Miniature traction engine

click photo to enlarge
Each year, in recent years, I've helped some friends with a model engineering and hobby show. My part in the proceedings is based around photography. The event gives me the opportunity to photograph static and moving subjects - usually models of one kind or another - with specific aims in mind. It is a utilitarian kind of photography quite different from my day-to-day work which is entirely based on my interests and whims, and in which I have no one to please but myself. What I appreciate about my annual exercise is the discipline that is needed to produce the photographs that are required. And, it makes me realise how lucky I am to be able to photograph what I want rather than what someone else wants: I'd be a very poor professional photographer.

Today's photograph shows a miniature steam-powered traction engine, a vehicle based on large agricultural machines that were used from the latter part of the nineteenth century through to about the time of the Second World War. They were essentially a moveable source of mechanical power used to power threshing machines, balers, elevators etc. Some large farms would own such a machine, others would use the services of a contractor who might hire out several. These miniature models are sometimes bought from a supplier, ready-made. However, very often they are "scratch-built" i.e. entirely built from by their owner from engineering drawings. My photograph shows the lead vehicle of about a dozen such machines undertaking a "road run" through Springfield Gardens, Spalding in Lincolnshire.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Miniature Traction Engine, Springfield Gardens, Spalding, Lincs
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spalding tulips under trees

click photo to enlarge
I have a particular liking for tulips. I haven't counted, but I think they will be the most frequently depicted flower on this blog. The Lincolnshire town of Spalding, and the area around it, has a long association with this flower. For many decades it has been grown in the locality both for the blooms and the bulbs, both of which are grown to be sold.

The now defunct Spalding Flower Parade featured hundreds of thousand of tulip blooms on imaginatively designed floats, and the event drew many people to the town to witness the spectacle. The other day we were in Spalding and had a look at Springfields Gardens, the area that sits alongside the purpose-built shopping centre and which makes shopping there bearable (for me anyway)!

We came across sunlit flower beds that featured a great variety of tulips and smaller numbers of other spring bulbs. This didn't surprise us. What did amaze us, however, was the sight that greeted us when we walked through the adjacent area of woodland. Large drifts of tulips had been planted there and were showing off beautifully in the dappled sunlight. It was most unusual to find this variety of flower growing in this kind of location, but it worked wonderfully well and I wondered why it wasn't done more often. The plants had managed to grow and bloom because they reached maturity before the leaf canopy was fully open and had begun restricting the amount of light that reached the ground beneath the branches - in much the same way that wild bluebells and ramsons manage to flower in this kind of setting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon 5D2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Old show float, Spalding

click photo to enlarge
I recently spent a couple of days photographing an event at Springfields, Gardens, Spalding, for some friends. Most of my time was spent indoors, but a procession through the Gardens got me outdoors among the trees and the tulips. It was while engaged on that activity that I spotted, in a corner of the large site by a car park, the old float. At least I think that's what it must be, probably a relic of the no longer held, Spalding Flower Parade.

At first, from a distance, I thought it was Santa's sleigh with reindeer. But, on slightly closer inspection I saw it was horses drawing a carriage. The construction involves a lot of wire, metal, and some kind of light coloured material. The latter is unravelling, each hard blow bringing more of it loose, making the horses look like equestrian mummies from a pharaoh's tomb. I quite liked the ragged look this imparted to the ensemble and I made a mental note to photograph it during a free moment. When that came about I couldn't find a satisfactory composition until I combined the "sculpture" with a background of five nearby trees. These, very uncharacteristically for the beautiful Gardens, are succumbing to a covering of ivy that is creeping ever higher up their trunks, which though harmful to the trees added some darkness and contrast to my shot.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5D2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Man-made reed beds

click photo to enlarge
A couple of days ago I got up from my sickbed* and accompanied my wife on a shopping expedition to Spalding. Because I hadn't been out for a while we also had a walk round Springfield Gardens, a 20 acre site adjacent to a shopping centre. As we came upon an area of reed bed and water I reflected on how well this feature had developed. In particular, how natural-looking it was, what a welcome contrast it made to the areas of formal planting, and how it must increase the biodiversity of the site.

There was a time in the latter decades of the twentieth century when, on the back of the rise in environmental consciousness, every garden seemed to acquire a "wild" area. It could be as little as a pile of rotting logs, a bed of nettles or a structure made of bamboo tubes for bees to colonise. Or it was a meadow area, a natural-looking pond or perhaps a stand of native trees and shrubs designed to attract birds and insects. What characterised many of these developments was their unnatural appearance; the way they were clearly bolted on to a traditional garden. Rather fewer fulfilled their aim of being a haven of wildness in an area of manicured order, a place attractive to native species that was a counter-balance to the regularity and species-poverty of many gardens and much agricultural land.

