Churchyard trees

click photo to enlarge
Churchyard trees are the bane of my photographic life - but I wouldn't be without them! Most English churches are surrounded by a few, or many, trees. Those that aren't are often in the uplands, on moorland fells, by the sea, far out in wind-swept marshes, or in the concrete jungles that are our great cities. But in villages and towns trees surround the church, often the biggest, oldest and most interesting specimens in the settlement.

In almost every churchyard that has trees the dark green, evergreen yew (Taxus baccata) will be found, often many specimens, sometimes in an avenue flanking the main path to the south porch or west door. This long-lived tree is a symbol of everlasting life, a deterrent to the farmers of long ago who let their cattle roam free (its berries are poisonous), and the source of the English archers' longbow. Holly (Ilex aquifolium) is nearly as ubiquitous, its red berries and prickly leaves, a reminder of Christ's crown of thorns. Quite a few churchyards have laurel bushes and trees. These were planted by the Victorians who valued it for its association with victory, particularly the victory over death that Christianity offered believers. The rest of the trees to be found will reflect the locality and its soil, the taste of the church council, and the fashions of the past few hundred years - in the second half of the twentieth century many flowering cherries were planted. To walk through an old churchyard full of trees, such as the one above at Swineshead in Lincolnshire, is a real pleasure, and offers variety and interest whatever the season. Today the snowdrops and aconites were in full flower, and the first crocuses were starting to appear.

So, since these are clearly places of great beauty, why do I describe the trees as "the bane of my photographic life?" Well, if you're interested in photographing church architecture, and want an image of the whole building, you find that they are invariably planted just where you wish they weren't - often obscuring the "best" viewpoint from the south-east. Winter is the only time that a reasonable view of the south elevation of the medieval church at Swineshead can be secured. And, even then (as you can see), I had to move farther to the west than I would have liked, and shoot through a tangle of branches. However, I was thankful for the appearance of a shaft of afternoon sun from behind quite thick cloud, that illuminated the building and separated it from its surroundings, thereby helping me in my task.

For more images of this church and its churchyard see here, here, here, and here, and for a bigger, black and white version of the image above click here.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Looking for colour 2

click photo to enlarge
In my garden the winter-flowering heather is showing its purples and whites in vigorous clumps among the dwarf conifers on the rockery. On the trellis yellow spots of winter jasmine still shine like stars against their dark backdrop. And a few clumps of yellow, purple and pink primulas glow from their protected spots below shrubs and trees. All these flowers have been offering spots of colours for quite a while now, snow permitting.

However, since Valentine's Day, and coinciding with the increasing temperatures and easing wind, other flowers have started to show signs of life. Drifts of white snowdrops are blooming in profusion in the flower beds and on the bank of the stream. Dull purple and bright white hellebores are showing well under the willow, and nearby the blue and yellow of the lungwort (pulmonaria) is starting to be visible. A couple of yellow tete-a-tete narcissi have opened, and under the crab apple tree the daffodils are in full bud, and visibly growing taller each day.

So, with bright colours starting to re-appear in the garden I put my macro lens on my camera and went out to see what I could photograph. And promptly went back in! Though the day was overcast it was bright, and whilst the temperature was lower than on recent days, it wasn't unpleasant. What drove me back into the house was the wind. It has been quite gentle for the past fortnight, but today it was quite a bit stronger, gusty and disturbing every plant at which I pointed my camera. So, feeling thwarted, I took some "Lakeland" water colour crayons out of the cupboard, a pack that I bought a while ago and haven't yet used, and got my "colour fix" by arranging and photographing some of those!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/10 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Snowdrops and capitalism

click photo to enlarge
Capitalism and a market economy seem to be the worst mechanisms for securing a high standard of living and increasing prosperity - except for all the other systems that have been tried.* But, whilst it can deliver quantity of life (though rarely for all citizens) it frequently fails to deliver quality of life. In the recent "boom" decades, psychologists, sociologists and everyday experience demonstrated that the increasing affluence of western societies brought increasing stress, anxiety, overwork, disatisfaction, and an unhealthily high regard for self: the condition that was labelled "affluenza". And now, as the world economy contracts, and joblessness increases, those unhealthy traits of the times of plenty are not lessened, but grow ever stronger: we are, apparently, no happier in times of "bust".

It seems to me that advanced capitalism and the market economies that characterise western economies, especially the U.S.A. and the U.K., are ill-equipped to deliver happiness and fulfilment for everyone. The reason they can't do this is that they lack an underpinning morality. It is surely time that people objected to: the idea that it is always "right" to charge for a product what the market will bear; the notion that envy, greed and ostentatious display are qualities (virtues even!) to which we should aspire; the feeling that however much money you have, it's always better to have more; the acceptance that the proper role of advertising is to stimulate avarice and covetousness; companies where the highest paid person in a company is judged to be "worth" 1,000 or 2,000 times what the lowest paid receives; the belief that it's right to pay someone a weekly wage that is insufficient to live on. In the years to come there will be much talk by politicians of a "new order", of controlling the excesses of the past few years, of a new social contract. But, if such talk amounts to no more than a tinkering with the edges of the existing system, it will be worth little. Reforms that get to the heart of capitalism, that inject it with a morality that ensures that all citizens benefit from, and participate fully in the society to which they contribute, are necessary. I'd like to think such changes could happen - but I'm not optimistic.

