Prospecting for views

click photo to enlarge
Look through any art gallery showing paintings from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and you are bound to come across many "prospects". These are paintings or drawings that show a view of a town, city, harbour, building, or any place that the artist or illustrator wanted to describe pictorially. This engraving of "A Prospect of the University and City of Oxford", dating from 1705 and attributed to Johannes Kip, is typical of the genre.

The earliest recorded use of the word "prospect" to describe the pictorial representation of what we would now call a "view" dates from 1649 when John Evelyn (1620-1706) wrote in his diary, "I went to Putney and other places on the Thames to take prospects in crayon to carry with me to France, where I thought to have them engrav'd." Today "prospects" are rarely painted or drawn, but the making of such images is one of the most common uses of the camera. However, we now use the word "view", "landscape", "scene" or some such word, and "prospect" has pretty much dropped out of use. Which is a shame because the the verb form of the word links very nicely with the noun to describe how we search out the particular point from which to make a representation of the scene.

I did quite a bit of searching to find this "prospect" of the church at Quadring, Lincolnshire. I tramped back and forth through the rough grass of this field until I found a composition that made the building the focal point but still kept it quite small. I wanted to include some of the tall brown grasses, and decided to use the interesting but ragged hedge as mid-ground interest and as a means of reducing the expanse of boring blue sky!

Here is a closer look at this church in an earlier blog post.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Leaves of spring

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In 1664, John Evelyn (1620-1706), the English gardener and writer, published "Silva, or A Discourse of Forest Trees". In this ground-breaking book, written to encourage the planting of trees to meet the ship-building needs of Britain's growing navy, he described the species found in the British Isles. He noted those that were native to the islands, and those that were introduced. One of the trees discussed by Evelyn is the sycamore, Acer pseudoplatanus. There were relatively few of these trees at that time, and he correctly described them as an introduced variety. No one can be sure who first brought the sycamore to Britain. Perhaps it was the Romans, or maybe it was later travellers bringing seeds or saplings from its native home in south and central Europe. Whoever it was, they are responsible for a tree that is now widespread, one of the commonest trees in many parts of the country.

Acers, confusingly also known as maples, are widely used as a source of wood for flooring, furniture and joinery. Its white, clean wood is almost odour-free making it useful for jobs associated with food. The sap from the Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum) is tapped and made into a highly prized syrup. In Britain, though foresters see the sycamore as useful, it is also invasive and subject to control in some areas. However, gardeners love the acer and many varieties are cultivated for their distinctive and attractive leaf colours seen in spring and autumn. In my garden two acers are currently spreading their leaves: one a copper colour, the other a bright lime green, though today's photograph shows an orange variety that I came upon early one evening in a nearby cemetery! The blue sky proved to be the ideal complementary colour for the attractive foliage, and the shadows cast by higher leaves on those lower down added a further layer of interest.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 38mm macro (76mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off