The tide of green paint

click photo to enlarge
Over the past twenty years a tide of green paint has lapped over our villages and towns, initially affecting the more well-to-do areas, then extending into less prosperous regions. It started out as almost exclusively sage green, then branched out into other shades of muted green, sometimes with a hint of blue, often leaning more towards grey. If you search out this range of colours you'll find them offered by suppliers of "heritage" paints. However, such is their popularity, some mainstream paint companies now stock them. Is this simply fashion or are there deeper influences at work? The change in the colours of doors, windows, fences and other exterior woodwork from white and strong colours to these more earthy hues is not something that has been widely noted or much commented upon, so here are some of my thoughts on the subject.

The increasing search for authenticity in heritage projects and building restoration during the last quarter of the twentieth century prompted interest and research into the use of paint from the seventeenth century through to the present day. By scrutiny of primary records - job specifications, contractors' estimates and bills, buyers' and visitors' diaries etc, as well as microscopic analysis of the layers of of paint on old surfaces - a revised view of the composition and colours of paint used in the past was formulated. A range of muted greens were found to be popular during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. So too were colours in the off-white, brown, mauve/peach, orange, blue, grey and stone ranges. None of these, especially when used outdoors, were strident colours, though stronger colours were used indoors. For reasons difficult to determine, the range of greens became much more popular than the other muted colours. That's not to say the others weren't used, they were, especially for external render, but also for woodwork. But, the greens were much more widely used. Perhaps their popularity grew as a result of the increase in membership of organisations who first used these colours - bodies such as the National Trust and English Heritage. People visiting houses that were restored using the new thinking about paint may well have been influenced to adopt the new colours too, especially if they lived in a period property.

Today the greens described above are used fairly indiscriminately on buildings old and new. I recently passed some very new flats (styled in a modern way) in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, that had windows and doors painted sage green and walls that were clad in hardwood. As I've travelled around the country I've also detected that this kind of green paint seems to be used as a badge of belonging by people of a certain class and outlook. This struck me most forcibly when I was recently in Tewkesbury, a town that more than most has succumbed to this fashion.

Today's photograph shows two such doors in Ely, Cambridgeshire. That the tide of green paint continues unabated is clear when you compare the colour of the rightmost house on Google Street View with that of today. As I took my photograph, drawn to the scene by the overlay of tree shadows on the yellow brick walls, I wondered what colour the painter was going to use when he had finished preparing the wood.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Two eye-opening statistics

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Newspapers and the internet throw statistics at us all the time. A good number or a summary encapsulated in a figure is a powerful tool for grabbing your audience. But you have to be careful. Sometimes the statistics are a product of a journalist's innumeracy, are often simplified, extrapolated or taken out context from more complex data, rendering them inaccurate at best or fictitious at worse. So, it is with caution and an element of scepticism that I present two statistics that I came across recently. The first, on initial inspection, seems to have nothing to do with photography - but it does. The second is directly photography related.

In a recent Guardian newspaper article about data storage I read the following:

"DatacentreDynamics' research also reveals that British datacentres consume 6.4 gigawatts of power annually – enough to power 6m homes – and that is set to increase by 6.7% over the next year."

That is an awful lot of electricity, even allowing for the fact that a significant proportion of the data stored here is for overseas users. It also clearly underlines that cloud computing and electronic data are not quite the no-cost or even low-cost option, that we sometimes think. I used to be sure that photographs viewed on screens and stored on servers, and that blogs such as this one that exist away from the computer on which they are written, used less physical resources than prints and paper. But do they? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The second statistic that brought me up short was reported on the website, "Visual News", and is a graphic that purports to be "A Snapshot of the Photography Industry". It documents the rise of the phone camera, the consequent decline of the point and shoot camera, the dominance of sites such as Facebook and much else. It also includes the following:

"Today we snap as many photos every two minutes as humanity as a whole did in the 1800s."