I was thinking about this as I processed my photograph of some snowdrops that are in full flower in my garden. The way that the plants soldiered on through the snow and ice of the past few weeks, going from tentative shoots to full bloom, impressed me, and reminded me that people have a similar fortitude and will surely deal with the icy blast of this recession too. I posted an image of some very early snowdrops on January 13th. It was a fairly conventional treatment of the subject. This time I went for a "dreamier" approach, and used the shallow depth of field of the macro lens to throw the background out of focus.

* adapted from: "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Winston Churchill (1874-1965), speech in the House of Commons, 11th November 1947

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

What is it?

click photo to enlarge
What is it? A false-colour photograph of a mountain range? A colourfully prepared meat dish ready for eating? Part of the innards of a dead animal? The wrinkled skin of an exotic lizard? It's none of these, but is, as its label tells, a detail of an unfurling rhubarb leaf.

Over the past few days , the warmer weather has caused the green, red, pink and yellow buds and shoots of my rhubarb to become much more visible. As I passed it today I stopped and looked closely at the unlikely shapes and colours that it was producing. Some of the newer, darker, almost brownish pieces looked like a small brain, all shiny wrinkles and folds. Other shoots had miniature leaves with colourful veins and leaves. The piece in my image was only an inch or so across and looked quite otherworldly - like a high definition photograph of the untrodden land of a distant planet. I took this shot of it, and decided it would make a good subject for one of those photographic quizzes where people have to guess what something is from a fairly close-up shot. I wouldn't have guessed what this was, and I reflected that seeing the familiar in an unfamiliar way is one of the small pleasures of the macro lens.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/40 second
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Victorian garden

click photos to enlarge
There's small wonder that when children go into a public playground one of the first things they head for is the see-saw ( that is if "health and safety" hasn't banned it.) It seems that the human psyche just loves to go first this way, then that. Yesterday lending was good: today it's bad. Bust inevitably follows boom, and the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

This see-sawing (or perhaps it's a swinging motion, and I chose the wrong piece of equipment for my metaphor) affects gardening just as much as international finance, the length of skirts, or the nutritional value, or otherwise, of the humble egg. England's great contribution to gardening - the landscape garden -was triumphant in the eighteenth century. Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton, and their followers recast the gardens and parks of the well-to-do to look like the vision of "wild nature tamed" as seen in the paintings of Claude. Romantic ruins, serpentine paths, "eye-catcher" follies, asymmetric clumps of trees and shrubs all contributed to the look. However, by the 1830s people had become tired of this, and the pendulum (to introduce a third metaphor!) swung back to the very formality that the landscapists had sought to banish. The gardens of Italy during the Renaissance, with their rectangular, geometric forms, prominent fountains, statues, axial layouts, tall conifers contrasting with tidy, cut shrubs, were the inspiration for this new direction. That this recreation wouldn't have been recognised by either an ancient Roman or a later Italian was of no consequence: even parterres made a comeback, and newly imported exotica like the monkey puzzle tree were included in this heady mix.

Today's photographs show something of this style of garden at Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, in the month of February. The two views each show a part of the same area, the first illustrating the favoured axial symmetry, here lined up on the centre of the west facade, and the second the degree of "close control" that such gardens exhibit: not so much nature tamed, as nature caught, caged, muzzled and trimmed like a pampered poodle!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Second image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Looking for colour

click photo to enlarge
Today, despite the weather forecasters' predictions the day was sunny, bright and warm. Coming after one of the coldest periods in recent years, with its accompanying days of dark grey skies, it was a welcome change. Sitting on my bench in the garden I could almost imagine it was the end of March rather than late February.

So, motivated by the clarity, colour and brightness of everything I cast around for something colourful to photograph. The winter-flowering heather was showing fine white and purple hues, but the sun and shadows falling on it didn't help the composition. The clumps of snowdrops under the trees by the stream looked cheerful, but white and green wasn't showy enough for me. Nor were the odd yellow pansies that had survived the frost and snow. A passing tortoiseshell butterfly that also thought it was later in the year, and had awakened from it torpor, wouldn't settle long enough for me to get a decent shot, though I did photograph a small group of ladybirds huddled together on a conifer. However, as I passed the front porch I noticed, through the frosted glass, blue, yellow and red. I went inside and found a daffodil, geraniums and a primula in flower. The latter's blue/purple petals and its white-fringed yellow "eye" offered the vivid and vivacious colours that I craved, and so I took this close-up image. No doubt there will be further dull, dank weather, frosts, and maybe the odd light fall of snow, but today I'm not thinking about that, I've got my eye on spring.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1 second
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

districtnk and all that

click photo to enlarge
Driving through Lincolnshire a few weeks ago I noticed a new roadside sign. It welcomed me to an area known as "districtnk" - that font, that spacing, those colours! I looked around with some trepidation, thinking that I'd entered a gulag-ridden outpost of the the old USSR at co-ordinates n,k on the map held by the Supreme Soviet in Moscow. However, when I saw the sign again I realised that North Kesteven District Council had "re-branded" itself - whatever that means - and this was their new welcome sign. Furthermore, it proclaimed that the district comprised "100 flourishing communities" (not 98, 99 or 101, but 100 - what are the chances?), and, because they knew that the new title was so opaque that it couldn't stand alone they spelled out the council name in full at the bottom. Gone was the old coat of arms, replaced by a symbol that made it look like they were sponsored by BP. I hope they didn't pay very much to the consultants who came up with all this because if it's supposed to show the council as progressive, modern, go-ahead, etc, for those of a certain age it suggests just the opposite. Perhaps the next step in the re-branding is for districtnk to start re-naming some of those "flourishing communities" after Soviet leaders, after which they'll move on to giving the schools numbers instead of names.

