Old style wheat harvesting

click photo to enlarge
The Bicker Steam Threshing & Classic Car weekend held in the Lincolnshire village each September features a vintage Foster threshing machine powered by a traction engine separating the wheat seeds from the stalks. For this to happen regularly over the two day event a quantity of wheat has to be cut and saved. This must be done in a more traditional manner, without the involvement of a combine harvester. I was invited to photograph this recently. My photograph here shows a Lanz powered binder of c.1950 vintage pulled by a Fiat 90.90 tractor from (I think) the 1980s, cutting the wheat, binding it in "stooks" and laying it in rows ready to be forked onto a trailer.

photo and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Cutting and Binding Wheat for Bicker Steam Threshing
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 39mm (78mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reflecting on hats

click photo to enlarge
It's not only fashions in hats that come and go, hats themselves fall in and out of favour. When I was a callow youth the trilby and other styles of men's hats with brims were on the way out. Flat caps were following a similar course to near extinction, being favoured by older folk only. One hat that was worn by a few men, and which is rarely seen as daily wear now, was the beret. Some men had got into the habit of wearing one during the war, and continued (without the badge) when they returned to "civvy street". Women wore hats on more formal occasions, but not too often as everyday wear. However, the headscarf was common, though like the men's hats it was in decline. Children wore the hats that their parents told them to wear: caps and balaclavas were common for boys, and bonnets for small girls. However, once the 1960s appeared few self-respecting teenagers wore anything on their heads except their flowing locks that grew in length as the decade progressed.

Consequently, for someone of my age it has been interesting to see which hats continued through the period of relative drought that the 1960s heralded, and how hats then made a comeback to the point where many teenagers have lost the habit of removing it when going indoors. Older men have always favoured hats, especially if their hair disappeared or thinned to the point where the summer sun would burn the top of their head. So, Panama hats never disappeared, and in Britain remained as sure a sign of summer as the thwack of leather on willow (cricket for the unenlightened) or the unveiling of tattoos on the midriffs of young women. But it's the rise of the American-style baseball cap that is the real surprise for me, given that baseball has about as much exposure in Britain as cricket has in the U.S. However, I suppose that these caps have been adopted world-wide as both headwear and a medium of advertising, so it's probably inevitable that they should fetch up on our shores too.

The other week I attended the Steam Threshing weekend at Bicker in Lincolnshire. This event, a small country fair that raises funds for the local church, features a variety of attractions but especially traction engines and an old-style threshing machine. As I made my first circuit of the field looking for photographs I came upon this group of men sitting on straw bales watching a traction engine. They were wearing a fine collection of hats - two Panamas, a baseball cap and a fisherman's hat (also, I believe, called a bucket hat, a "beanie"). They seemed perfect for one of my rare forays into people photography. Incidentally, I went to this event a few years ago and photographed a quite different collection of hats - see here.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 271mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1260 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blogger Lightbox and traction engine drivers

click photo to enlarge

Blogger is an entirely free blogging platform that works well, is regularly updated, and serves the needs and desires of millions of people. Consequently, it seems a touch churlish to complain about changes or shortcomings. If it was a service that users paid for then voicing grievances might seem more reasonable, but when no money changes hands it can appear somewhat ungrateful. And yet, few companies give away products without receiving something in return, and presumable Google (who own Blogger) gets something to its advantage from the service. Moreover, user feedback is useful to anyone who sells, operates or markets a product, and it is with this in mind that the following observations are offered.

