Obelisks

click photo to enlarge
The obelisk is a monumental form of long standing. This tall, tapering, four-sided monument, capped by a four-sided pyramid takes its name from the Greek "obeliskos" yet it pre-dates the Greeks and is common in Egyptian architecture. My introduction to the obelisk was in primary school when we learned about Cleopatra's Needle. This is an Egyptian obelisk of c.1450BC (far older than Cleopatra) that was brought from Egypt to London in 1877 and in 1878 was erected on the Thames embankment where it remains today. Paris and New York have similar (and similarly named) obelisks. In England obelisks were popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when they were used as memorials and eyecatchers alongside other Greek, Roman, and occasionally Egyptian architectural forms.

The example in today's photograph is an eyecatcher in the parkland that surrounds Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire. My photograph shows a view of it from the Iron Age "British Camp" on the Malvern Hills near Herefordshire Beacon. Its purpose is to enhance the landscape and endow it with classical qualities. Follies, ruins, monumental arches, pillars, temples, rotundas and obelisks were all pressed into service by landscape architects such as Repton and Brown, as they tried to re-create the Romantic views seen in paintings by the likes of Claude Lorraine. This particular obelisk is about a mile and half from the castle on a low summit, a place where it would be regularly seen by the occupants as they walked around their extensive estate.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 112mm (168mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lions sejant?

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I have no time for the social structure that produced heraldry or for heraldry as a social tool; it seems to me to be a self-serving way of differentiating the plebeians from the aristocracy, of binding the so-called "upper classes" together by lineage, and, in many cases, giving a spurious antiquity to the nouveau riche. That being said, you have to admire the gusto with which the whole heraldic apparatus was invented established, codified and embedded in society.

Go anywhere in England and you'll come across heraldry. It's in almost every Church of England building, virtually all civic buildings, on the coinage, on pub signs, affixed to buildings, printed on book covers, an most of all, everywhere in castles new and old.

Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire is a Victorian castle and the builders took great pains to make it look like it has been built up over the centuries, with rooms and details in various architectural styles. It is also dripping with heraldry. The detail above shows part of a panel behind a stream of water that issues from a wall into a pool. It has two lions facing each other, their front legs raised on steps, between them a tree, and above a shield. The position that heraldic animals adopt are circumscribed by rules and special names. I think this pair are sejant!

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 95mm (142mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO:360
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Landscapes - with or without people?

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Very little early landscape painting, for example that of ancient Greece or China, showed only natural features. It was much more usual for such work to, somewhere, often in a fairly insignificant way, include buildings or a human figure. As the genre developed down the centuries the place of people in landscape paintings persisted. Artists knew that the inclusion of a figure changed the meaning of the work, gave scale to the depiction and offered a powerful focal point. The fact is, if the human form is present in a work the eye finds it extremely quickly. Only in the work of later painters, and in photographic landscapes, is it common to find work where no human figure is present.

When it comes to landscape photography I often like to include a person somewhere. Frequently I choose the foreground to give the eye a starting point. But I also see the value of a person in the middle-ground or background for establishing a sense of scale. When I was photographing this stand of cedars in the arboretum at Eastnor castle, Herefordshire, I deliberately took one shot without people and one with people to illustrate just that point.

Cedars are not native to Britain. These examples were planted by Victorian collectors and they are widely regarded as the best group and some of the biggest specimens on these islands. For that reason alone I can justify the inclusion of people for the purpose of scale. When you view the photograph without figures it's hard to appreciate the width and height of those big tree trunks.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 42mm (63mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:250
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On