In other words it takes us 120 seconds to accumulate the number of photographs that were amassed in the 100 years between 1800 and 1900. Which prompted me to think that the first statistic about energy use for data storage could well be accurate! It also made me consider whether ever higher pixel counts on cameras should be opposed on environmental grounds, something that hadn't occurred to me before. All of which has little to do with today's photograph, taken on an overcast day, of boats on the river at Ely, Cambridgeshire. Except these two further thoughts. Firstly, this shot represents yet another addition to the total data stored across the world. And secondly, I wonder how much electricity this one image uses in a year and at what cost?

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ely Cathedral

click photo to enlarge

The exterior of Ely Cathedral looks its best, in my opinion, from a distance of several miles as it rises above the small city on a low eminence in the flat Fenland landscape. To someone who is familiar with English cathedrals the exterior of Ely is a decided oddity, and the closer you get to it the odder it looks. A prominent west tower is common in a parish church but rare in a great church such as a cathedral, minster or abbey where the crossing tower usually dominates. The emphasis on embattled turrets rather than pinnacles is even rarer, suggesting a secular castle rather than a religious building. Ely didn't always look like it does today however. It too, like cathedrals across the land, once had a central crossing tower. But, in February 1322, the great Norman structure collapsed, probably due to the inadequacy of its foundations. In its place an octagonal lantern was erected, supported on stone, but constructed of oak, the whole structure making a bristling tower lower than the west tower and very different from the soaring culminations found elsewhere.

You may gather from this that I find the exterior of Ely lacking compared with say,York, Lincoln, Durham, Salisbury or, in fact, most other cathedrals. I do. That's not to say that it lacks interest, but for me the overall form of the building doesn't match the beauty of other major cathedrals. However, the collapse that led to the construction of the octagon produced on the interior one of the finest sights that any English cathedral can offer, one that brings distinction to the building and makes it a place worth going out of your way to see.

Today's main photograph and one of the secondary images show what your eyes behold when you pause below Ely's crossing and look up. At the top left is the painted roof of the very long Norman nave. Opposite, at the bottom right is the elaborate Gothic vaulting of the nave. The other two roofs cover the transepts. Windows fill the spaces between the eight stone piers and from the top of each of the latter spreads a fan of ribs that reach to each of the bottom edges of the octagon itself. This is painted with a ring of angels, has stellar vaulting with Christ on the centre, and the whole is ringed with stained glass that lights the space.

We made the journey to Ely on the back of a weather forecast that promised sun and cloud. The drab photograph of the west tower shows how accurate that was!

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation:N/A

The Octagon

click photo to enlarge

The classic English cathedral differs from its continental counterparts in a number of ways. Firstly, it usually has a square east end rather than an apse with chapels. Secondly, in profile, seen from a distance, there is less emphasis on verticality and more on horizontality. Thirdly, inside the nave and chancel the upward thrust of columns, arches and vaulting is more heavily broken by horizontal features. And fourthly, the buildings, by and large, have two west towers and a larger crossing tower. So, typical English cathedrals look like York, Durham, Lincoln or Lichfield, though some dispense with west towers entirely, and a few, like Westminster Abbey, have a very French look. However, one English cathedral doesn't fit into any of these descriptions very well at all - in fact it's a real oddity - and that is Ely.

Like some German cathedrals, Ely has a single west tower, but without the expected spire. Instead it has a castle-like top of embattled turrets. A heavy stone crossing tower is absent, and is replaced by an octagonal structure with a wooden corona (the Octagon) of the oddest profile, that appears to strive for width rather than height. The building's profile from some angles is quite military, and from others, veritably craggy. That Ely was largely complete by 1350 makes all this even odder. In fact it's hard to describe the exterior of Ely as beautiful, though it is undeniably interesting. However, the interior is absolutely wonderful - featuring a massive Norman nave and the underside of that corona.

My photograph was taken during a family visit in winter. I had no tripod, only one lens, and less time than usual to compose my image. So, I was glad for the in-body Image Stabilisation of the camera. That innovation, combined with my body braced against a wall, high ISO, and a wide aperture, allowed me to get this fairly sharp shot of the underside of the Octagon.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/6
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -1.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On