A week or so ago, with no warning, Blogger introduced a "Lightbox" view of enlarged images set against a black background. Prior to this the clicked image had been displayed in the top left of a white screen. I don't mind the new black background because it complements my template colour - but of all the changes to the viewing mode it's the only one that I'm happy about. The fact is, the Lightbox view doesn't work at all with some posts four or five years old - the old system kicks in. Worse still, with some posts a couple of years old the screen goes black and a tiny red rectangle appears, but no enlarged photograph. So, far from working across the Blogger platform, as advertised, it works on newer posts only intermittently or not at all on older posts. Others have deplored the fact that to escape the Lightbox you have to click an "X", whereas regular readers use the "Back" arrow. Doing that now takes you out of the blog, which isn't what many want. Photobloggers (though not me) have also complained that the Lightbox view doesn't allow them to show their photographs at full resolution because it restricts the size of display and compresses the image in order to do so. There is a rising clamour for Blogger to make this new feature something you can choose or ignore when you configure a set up. That would be the best option and, given Blogger's usual responsiveness, I expect that to happen - but not for a while!

Today's photographs come from the Bicker Steam Threshing event that I featured in a couple of earlier posts here and here. In retrospect the large photograph is better than the earlier photograph that I posted of the traction engine driver.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Threshing machines, balers and photo processing

click photo to enlarge

Today's photograph is taken at the other side of the threshing machine that features in yesterday's shot. You can see the smoke from the traction engine's funnel rising above the trailer of wheat that is being forked into the thresher. The green traction engine visible on the other side of the baler is powering a large wood saw. On the side of the baler someone has painted the date, 1946. I'm informed that the threshing machine and the baler are both of the same date, having been bought by the same person at the same time. I'd imagined, given the wooden spoked wheels of the thresher and the pneumatic tyres of the baler, that the threshing machine was older, but apparently that's not the case. Incidentally, the baler's plate says, "The Powell Baling Press" and the maker's name, "Powell and Co, St Helens".

After I posted yesterday's photograph I received an email from someone asking how I'd achieved the painterly effect of the image. He wondered if I'd applied a proprietary Photoshop action or somesuch. In fact, I simply did what I sometimes do with shots where I want this effect: I underexposed the original shot, Recovered the blown highlights, applied the Shadows and Highlights slider, then increased the Contrast. I then tweaked the final image with a little selective Dodging and Burning. The final result isn't too far away from what the camera captured, but the alteration of the balance of light and dark does give the shot something of the quality of a painting.

There are those who don't like this sort of thing, feeling that photography is about recording and that means accepting what the camera produces. My view is that using a camera for making records is fine, but the device is mainly about making pictures, and the dumb machine can rarely do that unaided. Firstly, it does not record what you saw: if you want a better record you have to process the camera's output to make it more closely approximate to what your eye/brain "sees". Secondly, a picture (as opposed to a record shot) usually requires pre- and post-exposure input to emphasise the qualities that the photographer needs to achieve his conception. In the past this involved lens, film, speed, and aperture selection before the shot and various printing processes afterwards - paper choice, dodging, burning, chemical choice etc. Very few of the significant photographers in the history of the craft/art made no use of such things and many chose their printers by name and instructed them specifically about how they wanted the print to look. That process, using a sensor and computer/printer continues today.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Threshing machines

click photo to enlarge

Mankind has a great capacity for invention. Throughout the ascent from cave to skyscraper inventions have been one of the driving forces of change, progress and a better life for many. But not every invention is an unalloyed good. For every person who argues that nuclear weapons have prevented a third world war, there are many more who would wish that they had never seen the light of day. And the fact is, though we can invent, we cannot un-invent: once something has been formulated and exists there seems to be no easy way to prevent it existing - though nuclear war might accomplish it!

The first threshing machine was invented by a Scotsman, Andrew Meikle, in the 1780s. It was designed to take the place of hand flails in separating the grain from the husks and stalks. Hand threshing was slow, arduous and labour intensive and a machine offered speed, ease and a reduction in cost for the farmer. It didn't take long for those employed on farms to realise that such inventions reduced the number of jobs available. The Swing Riots of the 1830s were caused, in part, by the increasing adoption of threshing machines, and the rioters particularly targeted them as they roamed the countryside giving vent to their fury. The early machines were horse-powered though a primitive steam engine was used to provide power as early as 1799. However, it wasn't until the 1830s and later that steam-powered threshing machines became widely used, and they remained busy into the mid-twentieth century when combine harvesters replaced them.

