River names

click photo to enlarge
The names given to rivers are some of the oldest words to be found in the British Isles. Many of them are pre-Celtic in origin, belonging to a time of which we have little knowledge concerning the languages that were used. The river in today's photograph - the River Welland - is one such name. All we know of the word "welland" is that it occurs in the earliest written documents: we know nothing of its meaning. The same is true of the Lincolnshire rivers Ancholme, Humber and Witham.

When we come to rivers with Celtic names we are often in a position to ascribe a meaning, though sometimes this is no more than an educated guess. In Lincolnshire the name of the River Glen is likely to be of Celtic origin and probably means "the clean one", echoing the derivation of the Northumbrian river of the same name. The River Lymn is also Celtic and derives from the Primitive Welsh "lemo" meaning an elm tree, hence the river's name is "the place where many elms are found". The names of the rivers Trent and Nene are also thought to have Celtic roots.

Why should river names be among our oldest words? The answer is that rivers are important and enduring features of the landscape, a source of food and water, useful for transport and an effective and immutable boundary or defensive line. Such a significant geographical feature would be named before settlements, hills or perhaps even people.

I've photographed Deeping St James church and the River Welland from this location before at different times of year. It makes a fine composition and is an archetypal English rural lowland scene.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

River Welland and Deeping Gate Bridge

click photo to enlarge
I recently read Peter Ackroyd's fine book, "Thames: Sacred River", a work that examines the river that runs through our capital. I read of its early origins, its course from source to sea, its role in trade and commerce, how it was and is used for pleasure, the way artists and writers have depicted it, even how it was a conduit for the city's effluent and the steps taken to return it to life after being for so long, at least in London, little more than an open sewer, and much else. Through fifteen sections and forty five chapters, each of which almost stand alone, Ackroyd looks at the many facets of the Thames. At a number of places he discusses the sites where the river was bridged and the importance that early peoples assigned to such places. This is a subject that has long interested me, and one that I was thinking about when I took today's photograph.

In the British Isles a relatively high number of archaeological finds are associated with bridges. The weapons - swords, daggers, shields, spear etc - of early peoples have often been discovered in river beds near bridges or in the banks and land surrounding them. This is thought to indicate the high value, reverence even, that was placed on a crossing of of a river, the flow itself being seen as something akin to a life-force. The Romans shared this kind of esteem for flowing water and often placed altars by bridges. Medieval religious orders built bridges with chapels on them for similar reasons, but also as a means of raising funds for the maintenance of the crossing.

Deeping Gate bridge has the year 1651 carefully carved on one of the upstream cutwaters. There are no ribs on the underside of the arches, and these are rounded, not pointed. Both of these suggest that the date signifies when it was actually built rather than rebuilt or restored. Consequently it is very unlikely to be a crossing point that experienced the devotional offerings and activities described above. Today it continues to fulfil its original purpose as a crossing point, and now, as at the time it was built, the narrowness of the road means only one vehicle at a time can pass over it. On the day I photographed it the sky, the sun, the reflective surface of the river and the early autumn tints on the trees made a composition that, apart from the road signs and telegraph poles, could have been seen on and similar day over the past couple of hundred years.

For further information about this bridge and a couple more of my photographs of it see here and here.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Design, phones and fishing boats

click photo to enlarge
There's a widely held belief that the design of objects improves with each passing year. That certainly seems to be the case with, for example, cars. Today's models are more comfortable, safer, more fuel efficient, and more rust-free than ever. But there are many objects where design doesn't follow that upward curve of improvement.

I've mentioned before the new teapots that can't pour without dripping despite the fact that the solution to this failing was discovered centuries ago. Then there are shower controls. You'd think that the means of regulating the flow and heat of potentially scalding water would be either standardised - like headlight switches on cars - or at least made blindingly obvious to the first-time user of the shower. But no, it seems that every time I step into an unfamiliar shower I have to try to work out how the controls operate and then risk being burned by hot water. This appears to be because shower designers are more interested in the appearance of the controls than in safety of the user.

