End House in Essex as we took a break from our journey down to London. When I got my first glimpse of the Jacobean country house I was impressed - by the size, symmetry and setting of the building - but moreso by the fine yew hedge that stretched diagonally forward from one end of the main facade.

The hedge must be about 15 feet tall, very wide and many yards long. It is cut in the "bumpy", abstract style that is favoured by many country house gardeners. One often sees topiarised yews and geometrically cut yew hedges in such settings, but frequently these cyclopean hedges feature too. Often they act as screens separating areas of garden or block views that offer little of interest or perhaps an eyesore. At Audley End it serves to mask the hotch-potch of service buildings - kitchen, dairy, laundry etc - from visitors as they approach the front of the house. The hedge, unusually, isn't wholly yew, a few other evergreen shrubs have been allowed to intermingle.

As yew hedges go it's one of the biggest I've come across. Not as big though as this example at Montacute House in Somerset that takes 4 gardeners three months to cut! For a couple more examples of this kind of hedge see this Spalding, Lincolnshire example and this one at Melbourne, Derbyshire.

click photo to enlarge

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Morris dancing

2011-10-12T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

"When he is dancing the true morris-man is serious of countenance, yet gay of heart; vigorous, yet restrained; a strong man rejoicing in his strength; yet graceful, controlled, and perfectly dignified withal."
Cecil Sharp (1859-1924), English folklore and folksong revivalist

Cecil Sharp had very clear and serious views on the revival of traditional English folk dance and song: the quotation above underlines this. What then would he have made of the morris dancing that I experienced at the Old Brewery, Greenwich recently. There were some serious countenances among the assembled morris men and women - mainly from the bandsmen - but in the main there was delight and enjoyment on the faces of the dancers in doing what they did.

Last year I watched some morris dancing in Pershore, Worcestershire, and reflected in the blog post that accompanied my photographs on Thomas Hardy's views about such performances. He distinguished between survivalists and revivalists, noting that the former who carry on the tradition through obligation do not show the same enthusiasm and enjoyment as those who take it up voluntarily in order to to re-kindle an ancient tradition. If Hardy is to be believed - and I think he probably over-stated his case - the Rose and Castle Morris depicted in today's images must count as revivalists because the delight they took in their performance was palpable.

One thing that I found interesting about this particular morris is the fact that, though they come from Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire, in the English Midlands, they dance in clogs following the tradition of Lancashire and Cheshire in north-west England.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Physiognomy and morris men

2011-10-11T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

The pseudo-science of physiognomy has it that we can discern a person's character and personality from their facial characteristics. The Greeks and Romans believed that the face - and other bodily features - were an external manifestation of the inner person. Physiognomy was taught in universities in the middle ages, and it has continued to have its adherents since that time, though many in the scientific community have ridiculed its methods and findings and continue to do so.

Interestingly, one recent study indicates that 90% of people think that you can judge a person's character through their face, so it's not surprising that the idea continues to be popular, and that some serious researchers are delving into the subject once more. My experience over my lifetime is that a person's face sometimes does seem to indicate something of their character, but it just as often doesn't. That observation may be saying something about me as a judge of people but I would say that physiognomy is an unreliable indicator.

I was thinking about this when I looked at my photograph of these morris men. I came upon them in Greenwich a couple of days ago as they were taking a rest from their labours and enjoying a drink. I snapped them for their traditional outfits and for their "characterful" looks. It's tempting to look into their faces and think we can read what they are like as people. But the fact is, I have other photographs taken at the same time where, because their expressions are different, we would come to quite contrasting opinions. As you have perhaps worked out, I think physiognomy is about as scientific as astrology.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 271mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ring-necked parakeet invaders

2011-10-10T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

Walking along Rotherhithe Street in London the other day my ears and then my eyes were drawn to a ring-necked parakeet flying above me between the warehouse conversions and new flats that line the way. Its repeated raucous screech and its bright colours seemed out of place in that man-made canyon: a steamy jungle or baking sub-equatorial plain seemed more appropriate. And yet, a growing population of these birds can be found in London and in many other localities in western Europe.

