Light on the river

click photo to enlarge
I find September light very alluring. It retains (almost) the brightness of July and August, but combines it with the deeper shadows of an autmn month. In the evening it has a yellower tint than in the summer months. All this is, of course, a result of the sun being lower in the sky, and explains my preference for spring and autumn as the best months (in the UK at least) for photography.

Today's photograph illustrates the above. I took the shot from a bridge over the River Bain in the Lincolnshire town of Horncastle. It's not much of a river, neither particularly deep nor wide. However, the town is built at the confluence of two rivers and the combined flow after periods of particularly heavy rain has, in the past, resulted in quite serious flooding in the lower lying built-up areas.On the day of my photograph the flow was unremarkable. But, lit by a the golden light of September, and combined with the silhouettes of overhanging leaves, the reflection of the sky and foliage, and the ripples on its surface, it caught my eye and I took this semi-abstract photograph. I call it that because the image is as much about the colours, tones and textures as it is the nominal subject.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.7
Image Stabilisation: On

Scaffolding

click photo to enlarge
The first photograph I ever took of scaffolding is probably the best I've taken of this subject. It appears on PhotoQuoto, a minimalist blog that I started when paid work got a bit too hectic for the fuller posts of PhotoReflect. It shows workmen maintaining a roller-coaster ride in the Lancashire resort of Blackpool.

Ever since that time I've looked out for more examples of this subject and you might wonder why. The fact is, I like the way that the apparently haphazard (though actually carefully and rationally constructed) tracery of steelwork transforms a building. I particularly like it when the complication of lines is doubled by shadows produced by the sun - it sometimes looks like angular scribble laid across the building's surface.

The example in today's photograph shows scaffolding on the main elevation of the old Court House in Horncastle, Lincolnshire. This building has, for many years, been used as offices for various local authority organisations. I read recently that it was scheduled to be turned into flats and perhaps that is the reason for the scaffolding in my photograph. It's good that this prominent building built in 1865 by C. Reeves in the Italianate style, will continue to serve the town.

I converted the colour photograph to black and white and increased the contrast to emphasise the lines of the both the scaffolding and the building.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0
Image Stabilisation: On

A Fenland rainbow

click photo to enlarge
I had to use the search facility of this blog to establish that this is the first photograph of a rainbow that I have posted. The fact is I've taken quite a few photographs of this phenomenon but never secured any that I considered good enough to display. But, on a recent evening walk round the village, at the end of a day that had started to brighten after hours of steady drizzle, this one appeared. It wasn't a complete rainbow - it quickly fades to nothing beyond the left edge of the frame - but it was bright and against an interesting sky, so I took a few shots of it.

A rainbow is a marvellous, if unlikely, meteorological phenomenon, something that invariably provokes a response from people when they observe one. It's small wonder that the Vikings saw it as a bridge between earth and Asgard (the place where their gods lived).Or that the leprechaun's pot of gold is supposed to be hidden at a point below the end of it. Mankind has spun so many good stories around the rainbow that it almost seems churlish to repeat that it is simply the refraction and reflection of light in water droplets, something that was first conjectured over a thousand years ago and more scientifically explained by the likes of Roger Bacon and Descartes.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Destroying the past

click photo to enlarge
The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.
Simone Weil (1909-1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic and political activist
Despite having great sympathy with Simone Weil's statement I don't find it difficult to think of a worse crime than destroying the past. However, to remove evidence of mankind's past is, undoubtedly, a particularly destructive thing to do. Our sense of the present is greatly informed by our knowledge of the past, and to lose one is to impair the other. The past - in printed or image form, in memories and in buildings and artefacts -  is all that we have to remember those who came before us. To rub them out is to extinguish people, and that is always wrong, whether they are living or dead.

If we confine ourselves to buildings we find that Isis are not the first group to wilfully and deliberately destroy ancient structures for their own ends. The Taliban did it in Afghanistan and in 1942 the Luftwaffe did it in their so-called Baedecker Raids on Britain, a response they said, to the switch to area bombing by the RAF. However, it is not always warring factions that are most responsible for the destruction of the past. All too frequently it is simple neglect or misplaced planning and "progress". In the 1960s and 1970s many ancient buildings that today would have been preserved, adapted and turned to new uses, were swept away in the name of progress. It took the destruction of the Euston Arch to galvanise people against the vandalism that was taking place and begin to bring to an end the loss that was taking place.

Tattershall Castle (above) was one of the buildings in the forefront of early building preservation legislation. In 1910, in a ruinous state, it was bought by Lord Curzon and sensitively restored. It had been destined to be dismantled and parts sold abroad. His experience with this building prompted Lord Curzon to press for some laws to protect old buildings resulting in the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act of 1913. As a direct consequence of his actions we can still experience something of this ancient building - as the mother and daughter are doing in today's photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Old graffiti

click photo to enlarge
On March 12th 1848 I. Burton and H. King of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire were standing on a staircase of Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire, presumably with a hammer and chisel or some other implements, carving their names in the stone handrail built into the wall. We know this because the heavily incised graffiti is still there for all to read. It is, I suppose, an immortality of sorts. They had probably been inspired by L. C. Howy (?) who had done the same thing in 1779, and perhaps by others from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

At the time this brick and stone castle was in a ruinous state, open to the weather and to any passing tourist, antiquarian or vandal. Many of the latter left their mark and most of them can be read today. One of the characteristics of graffiti today is that if it isn't quickly removed it soon attracts more. That was also true in the past.