I recently bought a pair of new cordless phones from a reputable manufacturer. However, after a couple of weeks I discovered that there was a fault that necessitated me returning them. But, I'd have returned them anyway because the clarity of the voices I heard through the earpiece was simply not good enough. When I, temporarily, plugged in a corded phone - a low-cost model from a no-name manufacturer - voices could be heard as clearly as anyone could wish. Of course, the old-style phone didn't have a light-up display, a choice of ring-tones or a built-in directory. Nor did it show me the name of the caller and the time etc, etc ad nauseam. No, it simply fulfilled its primary function of letting me hear my callers clearly, something that many modern cordless phones seemed to have relegated to a secondary concern behind a cluster of inessential gimmicks. I bought a replacement pair of cordless phones from a less well-known manufacturer, not quite as feature-laden, but which made a selling point of audibility. They work fine.

I was reflecting on progress (or lack of it) in design when I was looking at inshore fishing boats recently in Boston and King's Lynn. Among the steel hulled craft were a few, older timber-built boats dating from the the 1960s (according to the searchable database of UK Fishing Boats LN95 in the smaller photograph was built in 1969). Were the newer vessels, I wondered, better designs than the older boats? Would they last as long and give as good service? I don't know the answer to those questions but I do know that it isn't a given that they will be better in every respect.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (49mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Love-in-a-Mist or Devil-in-the-Bush

click photo to enlarge
Can there be a garden plant with more contradictory common names than the annual flower, Nigella damascena? Love-in-a-Mist is delightfully evocative of the way the light, feathery foliage surrounds the modest but beautiful flowers. However, Devil-in-the-Bush paints quite a different picture and must surely refer to the seed pods, each wrapped in a net-like basket with multiple prongs, like a shroud of barbed wire. Other vernacular names are similarly inventive. Jack-in-Prison probably derives from theed pod and its surrounding entanglement. Love-Entangle may also be similarly inspired, though perhaps the "love" is the flower in the mass of lacy leaves. Hair-of-Venus must be based on the leaves too. A legend attaches to one of the names - Lady-in-the-Shade. The story goes that the Frederick I (1122-1190), Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, drowned when trying to catch an enticing, green-haired water sprite. Lady-in-the-Shade immediately sprang up by the water's edge, a reminder of the tresses of the temptress. As is often the case, the Latin name of the plant is simply descriptive. Nigella refers to the small, black seeds to be found in the pod, and damascena comes from Damascus.

In my macro photograph of the seed pod that I plucked from the garden I definitely set out to illustrate the Devil-in-the-Bush and Jack-in-Prison names. Concentrating on the base from where the "prison" originates I photographed it against a black background in highly directional light and converted the image to black and white.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

More than a lamp

click photo to enlarge
When I brought this image up on my computer it set me thinking. If I was a photographer who specialised in one or only a few fields - say motor racing, wildlife, street, portraiture or some such - would I notice the subject of today's photograph? Moreover, if I did notice it would I value it sufficiently highly to take a photograph of it?

I suspect that the answer to both of these questions is probably not. Perhaps the deciding factor would be whether the interest in photography as an art was more or less than the interest in the field that the photographer concentrated on. The fact is, a great deal of photography is undertaken in support of a pre-existing interest in something or other - for example, trains. There's nothing wrong with this; after all, photography is a broad church and welcomes a wide range of approaches. But, understandably, for such people the interest resides principally in the content of the image rather than the way that content is presented photographically. That's not to say that the wider considerations of composition, colour, mood etc are absent, merely that they are not key factors in the way they might be in other fields of photography.