The first recorded British breeding in the wild of this bird was in Norfolk in 1855, so escapees have long been known to survive in our colder climate. However, the next recorded occurence was not until 1969, in Kent. Thereafter colonies became established in south-east England, in the north-west (I saw them occasionally on the Fylde) and elsewhere. On the afternoon of the day I saw the Rotherhithe bird we went to Greenwich Park. Walking into the trees only a short way from the heavily peopled Royal Observatory and National Maritime Museum found us surrounded by ring-necked parakeets. In that location they were as common as the carrion crows and wood pigeons, and much noisier. The berry-laden trees were clearly the attraction, and I managed to photograph this bird in the act of eating. My shot is fairly heavily cropped - I don't possess a lens capable of close-ups of birds.

On my return home I did a bit of digging concerning the spread of this species in the UK. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) estimates a resident breeding population of c.5000 birds, mainly in Surrey, Kent and Sussex. Other authorities judge there to be double that number, and it has become one of the 20 most commonly seen birds in London. In 2009 Natural England relaxed the legislation on this species and monk parakeets allowing their control (i.e. killing) in some circumstances. Whether the ring-necked parakeet is allowed to spread and increase further in numbers will doubtless depend on the impact it has on indigenous species and fruit growing. Will it attain the status of the little owl and the pheasant, birds that we no longer think of as non-native species, or will it be subjected to the sort of culling that has reduced the number of ruddy ducks from around 5000 to about 120?

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

New perspectives on familiar subjects

2011-10-09T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

It occurs to me that the title of today's post states one of the aims of most enthusiast and professional photographers. It is still possible to find subjects that haven't been photographed before, or haven't been photographed very often. But, photographers number in their millions, photographs in their billions, and inevitably most of the things that you and I point a camera at have been subjected to photography before. Consequently we daily try to see our familiar subjects in a different way from the way they've been seen before.

There are two ways of achieving this goal. You can set about the task consciously, adjusting your viewpoint, focal length, time of day, weather or any of the other variables that you can deliberately manipulate. Or, you seize the moment when serendipity offers you the opportunity of a less usual kind of image. On my Thames-side walks from Rotherhithe into the centre of London I've taken more than a few shots of Tower Bridge, a structure that says "London" to the world. Most of them have been ordinary, unexceptional, cliched, hackneyed, boringly familiar - choose your own description. I've posted only two of my images that have the bridge as the main subject - one from a less familiar location, and the other a deliberate attempt at a "different" kind of portrayal.

A couple of days ago I seized the moment when a shaft of late afternoon sunlight illuminated the bridge and made it positively glow against the dark clouds and deep shadows, and I thought this serendipitously taken shot, though not unique, was unusual enough to post.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The upper Ribble valley

2011-10-07T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photos to enlarge

The River Ribble is one of the major rivers of the United Kingdom, joint 19th in length at 75 miles (120km) long. It flows from its source at the confluence of the Gayle Beck and Cam Beck near Ribblehead, through North Yorkshire and Lancashire, to where it joins the Irish Sea between Lytham and Southport. The Ribble has interest and beauty all along its length. Growing up in the area shown in today's photographs I spent much of my time along its banks, and on my return visits I often photograph it, delighting in its varied moods and sights. When I lived on the Fylde Coast I frequently photographed the Ribble estuary at Lytham in a wider way and through its details.

Looking at today's photographs you may well say, "I see the valley, but where's the river?" In the upper reaches the Ribble is usually tucked away, bounded by trees on its often steep banks. That is the case in both shots: in the smaller it is below the line of trees in the middle-ground, and in the main image its course can be followed from near the bottom right of the frame, past the field with lines of drying hay in the centre, and off to the left below the wooded cliffs.

I took the first photograph fairly early on a sunny late September day. The light was modelling the undulating land well, showing off the drystone walls, and giving the trees a solidity that will disappear with their leaves. The highest point of land is the distant Fountain's Fell, land once owned by the monks of Fountain's Abbey. Below and to the right is a large cliff face, all that remains of Craven Quarry, the place where I photographed the Hoffmann Kiln earlier this year. The smaller photograph was taken on an equally sunny day, but in the afternoon and from the other side of the valley. I took this one for the contrast between the unimproved fields in the foreground and the distant background that contrast in character and colour with the greener improved fields closer to the road, river and farm. This shot also shows off well the drystone walls made of the local limestone that are characteristic of the Craven area of Yorkshire.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beech woods

2011-10-06T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photo to enlarge

Beech is a woodland tree. It is less frequently found as a single specimen in a hedgerow or growing alone somewhere. However, in some places it can be seen as a landmark tree signalling a crossroads or a boundary. On the Lincolnshire Wolds it was used to line some of the old drove roads, and in Yorkshire it is often planted around hill farms. When beech grows in a close-canopy wood it is tall, up to 140 feet, with trunks that are relatively free from branches. Where single specimen trees do grow, however, they are shorter with very large crowns - the so-called "deer park beech."