Signs, as a couple of my recent posts have suggested can be puzzling and fun. One notice I remember, that I didn't photograph but wish I had, was in an area of waste ground and said simply, "Danger! Deep Active Sludge" - succinct, memorable, and to me, completely impenetrable. Today's third and final (for now) offering was taken a couple of years ago near Bleasdale Tower in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire. It was presumably erected by concerned parents who wanted the farm vehicles to drive with consideration. The way they expressed themselves certainly caught the eye, but I wonder if, in the longer term, it had the opposite effect to what was intended. I say that because, though I must have passed it a dozen times as I walked the area over the years, my experience was of children and dogs nowhere! Not a one, just like on the day I took this shot.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Classicism and topiary

click photo to enlarge
The poet and atheist, Andrew Motion, has called for pupils in English schools to be taught more about the Bible. He is concerned that many students arrive at university ignorant of the text that underpins much of English literature. I have sympathy with his arguments, but I'm not sure how it can be done. In the past, and in my education, pupils learned about the Bible through the Christian worship and religious education that were features of almost all English schools. These are still, nominally, compulsory in schools, but the amount of time devoted to them has declined, and the almost exclusive focus on Christianity has been replaced by shallower study of more religions, for reasons that are certainly defensible.

Similar arguments could be advanced in support of teaching pupils about classical civilization, including Greek and Roman mythology. In fact, in a largely secular society, it is arguable that the legacy of the ancients remains almost as pervasive as that of Christianity, yet general knowledge of it is fast disappearing. But here too I struggle to think how one would achieve a wider understanding of the classical foundations of western society. Yet such knowledge was, for centuries, a cornerstone of education: the trivium and quadrivium grew out of it, and through the Great Books programme a number of American universities have more recently sought to use the seminal classical texts (along with the major works of later centuries) as the basis for their academic curriculum.

From the allusions to classical mythology that pepper poetry and prose, the Orders of Architecture and their associated ornament that grace our cities, and the etymology of a large portion of the words of the English language, the influence of Greece and Rome remains strong, and a knowledge of classical culture enriches one's day to day experience of the world. On a recent walk through the gardens of Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, I came across a number of classical statues set among the gardens and glades. They were largely of a general nature rather than specific, recognisable characters from the past. However, most displayed the contraposto stance derived from the ideal of beauty that descended from the ancient world, through the Renaissance and down to the nineteenth century from when these statues date. One held the mask of Janus, and another looked the model of sobriety in a toga, the badge of Roman citizenship. Such figures became traditional in English gardens from the 1700s onwards, and apart from providing focal points among the planting, served to display, on the part of of the Victorian owners, an image of learning. My photograph shows one such statue apparently passing purposefully through the topiary.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/120
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Incendiary bicycles?

click photo to enlarge
A few decades ago, in my teenage years, I was cycling down a long, steep and winding hill above Langcliffe in the Yorkshire Dales. As the drystone walls and sheep flashed by the smell of burning impinged on my consciousness. Glancing briefly around I could see neither burning man nor flaming beast, but looking down I saw smoke coming from my brake blocks. I suspect I had bought the cheapest available, and they didn't appear to be up to the job. When I stopped, got off and inspected the source of the heat and smoke, I could see that a burnt residue had been smeared around my wheel rims by the friction of rubber on metal. I think I can honestly say that is the only time I have ever considered a bicycle to be anything remotely resembling a fire hazard.

And I suppose that's why I found this sign fixed to a seaside pier in Blackpool, Lancashire, very puzzling, not to say quite bizarre. I tried to imagine the kind of bicycles that the author of the missive might have in mind. I could see that if the clowns from the Blackpool Tower Circus left their car on the pier it might well explode with a flash of flame and a puff of smoke - clowns' cars often do that. But their bicycles? Never! And anyway, most of them have only one wheel so if that was what the sign-writer had in mind he should have prohibited unicycles too! To this day that sign is probably the oddest that I've been motivated to photograph, and the whole point of it, including the spurious "health and safety" justification, puzzles me still.

I came across this image as I was transferring files to my new hard drive after my recent misfortune. It makes a good companion for the image I posted a couple of weeks ago. If you're not keen on this sort of shot, hard luck, I found a third example that will appear soon!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

The Target House

click photo to enlarge
So, are the Morris dancers of England an endangered species or not? A few weeks ago a newspaper article suggested as much. It sparked a flurry of investigative journalism by other newspapers, radio and TV, and reporters found themselves getting to grips with this arcane pastime. At the end of the media's rummaging in the unfamiliar world of common figures, distinctive figures, bagmen and fools, the general consensus seemed to be that there was nothing to worry about, and the Morris was quietly (and sometimes noisily, to the sound of bells, swords and staves) thriving.

Traditions and pastimes change down the centuries, some dropping out of favour only to re-emerge as something consciously revived or re-discovered. The same is true of games. Who would have thought that the end of the twentieth century would see the re-appearance of croquet, a game that reached a peak of popularity towards the end of the nineteenth century? Yet, this apparently genteel lawn game played with mallets, hoops and ball, seemed to suit the times, and many middle-class dinner parties across the land concluded to its clack and clatter.