As I've said elsewhere in this blog, I'm happy to be a photographic generalist. It means that I see photographic opportunities wherever I am, and that is something that I find enriches my life. It means - I think - that I see more than I would if I specialised, and that my perception of the world is enhanced by having self-consciously trained myself to try to see rather than to simply look. The distinction between seeing and looking is also a theme that I've tackled before and is perhaps key to me taking today's photograph. It helps me to enjoy how the subject is a semi-abstract geometrical composition and an essay in light and shade as well as just a simple standard lamp in the corner of a room.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Art in the south transept

click photo to enlarge

I tend to be disappointed if I turn up at a church that I want to look around and I find it being used for an exhibition by the local art group. It means that the the fabric of the structure is obscured by paintings, pottery, screens and sculpture and I don't see it in the way it appears on most days of the year - as an old building fitted out for worship and the rites of the Christian religion. It's not that I have anything against art, or the desire of people to exhibit or view the products of enthusiasts. And I do appreciate that the church often seeks to be a hub of the community in which it sits, and that such events help it to fulfil that function. Rather, it is my selfish desire to view the church as I would like to see it and my feeling of being thwarted. Of course, if it's a church that is reasonably local to me then I can easily turn up on a different day and indulge my interests. However, if it's a building that I visit on holiday or when I'm travelling, then it feels like a once in a lifetime opportunity is lost to me.

I feel the same way about churches that are full of decorated trees at Christmas but not about a building decked out for harvest festival, all wheat sheaves, marrows, tinned food, fruit and vases of chrysanthemums. Why? Well, the former feels like a modern gimmick designed to attract an audience whereas harvest festival is a centuries old religious celebration and thanksgiving that has endured. On a recent visit to Newark we came upon an exhibition of art in the south transept of the town's major church. St Mary Magdalene is a large and beautiful parish church and, fortunately, it could easily swallow up a small exhibition of this sort so my usual feelings of disappointment lay dormant. I had a look at the artwork - fabric with photographic representations of famous pieces of religious art printed on them to which had been added the artist's contribution, sometimes graphical, sometimes text. The offerings didn't appeal to me but the lighting of the location did - photographically speaking. The low sun and clear glass of the transept window made the interior space very bright; much more so than is usual. Strong shadows contrasted with glowing patches of light. It was a recipe that suggested a photograph so I took one of my wife viewing the artwork.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13.3mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Multitasking and digital diversions

click photo to enlarge
It's often said that women can multitask but men can't. Whether that's true or not, it seems to me, isn't especially important because it ignores a basic underlying truth that has been repeatedly proved down the years. Namely, that when you multitask none of the jobs are done as well as if you do them separately. That's why, among other things, you are prosecuted if you are seen texting while driving, and why serious consideration should be given to banning the use of any mobile telephony by drivers (even hands free) because it has been clearly shown to impair their reaction time.

Apparently today's university students multitask during lectures, often sending messages to friends or playing computer games while taking notes about the business at hand. Moreover, such students believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that they can manage to do all these things with no detriment to their learning, that it is a skill they have learnt and have improved over time. I recently read an interesting piece of research showing that students who do this, and who make these assertions, are invariably WORSE at multitasking than students who have less confidence in their ability to do so.

The advent of phones, computing and music that are usable anywhere has brought many benefits. However, it has also homogenised and degraded the experiences of people who are constantly plugged in, constantly checking, constantly multitasking. The simple act of walking through an historic town such as Newark (above) becomes less of an experience if you are constantly poking your device, instantly responding to a communication or have your head full of music. Moreover that communication and that music are not experienced and appreciated as well as they might be either. If you want quality in your life there is much to be said for focusing all your attention on one thing at a time, doing things serially rather than engaging in multitasking that involves the latest digital diversion.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Failed searches and streamer weed

click photo to enlarge
Most web searches that I make are successful. A wide range of information is available on the internet, much of it in great depth, and often in at least four forms - text, images, video and audio. Moreover, I've gone out of my way to become familiar with a reasonably wide range of search techniques. Consequently it is relatively unusual for me to fail in a quest for facts about a topic. But failures do happen. Often this is because the subject is arcane. Or it may be obscure or of interest to only a very small minority of people and therefore little documented. Some failures appear to be successes until you discover that what you took to be fact turns out to be someone's unintentionally erroneous posting or just plain wrong through the poster's ignorance.