The examples in today's photograph near Stackhouse, North Yorkshire, are part of a small wooded area on steeply sloping pasture with outcropping limestone. The trees' canopy has kept the ground damp allowing moss to grow over the grey stone, something that doesn't happen higher up the slope where the only shade comes from bracken and the occasional rowan. This woodland must have been planted here to make use of an otherwise quite unproductive area. Beech can manage quite well on thin, rocky soil, as this photograph that I took in Lancashire shows. The hamlet of Stackhouse would find these trees a good source of fuel, but also useful for furniture, tool handles and other strong wooden articles. In medieval times oak and beech were the main trees involved in the system known as pannage. This was the right to pasture mainly pigs in woodland so that they could eat the acorns and beech mast. In a thinly wooded area such as this there would be slim pickings for any foraging swine, but in the bigger, denser woods of, say, the Weald, it would be very worthwhile.

I have a fondness for beech trees, and as well as the Lancashire example noted above I've photographed this clump and this beech wood edge in autumn.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 250
Exposure Compensation: -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Jowetts, speed limits and the big picture

2011-10-04T17:00:00.000+01:00

click photos to enlarge

Our dismal government seems consumed with the desire to make almost daily proclamations about policy and legislation. Its febrile activity (and its political inclinations) usually result in bad decisions and frequent U-turns. The latest nonsense involves a proposal to increase the maximum speed limit to 80mph. This announcement - like many - seems to be driven by an unwholesome mixture of wanting to appeal to its voters, an ideological commitment to the individual over the community, and a sop to the "hard-pressed motorists" (copyright the AA, RAC, Daily Mail, Jeremy Clarkson, et al).

You'd think that the hands-off, managerialist style of our prime minister, David Cameron, would allow him to see the big picture that the ministers and "think tanks" who come up with these individual proposals don't. But, no, that seems beyond him. His role-model, Tony Blair, would not have been so careless. So, in the spirit of succouring the needy here are some reasons why he should conclude that it's a bad idea.

The de facto maximum speed on less congested parts of our motorways is already around 80mph. Many motorists seem convinced that they won't be prosecuted unless they go more than 10mph over the limit. There is a great danger that a legal rise to 80mph will increase the actual maximum to 90mph. Then there's the fact that the government is committed to a specific pecentage decrease in carbon emissions: a higher speed limit will burn more fuel and make us miss that by an even bigger margin than currently seems likely. Journey times on many motorways are not governed by the maximum speed limit but by congestion, so in most cases an 80mph limit will simply have the effect of speeding the driver to the next hold-up with no reduction in overall journey time. Britain's relatively good statistics on deaths and injuries involving motor vehicles will inevitably worsen should the proposals come about. Finally, if despite all the above, a higher speed limit does actually result in shorter journey times it would negatively impact on the sustainability of more efficient forms of medium and long distance travel such as buses and trains.

Today's main photograph shows a Jowett Jupiter, a British sports car from a different era when 1500cc and a top speed of 86mph was more than enough to enjoy open-topped motoring. The Bradford-based manufacturer went out of business in 1955 but some of its cars live on in museums and in the hands of enthusiasts. I photographed this example, one of a dozen or so on a club tour to the Isle of Man, when I was photographing the Midland Hotel, Morecambe. More Jowetts can be seen lined up in the smaller photograph.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 33mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Yorkshire Dales barns

2011-10-03T17:00:00.002+01:00

click photo to enlarge

A recent few days in the Yorkshire Dales re-acquainted me with some stone barns that I've known all my life. Some continue in use much as they always have, others have fallen further into a state of dilapidation, and some are in the process of being converted to new uses.

