To the ends of the earth

click photo to enlarge

Lincolnshire is the second largest English county (by area), encompassing that swathe of Eastern England between the Humber estuary and The Wash. The county has relatively little industry, no large cities, and only a short section of motorway. For many it is England's sparsely populated, sleepy backwater, and those who give it any thought at all think of it as flat and fecund. Both of these words have elements of truth: the Fens and the coastal areas are flat, but the Wolds and the hills of the Stone Belt are certainly not. And, whilst some of the most productive arable land in the country is to be found here, so too are marshes and pastures.

Consequently many are surprised to find that Lincolnshire produced more than its fair share of explorers who left the green fields and ancient churches of their home county to travel to the ends of the earth. Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), a Spilsby man, explored the Arctic and mapped two thirds of the northern coastline of North America. Matthew Flinders (1774-1814), who discovered and mapped much of Australia's coast was born in Donington. George Bass (1771-1803), who sailed with Flinders, mapped some of south Australia, and predicted the strait that separates that continent from Tasmania. Flinders named it the Bass Strait after his friend and companion who was christened in the church shown above.

This building of twelfth century foundation, is dedicated to St Denis, and is in the small, picturesque, "estate village" of Aswarby. George Bass was born on a nearby farm, and became a naval surgeon before undertaking his explorations. The church has a memorial and information about Bass, and an Australian flag hangs near the west end of the nave in memory of the village's famous son. I took this shot, one of several I have of this particularly lovely church and setting, on a late March morning when the light said spring, but the wind said winter's not quite gone!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Big hedge

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"Love thy neighbour, yet pull not down thy hedge", Old English Proverb

The saying above has a French version: "Hedges between keep friendships green", and both echo the oft-quoted, "Good fences make good neighbours". That being the case, what are we to make of the hedge shown in today's photograph? Its function doesn't appear to be to encourage a proper neighbourliness, so much as banish everyone and everything from sight. Looking at its height and undulations, "hedge" seems be a misnomer for this edifice constructed out of rows of yew trees grown closely together, and clipped as one structure when their foliage met.

It can be found in the grounds of Ayscoughee Hall, Spalding, Lincolnshire. This building, erected as a house in the early 1400s, and given to the town in the early 1900s, is now a museum with public gardens. However, the hedge must date from its time as a private residence. Research shows the yew trees date from successive plantings, the oldest probably being eighteenth century. It is cut in a way that is fairly common in the grounds of large English country houses (and churchyards), and fulfils the purpose of dividing up the gardens, screening one section from another, acting as a wind-break, and providing a mountainous backdrop against which plants can be displayed. Oh, and it offers gardeners a scary few weeks teetering thirty feet up on ladders as they give it the annual cut!

Impressed by the oddness of this living barrier I decided to show something of its scale by including two people sitting on one of the nearby benches.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 108mm (216mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Do it again

click photos to enlarge
The title of this blog post, inspired by one of the best Beach Boys songs, is about one of the pleasures of photography - revisiting the same subject and producing an image that is, in one or more ways, different from previous shots. There are many variations that the photographer can play on the same theme, but different time of day, season, weather, light, position, focal length and processing are the main variables. Manipulating these can provide stimulation for the mind and eye, and provide a useful and productive alternative to scouring the land for a different subject for each shot.

The mainly fourteenth and fifteenth century church of St Margaret at Quadring, Lincolnshire, has given me a number of images over the past several months, including the shot presented here that I took last October as the trees began to show the colours of autumn. With that photograph in mind, yesterday and today I braved the biting north wind and took more shots of the church, looking to capture the sharp spring light and the now bare trees. As I moved round the building framing shots from all points of the compass I came back to my favourite position for church photography - the view from the south east. What makes this aspect so satisfying is firstly the way the afternoon light models the structure, and secondly how it allows the inclusion of the principal elements of the building, which lead the eye to the usual (in England at least) west tower.

As I snapped away I decided to take a shot similar to that of last autumn, and tried to position myself - from memory - in the same location. I didn't do too badly, and again got the line of gravestones over to the right to give some balance to the shot. When I came to process the image I decided not to show the bluer light of spring that infused the view, but to convert it to a contrasty black and white. So, the variables here are season and processing, with a slightly different position and focal length. Which do you prefer? As for me, "God Only Knows"!

photographs & text (c) T. Boughen

Black & white image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Colour image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Looking up

click photo to enlarge

I've observed elsewhere in this blog that walking along looking up gives you a good picture of how a town or city centre looked in the past. The mania for modernising shop fronts usually means that the original architecture of a building remains only at the level of the first floor and above, the ground floor reflecting one of the fleeting fashions of the past twenty years or so applied with little respect for the rest of the facade.

Looking up can reveal exquisite terracotta ornament, brackets, consoles, cartouches, dated rain-water heads, Moderne windows, columns, capitals and more. It also lets you see the original compositional intention of the architect and the frequent emphasis on good proportion that underpins much eighteenth and some nineteenth century building.

That being the case, you may wonder why I've chosen this boring building with which to make my case, a nineteenth century structure on the High Street at Boston, Lincolnshire. The ground floor is a shop, and probably always was. However, I can't for one moment imagine that the flat fascia, spindly glazing bars, large sheets of glass, and clumsy white rendering were part of the original frontage. This insubstantial composition that looks ready to collapse at any moment under the weight of the bricks above, would have had heavier components, and would have been composed in a way that linked more strongly with the first and second floor windows. Those windows still use the eighteenth century (and Renaissance) idea of large fenestration at the piano nobile level, with smaller windows "closing" the facade above. And that is where the interest lies when looking up at this point on this street: you see a good compositional idea based on the importance of proportion, that was widespread a century earlier, still being used, albeit in a debased way, providing continuity between the building styles of two distinct periods.

I photographed this particular building not only for the reasons noted above, but because it is nicely separated from its neighbours, and for the small, ragged cloud drifting by, an interesting insubstantial counterpoint to the dead weight of brick on brick below.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A different kind of vandal?

click photo to enlarge

The other day I paid my £2.50 to climb just over half-way up the 272 feet high tower of the church of St Botolph in Boston, Lincolnshire. As I puffed and panted up the dark, narrow, spiral staircases I couldn't help but notice the graffiti that generations of visitors had left on the walls.

The most recent were of the "Marky woz ere 22-10-07" variety, or were protestations of undying love, written in text-speak with either a pen or scratched on the surface of the stone. There were also many examples from the twentieth century, and nineteenth century examples weren't difficult to find. But, when I ducked under an arch-cum-doorway that went through a corner buttress, I came upon this interesting group. At the bottom is the date 167?, the last digit being indecipherable due to erosion. Above is the name W. Lisons, another W (to make it symmetrical?) and the date 1753. Then there are further letters (I and S), with a star, that also look eighteenth century, and a mixture of other letters and marks of more recent origin.

As I gazed at them I reflected on why someone would write their name with a hammer and chisel on this ancient building, high above the town. Then it struck me that back then pens were neither as portable nor as permanent as today's, and aerosol cans weren't even a figment of someone's imagination. So I suppose that if you were looking for a bit of fame, notoriety, or even immortality (of sorts), then this might seem the way to achieve it at very little cost. It occurred to me that today's spray painters with their "tags", bubble writing and stencils, probably mark "their" territory from much the same motives. My final thought was that the graffiti that disfigures our present environment wouldn't be quite so ubiquitous if it had to be done with a hammer and chisel. Furthermore the noise as they chip-chipped the letters would make it so much easier to catch the miscreants, and Banksy's anonymity would be very short-lived!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On