A question I pondered the other day was, "Will domestic archery make a comeback?" The Victorians, particularly women, greatly enjoyed this pastime, and when the men went to play billiards or blast pheasants from the sky, the ladies would often retire to a distant lawn and launch arrows at targets. It was a recent visit to Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, a Victorian country house and grounds now in the care of English Heritage, that set me thinking about this. Near the edge of the extensive gardens, in what must have originally been a quarry, was a long, flat grassed area with a small, one room, Victorian/Georgian building called The Target House. This was the place where the Victorian owners and their guests practised bowmanship (and presumably stored the targets.) My photograph shows part of the main elevation of the building with what appears to be an eighteenth century, classical, Venetian window filled with incongruous (probably later) Gothic glazing bars. Below is an ornate bench with a cast-iron frame. The remainder of the building with its slate roof, chimney and too-large, ornate barge board also seems to be later.

So, will archery make a comeback? The other reason I ask is that last year I bought a recurve longbow, arrows and target, re-awakening an interest that I had in my teenage years. Could it be that, for the only time in my life, I'm on the leading edge of a trend, and in a couple of years English gardens will once again resound to the thwack of arrows hitting compressed straw? Perhaps not!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Simplifying images

click photo to enlarge
One way of reading a photograph is to consider it as a story with a narrative: to ask the question, "What is it trying to say to me?" That question can be easy or hard to answer, and the extent to which it is one or the other often depends on its complexity.

Complicated photographs can tell stories well, but it's probably done better by simpler images. In fact, a good rule of thumb in photography is to decide your subject, and then see how you can depict it with the minimum of content. A shot that is constructed on these principles will often be more striking, forceful and pleasing. Over the years I've found that high contrast and silhouettes are effective means of simplifying a photograph, and this blog is littered with examples of both these techniques. Today's image is a case in point.

The subject of my photograph isn't the gulls, rather it's the gulls in their setting and a particular kind of light. The shot depends on the gulls (and the posts, water and colour) for its content, but achieves any quality that it has by simplifying all of these elements, and presenting a semi-abstract, asymmetrical, but balanced composition in silhouette. I could have photographed this location from a different angle, and had a fairly well-illuminated picture, but I think it would have been quite dull. I find that when I'm photographing early or late in the day I actively search out such images, and am often pleased by them. But then perhaps that's just me, and I'm easily satisfied!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 134mm (268mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

St Swithun, Bicker

click photo to enlarge
Yesterday found me taking advantage of the most recent fall of snow, the sun and the blue skies, photographing St Swithun, Bicker. This church is an interesting building, and, with St Andrew in the nearby village of Horbling, stands out amongst the tall spired Fenland churches of this area of Lincolnshire.

Bicker church is cruciform, but so too are many others in the vicinity. However, whilst most cross-shaped churches (in fact most churches of whatever shape) have a long nave and a shorter chancel, at Bicker this is reversed. Consequently, if you don't know the direction that you're facing it's easy to think that the west window is the east, and vice versa. Even the traditional cross surmounting the east gable end is no clue, because the west gable and both transepts have them too. The reason for this unusual configuration is that the nave is early and late Norman (early to late 1100s), and would have been part of the first, smaller, stone building on this site that was then extended to become what we see today: the rounded clerestory windows on the distant left of the building reveal the Norman origins. Interestingly the tower probably dates from the 1300s, whilst the chancel is essentially Early English (1200s), so the building was erected in a sequence that is relatively unusual. Of course, quite a few details of the building date from Victorian restorations of 1876 and 1893-4, and these go some way to pulling the disparate elements together stylistically, and making the original work a little more difficult to decipher. The architectural historian, Nikolaus Pevsner, in The Building of England: Lincolnshire, called St Swithun's a "truly amazing church", and so it is.

My photograph was taken from the point that regular readers of this blog will recognise as my preferred angle - the south-east corner of the churchyard. You may also notice that this classic viewpoint (for an English church) is, not unusually, blocked by trees, both a deciduous variety and a conifer, meaning that a full and satisfying view of the church is impossible at any time of year.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Watching the pink-foots

click photo to enlarge
When I lived on the Fyde Coast of Lancashire I would frequently be drawn out of my kitchen by the sound of skeins of pink-footed geese (Anser brachyrhynchus) as they passed overhead. Their honking cries and the ragged lines and chevrons became a familiar sight from the time they appeared each autumn until their departure the following spring. The Fylde flock varied in size over the years, but was usually estimated at between 7,000 and 10,000 birds.

Pink-footed geese are creatures of habit, and return to the same feeding grounds each year. Such is their predictability that some individual pastures become known as "geese fields". The birds that frequented the Fylde fed on the extensive saltmarshes at Pilling or in the Ribble estuary, when the tide permitted, and at other times would disperse, in smaller groups of a few hundred, to favoured fields of grass or winter wheat. Unfortunately their regular appearance on their preferred sites made it quite easy for the wildfowlers, so-called "sportsmen", to indulge in their pastime of killing wildlife with shotguns for pleasure.

