Rotten apples and Gothic novels

click photo to enlarge

Horror is one of the genres of film that I pass by. I can't take it seriously nor can I accept it as a tongue in cheek exercise. The plotting is often puerile, the acting awful and the photography feckless. Even where this isn't the case I'm invariably unwilling to suspend my disbelief. I feel the same about the Gothic novel too. Many years ago I read Horace Walpole's, "The Castle of Otranto" (1764), the novel that is credited with initiating this branch of fiction, and went on to Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818), a few Edgar Allan Poe stories and sundry other examples of the type. My experiences didn't encourage me to look further, something you may find surprising in someone who spends so much time photographing Gothic architecture.

It's not the core elements of the Gothic novel - terror, death, gloom, decay, darkness etc - that I take issue with so much as the fact they are the centre and totality of the experience offered: there is no light against which to contrast the deep shade (to use a vaguely photographic metaphor). In fact, decay is something that I do like. That's perhaps not surprising since it is claimed to be a feature of the English psyche that recurs in literature, painting and architecture down the ages.

I've posted quite a few images of decay on the blog, for example these hydrangeas and water lilies, and I've even got a few involving death, such as these moles and a swan. Last November I photographed some windfall apples as they started to discolour. Today's photograph is another attempt at this subject, a little later in the year and with, perhaps, a little less focus on decay and a touch more on semi-abstract pattern making. I particularly liked the effect of the interloper willow leaf that had settled like an acute accent over the very decomposed apple on the right.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm (macro)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Apples, Halloween and merchandising

click photo to enlarge

A while ago I read that in the U.K., in terms of the public holiday "family spends", Halloween now comes second after Christmas. I was surprised, though on reflection I shouldn't have been because the evidence of this has been rapidly multiplying before my eyes for the last couple of decades. In early October many shops, including the obvious ones (greengrocers, florists, to etc) and the not so obvious (betting, clothes, newsagent etc), put up Halloween displays in order to either sell their associated merchandise or to catch the eye of passing shoppers. Interestingly, there is a single colour scheme that unites all of these  - orange and black. The former seems to come from pumpkins and the latter from the night/witches. And, each year the tat that is sold becomes ever more lurid. Witches abound, and so do skeletons, but they have been joined by Frankenstein, Count Dracula, severed hands, tombstones, spiders and cobwebs and all manner of "things of the night." This year I saw a gravestone that made moaning noises! It wasn't always thus.

I don't remember celebrating Halloween very much as a child. Moreover, that name competed with All Hallows Eve (the religious festival from which the modern event derives) as the appellation associated with our home-made turnip lanterns and mild attempts at spookiness. Today's jamboree that is the modern Halloween clearly owes the proliferation of pumpkins and "trick or treat" to our friends across the water, but much of the dressing up and "props" seems to be imported too. I'd be interested to know just how much the event has changed in the U.S. over the past twenty to fifty years. I suspect it has grown there too.

Today's photograph shows a few of our wind fall apples, the ones that we leave for the birds to eat over the autumn and winter. This image of decay seemed an appropriate one on which to "piggy-back" a few reflections on Halloween. It was the brightness of the recently fallen fruit against the wet, dark leaves that caught my eye, and I tried to emphasise this in my image.

click photo to enlarge

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 39mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On