We saw this particular piece of graffiti on a visit to the castle. However, it wasn't the first old graffiti that we'd seen that day. Before we arrived at Tattershall we had stopped off at Haltham and noted the names and dates left on the stone surround of the church's south door by vandals of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There was much less, to be sure, but it was there nonetheless. Even in the supposedly God-fearing seventeenth century there were people who thought little of leaving their name or initials on the fabric of a church, clearly unworried by the thought of any retribution that might follow their desecration.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Another Kitchen Sink shot

click photo to enlarge
In a blog post several years ago I announced to the world that I was a Kitchen Sink photographer. It was a title I conferred on myself after the creation of my greasy baking tray photograph, and once I'd done so I immediately cited some earlier photographs as examples of this genre, including a piece that I consider one of my better attempts at humour.

A couple of days ago I added to my collection. This time, however, it did not include grease, chili or soap suds. The low sun of a mid-September morn was slanting through the kitchen's Venetian blinds and casting shadows across our shiny induction hob and the tiles on the wall behind it. This happy coming together of two of my photographic favourites - shadows and reflections - combined with another structure that appears regularly in my photography - a regular grid of rectangles - was like photographic catnip to me and I took the semi-abstract shot above. It won't be a subject or style that appeals to everyone but it pleases me.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm (90mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:250
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Larder, Gainsborough Old Hall

click photo to enlarge
The modern surname, Spencer, is thought to come from the old French Despencer, Despenser or Dispenser, the name of a knight who may have supported William 1 in his conquest of England. This name may derive from the act of dispensing after the manner of a steward, or refer to the larder itself. Within a couple of centuries "spence" or "spens" had come to mean a food store or the surname of one who had the responsibility for such a place, in Northern England and Scotland.

That word was largely replaced by larder and pantry, the food stores for meat and bread, in England. Today those words are, in turn, falling out of use, and the much more general "cupboard" or "food cupboard" (or perhaps freezer and refrigerator) have taken their place. However, in my travels this year, during my visits to several old country houses owned by the National Trust and English heritage, the older words that were commonly used in my childhood returned to my current vocabulary as I have come across several reconstructed larders. These old store rooms have been "provisioned" with representations of some of the foodstuffs they would originally have held. In July I posted a photograph of a larder at Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire. Today I offer an example from Gainsborough Old Hall, Lincolnshire. This large, partly timber-framed town house has particularly large and fine kitchens and associated rooms dating from the 1400s. I particularly liked the evocative, dimly lit larder and the (stuffed) game and representations of prepared meat on the slab.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.4
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:6400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Swallows, barns and Mobius

click photo to enlarge
The re-naming of certain species of British birds is something that will take a long time to gain widespread acceptance - if ever it does attain that position. Certainly, as far as I'm concerned, a wheatear will not be called a northern wheatear, a jackdaw will never be a western jackdaw and a jay won't be a Eurasian jay. I can certainly understand why ornithologists, drawing on recent genetic discoveries, see the need to differentiate birds with greater precision. But, that doesn't mean that the common names won't continue in use, nor I think, do bird experts expect otherwise. My father called what is today referred to as the northern lapwing, the tewit, a country name that he grew up with. I shall continue to call it the lapwing as I have done all my life. And I will never bring myself to call a swallow a barn swallow.

On a recent visit to Gainsborough we came across a street sculpture in mirror-finished stainless steel that depicted a Mobius strip (ring) of swallows. The piece was called "Endless Summer", a title that caused me to groan. It wasn't the greatest example of recent public sculpture that I've seen but the shiny finish lifted it above the other examples that we came across in the town. I was sufficiently interested in the way the polished metal reflected the surroundings and imparted changing colours to take this detail of part of the ring of birds. Real swallows were still about when I took my shot, skimming the nearby River Trent and circling above the fields across the water. In a few weeks they'll be gone but their metal counterparts will still be here, reflecting the greyer days of autumn and winter.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 54mm (108mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0
Image Stabilisation: On

British Camp, Malvern Hills

click photo to enlarge
Many years ago I came across a second-hand copy of "The Relative Hills of Britain" by Alan Dawson. The premise of this fairly slim volume is simple but interesting. It lists all of our island's hills that are high relative to the surrounding land - the qualification for inclusion in the book is that there must be a drop of 150 metres (492 feet) or more on all sides of the summit. Britain doesn't have particularly high mountains - Ben Nevis at 4,409 feet (1,344 metres) is the tallest. Nonetheless, there are many British so-called "walking enthusiasts" who consider it beneath them to climb anything below 2,000 feet (610 metres), the height at which a hill becomes a mountain. What this book helpfully does is list the "relative hills" on a regional basis and directs the attention of walkers to many "lesser" peaks that are significant and worth climbing.