Since I've lived in Lincolnshire I've seen brent geese (Branta bernicla) and barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) on the saltmarshes of The Wash. However, the geese that fly over my new home are not these species, but the familiar pink-foots. This morning I turned my head skywards at the sound of their familiar cries, and saw a couple of dozen flying quite low, perhaps descending into fields beyond the village. Then, whilst out for a morning walk the group in today's photograph flew past, heading perhaps, towards the South Forty-Foot Drain or the fields beyond to the south of Heckington. I have yet to find any local "geese fields", but I live in hope. I quickly took this shot when I saw that the geese would fly over a nearby Fenland farmhouse, a quietly distinguished building dating from the 1700s, and I waited until they were on the left of the frame so that they could balance the building on the right.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 53mm (106mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wych Hazel

click photo to enlarge
There's a place in every garden for a few odd looking plants. And, if that odd looking plant can provide colour in the depths of winter, then it is doubly welcome. The witch hazel (Hamamellis mollis) is such a plant, and this morning I braved the cold to examine it in all its weird splendour.

This winter flowering deciduous shrub was introduced into Britain from China in 1879. Closely related species are also found in Japan and North America. In January and February the bare twigs are festooned with the rather strange looking yellow flowers shown in my photograph. Modern cultivars have extended the range of colours to orange and red. Despite its name the shrub is not related to the European hazel. It got its name from early American settlers who thought the twigs resembled the tree that they remembered from their homelands. The word wych (and witch as it is known in the U.S.A.) comes from the Old English wice meaning pliant. Many people who wouldn't recognise the plant know the name from the medicinal extract widely used for treating bruises, insect bites and other ailments.

My wych hazel grows in a shady corner of my garden, and I managed to photograph it against a dark background to highlight the shape and colour of the flowers. I selected a section of branch and framed it diagonally in the viewfinder.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:- 0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Neophilia and listmania

click photo to enlarge
Yesterday's post was, in part, about neophilia, the love of novelty and new things, a fondness that is often taken to excess and whose corollary is usually a dislike of that which is old. I've been thinking about this in the context of "listmania" - the drawing up of lists and, particularly, "best ofs". For a number of years it's been impossible to avoid these inane compilations. Guitar solos, footballers, movie themes, overtures, hoaxes, cartoon characters, love songs, jokes - it seems that everything has at one time or another been subjected to a list that purports to rank the 100 "best" (or sometimes "worst") examples. There are legions of magazine articles and books based on this idea: there's even a website that professes to list the 100 Best Everything! The most loathsome list that I've come across is in a book called Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK, a particularly repugnant mixture of smugness and bigotry. This nasty little volume would be number 1 in my "50 Worst Books" list (irony alert!)

There's also a television channel, not one that I've watched I hasten to add, but which I've noticed on my electronic programme guide, that seems to consist of day-long offerings of musical lists - the 100 best-ever comedy songs, the 100 best-ever disco hits, the 100 best-ever "weepies", etcetera, ad nauseam. What you notice about most of these lists is that they are based on the perspective of a few twenty-somethings so they reflect only their experience, and in many instances encompass only the past 10 years. That's not surprising, I suppose, since the whole "list" phenomenon seems to be designed to appeal to a section of the younger population. That such a concept is entirely fatuous is indisputable. But it's worse than that, it's dangerous. Not in a life-threatening way of course, but in a cultural sense. The idea that someone has the audacity to suggest that they know what is best is one thing, but that people should blindly accept this judgement, and then act on it in terms of buying, consuming and informing their own judgement and appreciation, is quite another.

All of which has little to do with today's photograph of a chest tomb and a gravestone, Grade II listed structures, in a Lincolnshire churchyard. Both are made of limestone ashlar, are old (eighteenth century) so won't appeal to neophiles, and both are unlikely to appear on any list other than those compiled by English Heritage. The gravestone is rectangular with a segmental top and the most elaborate scrolled cartouche with cherubs. It has a much faded epitaph commemorating William Base d.1749. The chest tomb has inscription panels on the sides recording John Spur d.1761. At each corner are gadrooned pilasters, and on the west face is a semi-circular headed niche with a very weathered sculpture of Christ Triumphant Over Death. If you look carefully you can see that Christ has his foot firmly placed on a skull!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The old and the new

click photo to enlarge
In a newspaper article I was reading the other week the writer made the point that he (or was it she?) knew of many people's houses that contained nothing that was old. No old pieces of furniture, no old photographs on display, no old "consumer durables", no old books, nothing: everything seemed to date from the past five years.

Thinking about it, I can understand how this might come about. In recent years people setting up home have tended to acquire everything that is necessary within a short space of time. The lower cost of such goods, higher incomes, and greater expectations, have made this approach, in some quarters, the norm. Not for them the collecting of cast-offs from parents and relatives, or the scouring of junk shops for something that "will do." No, the new house, the new car, the new interior has been the aim that some have thought a "right", and they've had it whether or not they can afford it. The economic downturn will result in some of these houses suffering what I think of as "Soviet navy syndrome". The old USSR expanded its surface fleet by building new vessels over a very short period, with the result that they all became obsolete at the same time too.

Whilst some people love the style, quality, associations, thrift, and eclectic feel that comes from mixing old with new (I certainly do), others see the anachronism as awkward, the old items as dirty and shabby, and much prefer to lust after the newest, latest, most fashionable in everything. I suppose some people are just strange! I was reminded of this as I processed this image of an old house overlooked by wind turbines on the Lincolnshire Fens. The flat landscape and old buildings look like they're accompanied by some shiny new visitors from outer space, so "different" do the new turbines look. Yet, I can't help thinking that, in reasonable numbers, they add to this landscape rather than detract from it. But I suppose I would say that as I view this text on my glossy new 22 inch LCD screen and type on my grubby, battered ten year old keyboard that I keep for its wonderful action (real mechanical linkages to each key as opposed to a squishy plastic membrane)!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Promenade silhouettes

click photo to enlarge
I once posted on a photography forum an image of the silhouette of a bicycle (The bait digger's bike) propped against some old seaside railings. All the details in the shot were black, and they were set against the orange and purple glow of dusk. The comments that followed were more numerous than I expected, and quite a few were about the details of the bike, speculation about its gearing, quality and so on. What I learned from this is that the reduction in detail that a silhouette entails focuses people's attention on the details that remain to a greater extent than would have been the case if the image had been well lit.