However, the other day I spent a long time searching for some information and drew a blank. I was trying to find out the name of the plant shown in today's photograph. It is a common river plant that I see regularly in many lowland rivers, and its very prominence suggest that it will be well documented. It probably is, but not in a form that allows me to assign it a Latin name. Fishermen call it (and several other plants that grow in a similar location and fashion) "streamer weed". That is descriptive of the ribbon-like leaves that undulate sinuously in the current. But, to fix its identity with the species' Latin name proved impossible for me. It may be a form of Ranunculus, Glyceria or some other equally common river-growing plant. The problem is that I can't match a photograph that looks like mine with any other reliably labelled image. Then there's the fact that most botanical illustrations use the flower as an identifier and this has clearly passed its flowering season. In fact, I've found very few shots of the plant that emphasise its attractive, twisting form, except a couple by other photographers similarly fascinated

From previous experience I imagine that I'll search again and a route to the right answer that was formerly closed, or which I missed, will open up. Until then streamer weed it is!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Northgate Brewery, Newark on Trent

click photo to enlarge
The building shown in today's main photograph is the old maltings of the former Warwick's & Richardson's Brewery on Northgate, Newark-on-Trent. It has languished, empty and derelict since its closure in 1966 and I find it remarkable that it has survived so well. Perhaps the steps taken to make it safe - bricking up doorways etc - have helped its preservation. The maltings were constructed in 1864 using local bricks from the Cafferata company at Beacon Hill. The necessary ironwork was supplied by the Trent Ironworks of W.N. Nicholson & Sons.

This essentially functional building - it housed kilns - has been given a decorative veneer. The orange brick has bands of cream brick dogtooth and dentil work The window and door openings are emphasised by surrounds of the same cream brick. When it was a working maltings railway trucks brought barley alongside and a cage steam lift hoisted it into the building. The roof outline is characteristic of maltings with cowls at the top of the pyramidal shapes. Shapes fashioned after either flowers or leaves act as tails that catch the wind and rotate the cowl in the desired direction to assist with ventilation.

As we looked at the decaying building we wondered whether its fate would mirror that of the main brewery buildings nearby. This rather grand structure, an essay in studied asymmetry, has been converted into flats with shops and a cafe behind the open Gothic arcade at the bottom of the main facade. The transformation from industrial to domestic use has been handled well - with one exception. At the end of the main facade a cuboid block with rectilinear windows and balconies has been appended (just visible at the right of the smaller photograph). It is clad in timber which has weathered to a a dirty brown/grey. For reasons completely lost on me this finish of hardwood boarding has been very popular in the UK in recent years. It rarely looks appealing and in our relatively wet climate it invariably stains and looks grubby. It has done so here to the detriment of the overall scheme.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/3200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rover 75 P4

click photo to enlarge
When new cars are rolled out their novel shape is often welcomed. However, just as often they meet with quite vocal criticism. People find fault with the lines chosen by the designers. "Too angular" they say, "the bonnet's too long" or "the line of the boot is awkward". What's often at work here is less a critique of the overall form of the new design and more a fundamental resistance to change, to innovation, to a shape that is unusual. People tend to like what they know. However, it can't be denied that car designers are just as capable of turning out ungainly looking cars as they are elegant vehicles.