Today's photograph shows a threshing machine built by William Foster and Company of Lincoln. I don't know when it dates from, but it is probably the early twentieth century. I photographed it at work, powered by a big traction engine, at the Bicker Steam Threshing event. This is an annual country fair held in the village of Bicker, Lincolnshire, that features traction engines in particular. A strong wind was making the work of those feeding the threshing machine with their pitchforks a little more unpleasant than it otherwise might have been.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tradition and old age

click photo to enlarge

My current book is a re-reading of one that I first read in 1977. George Ewart Evans' Where Beards Wag All: The Relevance of the Oral Tradition, sets out to add the voices and memories of old people to the documentary evidence of historians, and thereby humanize the recent past. It uses commentary by agricultural workers and others to explain the jobs of craftsmen, the system of agriculture, the village life and the lives of the migrant workers of East Anglia from the period towards the end of the nineteenth century to around 1930. His notes and recordings add to the historical record details that cannot be found in documents, artefacts and the landscape, and activities that are somewhat dry and theoretical in history books, for example steam-ploughing, making whitening, or operating a village foundry, come alive when described by the people who undertook the work.

Conincidentally I attended the Steam Threshing event at Bicker this weekend, and saw people re-creating some of the old crafts and farming methods that I had read about only days earlier. A traction engine was operating a large, wooden threshing machine, one was powering a saw that was cutting logs, and a third was linked to a flour mill that was producing bags for sale. Vintage tractors, of the sort that Evans describes beginning to replace horses during the 1930s were on display. So too were collections of old wood and metal working tools. And, in a mocked-up shed that included another small flour mill, I saw this man making lengths of ornamental wrought iron using a small forge, a vice and an anvil. He had dressed for the part in bowler hat, waist-coat and neckerchief, and made an interesting sight. I grabbed this shot as he worked his metal with his hammer.

As I watched I reflected on the greater interest that older people have for these types of traditional crafts and industries. Is it, I wondered, because their age gives them a greater perspective and they are able to list the activities and crafts of their youth that are now no more? Probably.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 110mm (220mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Steam-powered log cutting

click photo to enlarge
On Saturday and Sunday it was Bicker Steam Threshing weekend. This is a small, Lincolnshire country fair featuring traction engines, the operation of an old threshing machine, vintage vehicles of many kinds, stalls, and more. The purpose of the event is to raise funds for the village's medieval parish church, St Swithun's.

Events of this sort are ripe with photographic opportunities and I'll be posting a few shots that I took there over the coming days. Today's image shows log cutting on a bench circular saw. The common methods of making logs for the fire is to saw them to size then split them with an axe, or use a hammer and a purpose-made metal log "grenade" to make the fire-sized pieces. However, a gathering of traction engines (I wonder what the collective noun for that is?) is a gathering of sources of power. One was towing a trailer giving rides round the village, another was harnessed to the threshing machine, and another was powering the wood-cutting saw with a long belt drive. That left other engines quietly sulking, puffing and whistling, hoping that they too would be selected for gainful employment.

I spent a good few minutes watching as the logs were trimmed to size and thrown into the trailer, and found myself mentally transported back to the time when this sort of power was the norm. In those days traction engines would move from village to village, from farm to farm, working a few days here on the harvest, a few days there powering a saw. A simpler time. But then I was struck by the slight absurdity of what I was actually seeing - a machine that gets its energy by burning large amounts of coal being used to cut up woood that will be burned over the coming winter to provide heat energy. I started to do mental calculations about the energy used in the cutting process compared with the energy available in the wood, but the complexity and futility of that gave me a headache, and I soon stopped and simply enjoyed the spectacle!

For anyone who was wondering, yes, the two photographs are shots of the same scene taken from different angles.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 114mm (228mm/35mm equiv.) (14mm (28mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f6.3 (f6.3)
Shutter Speed: 1/250 (1/500)
ISO: 100 (100)
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 (-0.7) EV
Image Stabilisation: On (On)