Today's photograph is a case in point. I took it a while ago at Lytham Green, an open space next to the where the River Ribble flows into the Irish Sea at Lytham in Lancashire. It shows my favourite photographic model (my wife), sitting on one of the ornate cast iron benches next to the footpath that overlooks the water. Next to her is a street light with an old style lantern top, from which hangs a life belt and the attached rope. Apart from the grass and the late afternoon sky of February that's it. It's a shot that I don't think would work if the light had been behind me and the scene had been fully lit. I don't claim that it's a great shot, but I do think that the silhouette I captured has more interest, and that the eye lingers over the details longer, than would have been the case with any other treatment of the subject.

Of course, the Victorians knew all this, as did the eponymous Etienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), Louis XV's miserly finance minister, who discovered the power and interest of silhouettes as he spent his retirement cutting them out of out of black paper. So too did John Miers (1756-1821), the English painter, whose portrait silhouettes on plaster and card were much sought after for the likeness (!) and detail of his depictions. Perhaps, in these straitened times, when money is tighter, and people are doing more for themselves, the inexpensive art and craft of silhouette cutting will make a comeback to while away those dark winter evenings!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 96mm (192mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/2000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Photography and terrorism

click photo to enlarge
On February 16th the freedom of photographers in the UK will be further curtailed when the Counter Terrorism Act 2008 becomes law. This legislation allows for the arrest, imprisonment (for up to 10 years) or fine of anyone who elicits or attempts to elicit information about a member of the armed forces, an intelligence officer or a constable, which is likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or publishes or communicates such information. Now you might think that protection of this sort is desirable for those in the front line of the so-called "war on terror". And so would I if I felt that would be how the legislation would be used. The problem is that the drafting is sufficiently loose for it to be used by the police to prevent photography of any officer in any circumstances.

In recent years a number of amateur photographers have been illegally harrassed by the police, PCSOs, security guards and others when photographing within the bounds of the existing law - photographing buildings, scenes in the street, at railway stations etc - and have been questioned, compelled to stop, made to erase images, and forced to move on. Journalists have been arrested, had cameras snatched, and their view deliberately blocked when photographing demonstrations as they are legally entitled to do so, and as society would wish them to do in the interests of free speech. The legislation that will soon come into force will give the police and others the power to prevent people taking photographs in which they feature, even incidentally. Given the well-documented disregard for the present law exhibited by some who are charged with upholding it, can we have any faith that this extension to police powers will be used as those who framed the legislation intended? Even though the Act allows that anyone charged can use the defence of "reasonable excuse", it seems highly unlikely that this will prevent it being used to strengthen the position of those in authority with an unreasonable fear of photography. And anyway, should photographers be put in the position of having to prove their innocence for simply pursuing a hobby or, in the case of journalists, exercising what should be a basic freedom of the press in any mature democracy?

I can see that some will want to give the benefit of the doubt to the legislators and law enforcement officers, and will trust that the new law will be used as intended. Others will think that my views are unneccesarily alarmist. However, I see this as a further erosion of essential freedoms that many private individuals, politicians, civil servants, academics, and others are beginning to question more strongly. Today I've written to the Home Secretary deploring the scope and likely use of this legislation. I've also asked her to give me two things: firstly, a written assurance that this legislation will not be used to limit my freedom as an amateur photographer to photograph anything within a public place, and a paragraph that I can carry to present to anyone who tries to stop me pursuing my hobby, saying that this Act cannot be used for that purpose. Even before I wrote I had little faith that I'll receive those assurances, and, if past experience in contacting the Home Office is any guide, I'll have to ask more than once to get a specific response rather than mollifying waffle. However, I do it in the knowledge that doing nothing doesn't change anything, and doing something might. I urge you to to do something too.

Here are some links about this issue:

Counter Terrorism Act 2008 (Para 76 is the relevant section)
Jail for photographing police? British Journal of Photography article, 28 January 2009
Photographers react to British PM's message Amateur Photographer 13 January 2009
Home Secretary green lights restrictions on photography British Journal of Photography article, 1 July 2008

So, given that this blog is about my "photographs and reflections" is there any link between today's image and what's written above? Not really, except that the growing curtailment of freedom in the UK may well lead to photographers taking more images of this sort that don't "infringe someone's liberty", don't offend someone's delicate sensibilities, can't be misconstrued in any way, and have no potential to be used for terrorist purposes!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bird books and memories

click photos to enlarge
The other day I took down a book from my shelves for no good reason other than I hadn't looked at it for a while. It was British Birds by F.B. Kirkman and F.C.R. Jourdain. My edition dates from 1966, the year I bought it in Kirkby Lonsdale as a teenage birdwatcher holidaying with relatives at nearby Whittington. It looks quite old-fashioned today with its painted illustrations (called Plates, and numbered), and text divided into sections headed Description, Range and Habitat, Nest and Eggs, Food, and Usual Notes (i.e. song or call). Moreover, the order of the species is not as we would now expect, but starts with Crows and ends with Divers. A further quirk is the page numbering that counts only the text pages, something that is quite common in C19 books. In fact, this book looked old-fashioned in 1966, and with good reason: the first edition was printed in 1930, was based on the British Bird Book (ed. Kirkman) of 1910-1913, and uses the same 200 illustrations.