At a recent display of veteran and vintage vehicles at a Lincolnshire country fair I came across one of the ugly ducklings of the automotive designer's art. It was a beautifully presented Rover 75 P4, a vehicle that was manufactured in Britain between 1949 and 1952. In the immediate post-war years car makers wanted to offer the public modern looking vehicles, cars that no longer looked like their pre-war offerings. Seeking inspiration Rover looked abroad to the United States, a country where car manufacture continued through the war, less hindered than in Britain by the demands of armaments production. In particular they looked at Studebaker, and it's perhaps here where they went wrong. American car design of the 1940s and 1950s was undoubtedly interesting but even its most ardent supporters would surely not suggest that it was anywhere near the peak of the art. The rounded lines, big wings, chrome work, emphasis on the bonnet, radiator, lights and badge all speak of U.S. cars of the time. Rover scaled the design down for the British market but in its desire to make an impact added a third headlight in the centre of the radiator. It resulted in the car being nicknamed, "Cyclops" - not the most appropriate name since that mythological creature had but one eye, not three. However, you knew what the wits were were getting at, and the effect is awkward to say the least. It wasn't especially popular with buyers and was soon replaced by versions with the conventional twin headlights.

When I came to photograph this car I decided to emphasise the areas where Rover had spent its money on the excessive and imitative ornamentation - the front. So, I got down low and used the 24-105mm lens at its widest. The unprocessed RAW shots at this focal length have a little vignetting and I decided to keep it when I converted the image to JPEG for the way it emphasises the centre of the composition with that all-seeing eye.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Perennial rudbeckia

click photo to enlarge
After the last two posts I feel the need for colour, and what can be more colourful than the bright yellow petals of perennial rudbeckia against the deep blue of an early autumn sky? In our garden we have a few clumps of these striking and long-lasting flowers. They are a variety of coneflower, one of four genera (including Echinacea) of the Asteraceae family, and are especially useful in bringing strong, bright colour to the garden after the flowers of high summer have faded.

My usual view of these blooms is against the leafy backdrop of the borders in which they reside. So, their yellow sits alongside green. However, for this photograph I made the conscious decision to get down low with the camera - in fact I held it at arms length inside the clump - and photograph upwards to place their colour and the shape of the flower heads against the plain blue of the sky. In the RGB colour model wheel blue and yellow are opposite each other. This makes them complementary colours. A feature of such pairs is that when they are placed next to one another the effect is to increase each colour's visual intensity. As the evenings begin to draw in and the first misty mornings remind us that summer is waning, photographing vibrant colours of this sort is my way of hanging on to something of the departing warmth and sun.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Another view of fog

click photo to enlarge
Today's photograph was taken about seventy yards from and a few minutes before the shot in the previous post. And, where that image was captured with the sun behind me, this one was taken contre jour. That fact, the nature of the subject and the conversion of an essentially monochrome colour photograph into very definite black and white has resulted in this image acquiring a quite different mood. The previous shot has a slightly melancholic touch but it's essentially neutral, wistful or even slightly upbeat with the intrusion of that warming sunlight. However, here the stark gravestones silhouetted against the misty west end of the church is loaded with associations that, I can't help thinking, are largely the result of certain writers and a whole slew of horror and mystery films.

People such as Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens knew that there is nothing like a fog or mist to evoke a feeling of cold, menace or fear. Think of Pip and Magwitch in the misty Kent marshes in the 1946 version of "Great Expectations". Better yet think back to how Guy Green, the Oscar winning cinematographer on that film depicted the scenes, and how influential his work was for succeeding generations of film makers such as John Carpenter. And then consider how these images have affected how the man or woman in the street views a misty churchyard. From Bram Stoker's "Dracula" to the latest teen horror, the combination of fog and a graveyard have become, in the popular mind, synonymous with supernatural dread. Of course, none of this influenced me in any way as I carefully composed and processed this photograph. Really. Just as it wasn't a factor in this photograph of a "House of Correction" or this one of a ruined church. Honestly!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18.9mm (51mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Early autumn mist

click photo to enlarge
We've just experienced the first real mist of early autumn in this part of Lincolnshire. As I looked out of the bedroom window it was clear that it wasn't one of the thin, wispy mists that have struggled to make an appearance recently, but was what used to be called "a real pea-souper". That left me with a dilemma: to have breakfast then go out with the camera, risking that it might have dissipated by then, or to go straight out and be sure to catch it. I chose the first option and was glad I did.