I was reminded of this on a recent visit to Herefordshire as we walked up Black Hill, Pinnacle Hill and Jubilee Hill, three of the "saw tooth" peaks of the Malvern Hills, a low range that features in its pages. As we did so we looked back at Herefordshire Beacon, another of the "teeth", that is topped by the Iron Age hill fort called British Camp. The September sun was picking out the detail of the earthworks, paths and a couple of people on the grass-clad summit above the tree-line. We have walked to the top of the Beacon a couple of times and I've posted photographs I've taken from the top. On this occasion we were looking for different views over the surrounding countryside and more distant prospects of the ancient earthworks.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0
Image Stabilisation: On

Lichfield Cathedral is number 2...

click photo to enlarge
... in terms of popularity on this blog. On a few occasions I have reviewed my hit counter and noted, in particular, the most popular posts and photographs, and the countries that produce the most hits. Ever since I first did this my blog post showing the nave of Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire has been second in popularity. By a large margin, I must say, from the third most popular, and considerably behind the number one post. I don't propose to list all these again, but I do still wonder what makes Lichfield's cathedral a relative magnet for visitors.

This particular English cathedral is a bit of an oddity in that its two west towers have tall spires, as does its crossing tower: cathedrals with three big spires are very unusual in England. It's also true to say that Lichfield isn't one of the "big" cathedrals in terms of size, popularity, architectural beauty and significance, or visitor numbers. It lags well behind the likes of Canterbury, Westminster, Lincoln, York, Durham etc. And maybe that accounts for it. Perhaps, on the world wide web, Lichfield has fewer photographs and articles than many other cathedrals and therefore the ones that do exist attract relatively more hits.

This photograph of the nave taken on my recent visit is from a slightly different position compared with my earlier effort. And this time I looked very carefully before I pressed the shutter and checked that there wasn't a box in the foreground! I took my shot with a 16:9 aspect ratio in mind to remove some of the nearest seats and give greater emphasis to the repeated verticals of the columns, piers and arches.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Walkie Not Talkie

click photo to enlarge
I've never been a fan of the telephone. There's something about talking to a disembodied voice that doesn't appeal to me. Moreover, I spent too much time speaking to people on the phone during my working life. That's not to say I don't appreciate their utility, and of course, I do use phones. With that in mind you might think that the rise of the smartphone would be something I'd welcome because it offers communication without the necessity for speaking. In fact, I wonder if these days such devices aren't more used for texting (SMS), email, social media communication etc, than simply speaking to people. But the fact is, though I recognise their multiple uses, and though I use my wife's smartphone, I haven't succumbed to one myself because I have enough computers of one kind or another and the idea of having one to use on a regular basis when I'm out and about is simply too much to contemplate.

I sometimes wonder what smartphone users would do if they had their device surgically removed. What would they do with their hands, their eyes, their ears and their brains? Would they have to look about them, make their own entertainment, fret because they don't know what their friends and acquaintances are doing, organise their time and social interactions better because there was no phone to make last-minute adjustments? I do wonder whether smartphones will turn us into lobster people who carry massive smartphones as evolution causes us to develop massively over-sized thumbs from countless keypresses.

I recognise that my relative antipathy to smartphones isn't widely held. On reflection it probably comes from the deep enjoyment I get from looking at our world, finding out about it and reflecting on what I see. A smartphone would get in the way of that - and it would encourage me to use an inferior camera!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 63mm (126mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0
Image Stabilisation: On

Blues and the chapel pianist

click photo to enlarge
I think it was 1969 when I bought "King of the Delta Blues Singers" by Robert Johnson, a collection of acoustic blues recorded in the 1930s. And it was probably two years later, in 1971, that I bought the newly issued "King of the Delta Blues Singers Vol. II". These were 33rpm L.P.s with paintings of Robert Johnson on the front. The first album showed him from above. The second had an illustration of him playing his guitar in front of a microphone that was positioned in the corner of the living room of a house. Comprehensive cover notes (of a kind that died with the advent of the CD) said that, despite his wonderful song-writing ability and great guitar playing, he was incurably shy and reticent about recording and would only perform without making eye contact with anyone.

I was reminded of this illustration recently when we visited Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire. This stately home is in the care of the National Trust and features, among many splendours, a private chapel with interesting trompe l'oeil paintings. When we visited it we were entertained by a pianist who was sitting at his instrument facing the wall at one end of the chapel. I don't think he suffered from the performance terrors that afflicted Robert Johnson because between pieces he was chatting to visitors. However, it did look odd and it appeared somewhat unkind that he should be so positioned. Perhaps it was his choice to avoid the distractions of the steady stream of visitors.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO:6400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On