It was those paintings, as well as the quality of the book, and the final section with paintings of all the species' eggs lined up as in a Victorian collector's cabinets, that led me to buy it. The main plates are in a range of styles by a variety of artists, usually showing the bird in its habitat. Most are the work of A.W. Seaby, but there are contributions by G.W. Collins, Winifred Austen and H. Gronvold. For the purposes of identifying the species the pictures leave a little to be desired, but as individual paintings of wild birds they are charming: they appealed to a teenager, and they appeal to me still.

As I renewed my acquaintance with the book and flicked through the pages, stopping at birds that caught my eye, I came to the Teal (Anas crecca), and out from the page dropped a little collection of feathers of that species. Watching them float slowly to the floor I was immediately transported back to the pond on Docker Moor where I found them among the rushes after I'd inadvertently flushed the birds from the water side. They were from the flanks, scapulars or back of the birds, and had lain undisturbed between the pages for more than forty years.

What do you do when you find a group of feathers like this? Photograph them of course! My first image is in the style of the Victorian collectors, with the feathers laid out not quite randomly on a white background. The second is what I see as a more modern approach, a closer view making more of the brown and white striations by the use of a black background.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

First image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/5 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Second image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/2 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Pinchbeck

click photo to enlarge

Pinchbeck near Spalding in Lincolnshire doesn't take its name from the alloy of zinc and copper used as imitation gold, nor does it derive from the inventor of that metal, Christopher Pinchbeck (c. 1670-1732), the famous London clockmaker. His invention caused "pinchbeck", in the nineteenth century, to become a synonym for cheap and tawdry. However, his unusual surname makes it quite likely that some of his ancestors came from the Lincolnshire village. In the Domesday Book (1086) Pinchbeck is called Pincebec. Later spellings include Pyncebeck and Pincebek, suggesting that the name is a compound of the Old English pinc (minnow) and the Old Norse bekkr (beck or stream). Whether or not the stream that flows through Pinchbeck is still noted for its minnows I don't know!

The church of St Mary is the oldest building in the village. It has some re-used zigzag and billet moulding suggesting that a Norman (C11 and C12) church stood here. What we see today is a big church with a sturdy, finely proportioned tower (though it now leans somewhat) of the C14 and C15. This has a beautiful west doorway with an ogee arch with fleurons and much cusping. The exterior of the building is mainly fourteenth and fifteenth century, but inside is older. The nave arcades (see above) were probably heightened when the church was enlarged, but they mainly date from the C13. At the west end the exceedingly tall tower arch is C14. Much of the eye-catching roof is original, probably C15, with tie-beams and hammerbeams alternating, the latter having large angel figures (for another angel roof see here). The whole structure was restored by the eminent Victorian architect , George Butterfield, in 1855-64. He did a good job, making sensitive repairs and additions to the structure.

My photograph is a view of the nave from in the chancel. Behind me at the east end is the high altar. However, as is common today with the smaller congregations of churches, another altar has been set up at the east end of the nave near the pulpit. I usually make a shot into the nave, from beyond the chancel arch, a strictly symmetrical composition. However, here I went for asymmetry and stood to one side. Despite it being early February the light inside the church was excellent for three reasons: the south aisle and clerestory windows are clear glass, the sun was shining, and the churchyard still had a reasonable covering of snow that was acting as my photographic reflector, illuminating the building and, particularly, the roof and its old timbers.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/19
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Using the sky

click photo to enlarge
The other week I gave a talk about garden and flower photography to the local garden club. During the course of the presentation I talked about whether or not to include sky in shots of gardens. My view was that, in general, better photographs of gardens result from compositions that exclude the sky unless including it adds something positive to the image. So, I said, I favoured a blue sky broken by clouds, or a sky with interesting clouds, but I would strive to eliminate from my photographs, or at least minimise, flat, grey stratus, or a boring, clear blue sky.

In a country that is known for its clouds, where the changeable weather is a favourite topic of conversation, and where many choose their holidays on the basis of how clear and blue the sky is, that last phrase bit to be a little controversial, and so it proved. So I was careful to make it clear that I was only disparaging flawless azure in photographic terms - for other purposes I recognised that it had its uses.

Much the same might be said of whether or not to include the sky in a landscape photograph. I think it's true that for the landscape photographer an interesting arrangement of clouds can be the difference between an average image and a good one. In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that a beautiful sky can be the star of a landscape photograph, and what appears below can be merely the supporting cast. An image like today's illustrates that point quite well. It isn't a wonderful shot, but what good qualities it does possess rely heavily on the colours, patterns and tones of the sky: the silhouettes of the wind turbines, the electricity pylons and wires are the nominal (and necessary) subjects, but are secondary to what is happening above.

Regular visitors to the blog will note another image where the sun has been deliberately included (see here).