As I gazed across the greater reedmace, reeds and trees, I could, for a moment block out the sound of traffic on the nearby A17, forget the hum of air-conditioning in the buildings behind me, and imagine I was out in the marshes where bearded tits flitted about, bitterns boomed and the only sound was the reeds rustling in the wind.

* My absence from blogging in recent days is due, I think, to the generosity of one of my grandchildren. Not for the first time after a visit I was stricken by a minor illness; in this instance a sore throat, loss of voice, streaming nose and general lethargy. I seem to be on the mend.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  - 0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Waterside colour

click photo to enlarge
The trees and bushes of town and country are full of colour at the moment as autumn's progress wreaks its toll on deciduous leaves. In my garden the cherry trees and the silver birches show the brightest hues; orange/red and yellow respectively, and their leaves daily pile up on the lawns and gravel, inviting us to gather them up with rake and barrow.

On my recent trip into Spalding, during a stroll round Springfields Gardens, I came across a fine reflection in the stream that was duplicating the strong colours of the waterside shrubs. The yellow and green looked natural enough, the sort of tints that can be seen everywhere. However, the pink/purple leaves were obviously not a native species, and they gave this corner of the garden a slightly exotic feel. As far as I could see it was a variety of dogwood (Cornus), a shrub grown as much for the winter colour of its stems as for the beauty of its leaves.

Reflections in water are a recurring theme in my photography. I like the element of confusion that the doppelganger introduces and the hint of abstraction that comes from a subject that has no very obvious main subject. In fact, the reliance on colour and texture often gives such images a painterly quality - another reason I favour them. If you like the photograph above you might also like these earlier examples involving water and reflections: willow branches, trees with cherry blossom, reeds and a fence.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 92mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Domes, budgets and power

click photo to enlarge

When I was young and naive I used to think that power originated in politicians and the philosophies of their parties, and that this flowed out from government to affect our everyday lives. And perhaps in years gone by it did, to a certain extent. But I no longer have this picture of how power works. Because politicians, increasingly, are in the business of serving the real centres of power in our society: international finance, multinational corporations, supra-national organisations, and the very rich. In the UK this is most obviously true of the main parties of the centre and right, but is also true, to a lesser extent, of the parties that are, nominally, of the left.

In a blog post last year I said that one of the Conservative Party's principal aims seems to be to transfer wealth from the poor and the middle classes to business and the wealthy: in other words to their pay masters and influential supporters. The recent UK budget statement has demonstrated this in a way that I can recall no other doing in my lifetime. Implementing policies that have no electoral mandate, that are based on wishful thinking more than concrete evidence, supported by the craven Liberal Democrats, they have rolled out a budget that claims to be fiscally neutral but is no such thing. They have taken from the poor and middle income families to pay for a tax cut for the top earning 250,000 people in the country. Any claim that "we're all in this together" has now gone completely. Reducing the tax liability of hedge fund managers, top bankers, Premiership footballers, and other similarly high earners because you think the existing level discourages entrepreneurship and encourages tax avoidance, in the fatuous expectation that if you ask for less you'll get more, is a policy that could only come from a government that is comprised mainly of public school educated millionaires. Moreover, it takes a life lived in cossetted luxury to hold that belief and take that action with regard to the upper tax rate while at the same time increasing the taxes of lower earners believing it has no such effects. But then the Conservatives have always thought that to incentivise the rich you must give them more money and to do the same for the poor you need to do the opposite. Among other things the recent budget is a clear demonstration that the link between education and intelligence cannot be taken for granted.

I took today's photograph of a steel ornamental dome the day after Osbourne announced his budget as we took a break from shopping and walked through the Springfields Festival Gardens at Spalding, Lincolnshire.The sight of silver birch trees through the radiating and encircling metalwork was an uplifting, welcome break from thinking about the vicious ideology and self-assured, arrogant ineptitude of our current government.

1/2000 second at f2 wasn't the best combination for this shot, but I hadn't noticed that my aperture setting had shifted. Fortunately the depth of field of a small sensor is very good so all was not lost.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/2000
ISO:80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Eye scorching colour

click photo to enlarge

I don't like shopping. Lots of men (and quite a few women) don't. Food and essentials I can cope with: it's the infrequently bought items that I find harder to deal with - clothes, domestic sundries, shoes, etc. They mean visiting bigger shopping centres and scouring more places, often with no success. In recent years I've sometimes found myself in one of the assemblages of so-called "outlets" (what a horrible word that is), notably the Fleetwood Freeport in Lancashire and Springfields at Spalding, Lincolnshire. These places are "themed" - at Fleetwood its sited next to a marina, and at Spalding it adjoins the Festival Gardens. This pairing of an "attraction" with a large, purpose-built shopping area with its acres of parking is an attempt - or so it seems to me - to make buying stuff more interesting and palatable.