Over the years I've found the best time for photographing in mist and fog is often at the point when the early morning sun is just beginning to burn it off. Not only does that offer a range of densities of mist and fog, with some objects being more revealed than others, but the presence of a watery sun can inject warm colours and increase the contrast available. Today's photograph benefits from that effect in the lower left corner, lifts the mood slightly and stops the image from being too "cold".

Over the years some of my best photographs have come from situations where early morning mist has offered a "different" view of what I otherwise might consider to be a familiar subject - as with this yacht, this view of Canary Wharf, this lane in Yorkshire and these three trees.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 25.9mm (70mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Einstein on the beach (at Sheringham)

click photo to enlarge
My introduction to the music of Philip Glass was through Godfrey Reggio's film, "Koyaanisqatsi" (1983). This movie features footage from various locations in the United States presented with no actors or narration, simply a score by Glass. The only indication of the message of the film is in the film's subtitle "Life out of balance" -  a translation from the Hopi language of the film's main title. I loved the film and it quickly became a favourite of all the family.

The score of "Koyaanisqatsi" is in the minimalist style, a branch of modern classical music that seems to be either loved or reviled. It's an approach to music that I was familiar with before I heard Glass through Terry Riley's album, "A Rainbow in Curved Air" (1969), and I'm firmly in the camp that likes minimalism. We bought other music by Philip Glass in later years, but this piece that was written for the film, has remained a favourite.

On our recent visit to the Norfolk coast we came upon a series of paintings on the promenade that had been done by an artist as part of a project to involve children in drawing using chalk. The main "canvas" for this work was the sea wall. Towards the end of the series that showed deck chairs, boats, an ice-cream seller's van, etc., we came upon the example shown in today's photograph. Immediately we saw it my wife and I turned to each other and said, "Einstein on the Beach". Clearly the artist knew about Philip Glass. Why else would a seasonal, sea-front cafe be adorned with a picture of Albert Einstein drinking a mug of hot tea other than to reference the composer's first opera, a five hour piece from 1975, called "Einstein on the Beach"? It made us smile.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A few of my best photographs

click photo to enlarge
For a number of years I've had a link in the sidebar of the blog to a "Best of PhotoReflect". This showed some of what I consider to be my better efforts with a camera. However, the external service I used for that purpose kept introducing changes and "improvements" in a way that has caused me to ditch them.

So, to give anyone who wants a flavour of what the blog is about, at least as far as the photographs go, I've put together a page of ten colour shots and a page of ten black and whites. These can be reached through the side bar links as usual. I say they are my ten best in each category, but that isn't strictly true. Why? Because those lists are going to be different each time I compile them. I'd like to think any future changes will be due to me becoming a better photographer and producing images that I rate more highly than earlier ones. But that isn't going to be the case, or it will apply only in the odd instance. The fact is, once I get past the first couple of shots in each category the rest that I add depend pretty much on how I feel at the time.

I will change these lists periodically, though not too often. Incidentally the borders of the photographs differ. That's because I'm an inveterate fiddler and change my presentation now and again. I haven't linked any of the photographs to their blog posts. I may do that at some point in the future.

Today's photograph isn't one that I count among my very best. In fact its a reject, one I prepared for posting then cast aside after I changed my mind. It shows a bier and a tomb in the church of St Andrew at Rippingale, Lincolnshire. The wheeled bier, probably Victorian, is still used to transport the coffin into the church and, after the service, to the grave in the churchyard. It stands in front of a wall tomb-chest that has a lady on top. She is surmounted by an ogee canopy with damaged cusps, fleurons and plentiful ballflower ornament. All the indications - dress, ornament etc - are that it dates from the the period 1300 to 1350.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On