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/2000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Snow, headlines and blackbirds

click photo to enlarge
Some British journalists are bone idle and write their stories before the event that they describe has happened. "Exam joy" appears every summer accompanied by a photograph of incredulous, laughing students reading their results from the papers distributed by their schools, accompanied by text that records yet another increase in grades. Similarly, when a fall of the white stuff happens, out comes the headline "Arctic weather causes chaos", though to be fair, journalists sometimes revert to the less pithy (but essentially similar), "Country grinds to halt under blanket of snow." Then follows the inevitable article about how Britain can't cope with a fall of snow that is regarded as minor or routine in other places. Such pieces involve an unedifying mixture of sloth and ignorance.

If these journalists had the slightest familiarity with geography, meteorology or even general knowledge they would know that the snow that falls on the heavily populated areas of Britain doesn't come every year, doesn't come in the same amounts, and is of varying consistencies. Consequently it is not cost effective, nor is it good sense, to have in place the measures that are appropriate in Canada, Norway or Arctic Siberia. Furthermore, the writers of these articles don't appear to have noticed that our island is one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, and that a road blocked by a vehicle mishap involving snow has bigger repercussions than elsewhere. Nor have they realised that our relatively mild, maritime climate invariably results in freeze-thaw conditions around snowfalls, which bring a particularly troublesome set of circumstances that don't apply where snow lays long-term. I can just about forgive the ignorance of the Canadian tourist I heard bemoaning the disruption to flights at Heathrow and disparagingly comparing the snow clearing measures there with those in her country. However, I find it hard to take from people who live here and should be aware of the facts - probably the same people who'd be writing articles about the waste of public money on snowclearing equipment that would lay idle for years on end if our authorities followed the advice of these benighted commentators.

The disruption that the snow caused to the blackbirds in my garden appears to be fairly minimal. This "tame" cock bird found it harder than usual to stand on my kitchen window cill provoking me to feed it some scraps, but otherwise they just got on with the daily grind of foraging. It's clearly harder for the birds when snow is laying, so I've increased the amount of seed, nuts and titbits that we usually offer in winter to help them through this "Arctic Hell" (irony alert).

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lichfield Cathedral

click photo to enlarge
I've been doing some decorating of the house recently, although to be more accurate I should say that I've been helping my wife to do it, she being the one who takes the lead in such things. It's only when you do something like this that you realise how fond builders are of approximation. Hang wallpaper and you notice that walls are sometimes very slightly off vertical. Laying floor tiles can lead to the discovery that what you thought was a rectangular room is actually a touch rhomboidal. Tiny imprecisions of this sort don't matter a geat deal in a house, where the rooms are relatively small, vistas are limited, and ones eyes don't often line up one surface or edge against another.

However, in a big building, such as a medieval church, and particularly a cathedral, if you don't get the floor plan right, if lines are not laid correctly, if right angles are a degree or two wrong, then once the building is completed these imperfections are magnified. And, at that point it's a couple of hundred years later, and taking it all down and rebuilding it straight isn't really an option. Such is the case at Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire. The earliest building on the site dated from about 700A.D. Nothing of that remains, and little of its Norman succesor of the C12 is to be seen either. However, the Gothic structure that was built from the 1200s onwards is still very much in evidence, though repaired down the centuries after damage from neglect, falling towers, and the fighting of the Civil War. It was the Gothic masons, it seems, who got the nave and chancel out of line (though they may have been building on the foundations of the Normans). Stand in the nave, as I did for the photograph above, and the leftward lurch of the chancel is evident. So too are the leaning nave piers. Further collapse was averted by the architect, James Wyatt, in the late eighteenth century, by the expedient of replacing the 500 tons of stone nave vaulting with lighter lath and plasterwork in the style of vaulting.

Imperfections aside, I think you'll agree that the view inside Lichfield, with its forest of verticals (and almost verticals) reaching their climax in the pointed arches and vaulting ribs, is magnificent.

photograph & text (c) T.Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm (54mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/5
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

A sign of the times?

click photo to enlarge
I don't know about you, but I thought it was deep water that was dangerous. At least I've seen plenty of signs around canals, rivers, reservoirs, lakes, etc., that warn me about it, so it seemed a reasonable conclusion. However, when I was walking in Williamson Park, Lancaster, I came across this sign, and the only conclusion I can draw from it is that if shallow water is dangerous too, then surely all water must be dangerous. Perhaps the sign makers could save time and money by simply printing "Danger, Water!"

Of course, if they did that they'd need to put the signs on taps, baths, water coolers and swimming pools. People would need to be employed to place portable signs next to puddles after rain, and to remove them when the water evaporated. And if we conceded this principle then all those "Danger, High Voltage" signs on electrical equipment would need to be complemented by "Danger, Low Voltage" on batteries, or would it just be "Danger, Voltage"? Maybe balloons would have warnings analagous to those on plastic bags, but instead of saying "Danger of suffocation!" they'd say "Danger , Low Voltage if Rubbed on a Jumper!" And, thinking about it, I suppose the plastic bags that have holes punched in them to prevent suffocation would need marking with "Danger, You might get a bit out of breath and damp from condensation if you put this over your head!" Or not.

I came across this photograph when I was transferring backed-up images to my new hard drive. I took it a couple of years ago. Looking at it the other day I thought it perfectly encapsulated our risk averse, litigation conscious, accidents-don't-exist-anymore, it's-always-someone-else's-fault culture. The organisation that had the sign erected was clearly covering its back, fearing that if someone dived into the shallow water (an ornamental pond) and hurt themselves they'd have vulture-lawyers working on a no-win-no-fee basis to recover damages for their "negligence" in not warning about the depth of the water. It's literally and metaphorically a "sign of the times" in which we live.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm (90mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On