The other day we were at Springfields, Spalding. We came away with only a couple of small items that were on a longish list, but not before we'd had a wander around the gardens. I've taken a few photographs there before, principally of the sculptures. Probably my favourite shot from this location is one showing a detail of some large, painted, concrete shapes designed by Chris Beardshaw called "Sculpture Matrix". As we once more came upon these among the trees and planting I noticed that the colour scheme of pink exteriors and pale blue interiors had been changed and now the inside of the shapes was what I can only call neon green or a very bright lime green.

I used the LX3 to take a few more shots of these shapes with their now quite eye-wateringly colourful paint scheme. The best of the crop is the main photograph taken through one of the "viewing slits" that let the spectator see into the sculpture. However, since I rarely photograph anything with such jarringly juxtaposed colours, I also took a few shots of the corners and edges where the pink and green came together.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO:80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

He's Claes Oldenberg in reverse

click photo to enlarge
Many who came of age in the 1960s tend to look back on the popular music of that decade as something of a highpoint in the genre. I certainly do, though I'd cite the years between 1963 and 1971 as the best. The music of that time seemed to be constantly evolving, absorbing old ideas and giving them a new twist, as well as bringing original sounds, lyrics, melodies and instrumentation to the table. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Fairport Convention, the Velvet Underground, the Kinks, and the Grateful Dead typify the creativity that was laid before us year after year. However, what we sometimes forget is that for every Roy Harper there was an Englebert Humperdink, for every Leonard Cohen, a Jack Jones. There were definitely troughs as well as peaks.

Then there were those artists and bands who had something to offer, but never quite enough. I 'd include the Searchers in that category. They were capable of great harmonies and 12 string guitar figures that influenced bands like The Byrds, but in their drive to be successful went too far towards commercial, anodyne pop of the "Sweets for My Sweet" sort. This tendency also afflicted The Hollies. Their harmonies were terrific - no wonder Stephen Stills and David Crosby wanted Graham Nash - but they featured in songs that were often second-rate. Successful the Hollies undoubtedly were, but they didn't, in my judgement, produce songs that have stood the test of time.

A few weeks ago I was in Springfield Festival Gardens, Spalding, looking at the pieces of sculpture set amongst the shrubs, trees and flowers, when I came upon the piece by Stephen Newby called "Cascading Water Pyramid". This features a stack of stainless steel "pillows", the largest at the bottom, gradually reducing in size to the smallest at the top. Water falls down the shiny surfaces of these metal shapes that look, for all the world, like they have been inflated. Nearby is a water-wheel with similar "inflated" pillows. As I looked at the incongruity of a steel pillow a thought about their creator crystallized in my mind that borrows from that dire Hollies' attempt at psychedelia, "King Midas in Reverse": he's Claes Oldenberg in reverse, because he makes solid that which is soft, whereas Oldenberg made soft that which was solid! And with that I took my photograph of a corner of the stack of "pillows", water dripping from them, and tried to make something of the line of corners going down the frame.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm (54mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Eye See

click photo to enlarge

One of the pleasures of gardening is that you get to grips with nature. Growing plants for food and beauty is a marvellous pastime - but it's not for everybody. Only if you can come to terms with gardening's mixture of permanence and impermanence will it become a deeper obsession.

What do I mean by that? Well, in theory everything about a garden can be changed - the topography, trees, walls, ground cover - everything. But in practice there are are some things that you can't and don't change, or you change incrementally over a long period. The lie of your land is one such permanence, as are large trees, extensive walls, and big water features. But shrubs, flowers, vegetables and grass come and go with the seasons and according to the gardener's wishes. So too, by and large, does garden sculpture. In the average garden it tends to be small enough to move. But in larger gardens larger pieces are called for, and they become fairly permanent objects. That being so, you have to choose your sculptures carefully because if you decide you don't like them their removal requires a lot of work! Consequently, much large sculpture is fairly "safe", following traditional designs - classical figures, large urns, equestrian statues and the like. Large, challenging, or "odd" modern sculptures are much less common.

However, public or semi-public gardens like the 25 acres at Springfields Festival Gardens, Spalding, in Lincolnshire, can be bolder because they are enjoyed by streams of visitors rather than just an owner. Today's photograph shows part of The Sculpture Matrix designed by Chris Beardshaw. This uncompromisingly modernistic collection of big concrete rectangles, triangles and enclosures, painted purple and light blue, and pierced by horizontal and vertical slits, could only work in such a large area: it would overpower a smaller space. For me it's a sculpture that works in parts, but doesn't offer enough for its size. The detail I like best has this framed eye, inside an enclosure with shrubs, that can be glimpsed through the surrounding slits.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/17
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On