Todays's photograph shows a modest barn near Settle called Far Thornber Barn. Most Dales barns that are out in the fields have names. Often these relate to the first owner, to the location or have a name whose origins are lost in the mists of time. Sometimes the last part of the name is "Laithe" rather than "Barn", a word that derives from the Old Norse (ON) word "hlatha" meaning barn. This reflects the influx from predominantly Ireland and Norway of Norse settlers in the years after 800 AD. In this area, a mile or so south of Settle, there is a cluster of barns that I know well. The oldest is Brigholme Barn near Giggleswick, by the River Ribble, which apparently dates from the seventeenth century. The last part of its name comes from the ON "holmr" meaning a dry, raised place in wet land - a suitable location for a barn - and the first may derive from either the Old English "brycg" or the ON "bryggja", both meaning bridge. In my childhood it was piled high with bales of hay. It's now surrounded by newer structures that serve modern farming better, but is still used, cared for and maintained with traditional methods (lime mortar etc) as befits a listed building.

A few hundred yards from the barn in the photograph is the oddly named Fish Copy Barn. A more "architectural" structure than many it has a "porch", carved stone decoration and a late nineteenth century date stone with the owner's initials. For many years it was roofed, and the upper part of the porch was notable for a pile of song thrush nests about six feet high, the work of successive generations of birds each building on the nest below. Now it stands forlorn, unwanted and roofless amid a patch of waste land. By the A65 road the cluster of Cleatop Barns (named after the nearby house and wood) are in the process of being transformed into offices, retail space and a restaurant: a sad end for these distinctive buildings.

I visited Settle in a period of unseasonally hot weather with clear blue skies - not ideal for walking on the limestone and millstone grit uplands or for photography. This shot, however, was taken on the first morning of my stay when some low cloud pierced by patches of sunlight made photography much easier.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 60mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Midland Hotel, Morecambe

2011-10-02T17:00:00.009+01:00

click photo to enlarge

The Midland Hotel in Morecambe, Lancashire was built in 1932-3 for the London, Midland and Sottish Railway Company by the architect, Oliver Hill (1888 - 1967). It replaced a Victorian design by Edward Paley, with Hill being required to construct "a building of international quality in the modern style." Hill was an architect who moved from the Arts and Crafts tradition to modernism, or at least what passed for modernism in 1930s Britain: more Art Deco or "moderne" than the full-blown European model.

His curving design at Morecambe is a fine piece of work that still looks good today. It has a main entrance elevation that faces the town and a liner-like facade overlooking the sea. When I first saw it as a child in the 1950s it impressed with its size, and its whiteness. As I grew and became more interested in architecture I liked the banded windows, the prominent, bowed and glazed central stairwell (though I could have done without the sea horses), the Mendelsohn-like curved projection at one end and the spiral entrance pillars. Over the years as the sea-side resort declined so too did the Midland Hotel. It became grubby, something of a faded beauty whose charms could only just be glimpsed beneath the weeds and peeling paintwork. However, in recent years the building has been redeveloped by Urban Splash. I say redeveloped rather than restored because some sensitive changes have been made with the result that The Midland Hotel is once more the most noticeable and architecturally most outstanding building in Morecambe.

I was pleased to be able to photograph the Midland on a day with enough sun, blue sky and clouds to capture a holiday mood that suits it. It looked stunning, though I'm not so sure about the comfort-factor of those angular cafe chairs.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The tambourinist

2011-10-01T17:00:00.003+01:00

click photo to enlarge

According to my edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the word violinist (like the word violist for a viola player) is first recorded c.1670. Cellist however, first appears quite a bit later, in 1888, though the currently much less used violoncellist is recorded earlier, in 1835. I delved into the etymology of these words when I came to caption today's photograph. How does one describe someone who plays a tambourine? A trumpet player is a trumpeter not a trumpetist, though someone who plays a trombone is a trombonist. By association I made a stab at tambourinist, then checked to see if that was the word. The OED does list it with an earliest recorded use in Webster's Dictionary of 1961 and subsequent examples of tambourinist cited from 1970, 1971 and 1983. This struck me as a very late coining of the word given that the earliest recorded use of tambourine dates from 1579.

The tambourinist in the photograph can be seen in the gardens of Brodsworth Hall, South Yorkshire, one of the most complete Victorian stately homes. This figure is one of a number of statues bought in 1866 by Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson for his newly built hall, many supplied by the Italian sculptor, Chevalier Casentini, who may have been responsible for this example.

It's not difficult to photograph a statue or piece of sculpture in context, and just as easy to select an interesting detail. What is harder is to make a satisfactory photograph comprising more than a representation of the work. My attempt at that here involved using a dark background of conifers together with a tree in autumnal colours, and positioning the sculpture relative to those so that colour and contrast worked together to make a bold image.

For more photographs of this location see these general views, this garden statue and topiary, and this garden building.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On