Beech leaves

click photo to enlarge
Beauty is all around us, there to be seen if we care to look. Elsewhere in this blog I've quoted the first two lines from William Henry Davies' poem, "Leisure" - "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare." In this post I add the next two lines, "No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows." A few days ago we sat beneath the boughs of a tree and ate our lunch during a break in a woodland walk. The sun was shining, the oak leaves and the silver birch seeds were falling, and around us on the ground were small pieces of prickly gorse that the wind have removed from a nearby bush. It was pleasurable to simply sit,eat and watch as autumn progressed all around us.

After we had eaten we set off and I soon stopped again beneath some boughs of beech and studied the colours in the leaves of the tree's shoots at the base of its trunk. The green leaves of summer were fast passing to be replaced by green-veined yellow and more sombre yellow-veined, brown, and the shiny twigs were reflecting the blue of the sky. I can't guarantee that I stopped as long as a sheep or a cow, but it was long enough to enjoy the colours and patterns and collect a memento of the moment in the form of this photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Autumn Beech Leaves
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28.5mm (77mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beautiful and odd aircraft and Buccaneers

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On a recent visit to the Imperial War Museum (IWM) site at Duxford, a location that specialises in military and civil aircraft (though there is a tank museum too), I began reflecting on British aircraft design. Looking at the exhibits on display it occurred to me that a number of British  designs count among the most beautiful aircraft to fly.

In this group is, obviously, the Supermarine Spitfire, but also the Hawker Hunter, the Avro Vulcan, Concorde (honours shared with France), the Vickers VC10, the BAe Hawk and quite a few others, including, I think, the subject of yesterday's post, the De Havilland Dragon Rapide. But our country's designers were equally capable of producing inelegant designs, aircraft that look like they are made for an environment other than the sky. I'd put the Handley Page Heyford, the Fairey Gannet, the Blackburn Beverley and the Britten-Norman Trislander in that group. Then there are what I call the interesting oddities - aircraft that are not out and out beautiful but equally, are not without a certain charm. The English Electric Lightning and the Blackburn Buccaneer (above) definitely fall into that category for me.

I came upon this Buccaneer, an example of the aircraft that has been dubbed "Britain's last bomber" (purpose-built bomber that is) in a hangar at Duxford. Its wings were folded, showing its origins as a carrier aircraft with the Royal Navy. However, all the Buccaneers were eventually transferred to the RAF and this example is in the colours of 208 Squadron. The Buccaneer's oddness is seen in the air-brake that protrudes at the back of the body, the "hump" below where the fin starts, and the nose which is hinged to make the body shorter to fit on an aircraft carrier elevator. The saving grace - the beautiful bit if you will - is the elegant curve of the fin with its "T" tailplane. The arrangement of the aircraft and adjacent exhibits stopped me getting a good photograph of this feature but I liked the head-on view and so took that one instead.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 52mm (78mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:900
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beauty and Heckington windmill

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It's good that Heckington windmill, the last remaining 8-sail windmill, is undergoing a restoration, and that the buildings around it are being refurbished and remodelled to make the site into a place that can better welcome visitors. It's good too that the rear of the premises will no longer be the eyesore that it has been for many years. And, it's good that the sails that were succumbing to rot have been replaced and are as they should be. All this is a testament to the hard work and selfless effort of the volunteers who have made, and continue to make, it happen.

However, as I view the mill from the A17 when I'm driving past, or when I stop off in Heckington and have a closer view of the building an unfortunate yet inescapable thought always occurs to me - Heckington mill is undoubtedly the least visually pleasing English windmill that I know.

I recently saw, on successive days, Heckington windmill then Boston's Maud Foster windmill. The temporal proximity of my viewings brought home the agreeable elegance of the latter (probably my favourite windmill) and the ungainliness of Heckington. Where Maud Foster has warm, subtly coloured brickwork contrasting with the white of sails, cap, gallery, windows etc and visually interesting subsidiary buildings, Heckington has cold, stark black and white and seems to tower in an awkward way over a disconnected jumble of sheds. I'm sure the redevelopment will improve the latter aspect. However, it is Heckington's main distinguishing feature that I find most displeasing - eight sails. It is simply too many, makes the mill look top heavy and gives the building something of the character of a whirring desk fan - even when it's stationary! By contrast, the five sails of Maud Foster seem to be the ideal number offering visual interest, pleasing angles and less visual weight.  Four sails are very common on English windmills and usually look fine, six sails are less common and that number is beginning to lose the coherence that characterises fewer sails. Five sails are also less frequently seen than four but that number is definitely - to my mind - the optimum: eight is simply far too many!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (30mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Weeds and razor wire

click photo to enlarge
It's odd, the things that attract our eye as photographers. It may be something conventionally beautiful such as a landscape, a sunset or a ship on the wave-tossed ocean. On the other hand, it could be a subject that is generally regarded as ugly, unworthy of consideration or just plain ordinary - such as weed or razor wire. On an early blog post I chose razor wire as a subject and discussed its place in the modern world. And, at various times, I've photographed weeds a.k.a. wild flowers for their unique qualities.

Consequently, when I saw spirals of razor wire on top of an old brick wall that was growing a luxuriant crop of weeds I had to point my camera in their direction. I consciously chose a long focal length to throw a good deal of the subject out of focus, and was pleased with the way the wire, in places, lost some of its hard sharpness - photographically speaking that is!

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 140mm (210mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:220
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Dead heads

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If you are of a certain age and interested in popular music then the words "dead head" mean something entirely different to what is understood by someone who is a gardener. If, however, you're of a certain age, interested in popular music AND gardening then you use both terms very easily, depending on context.

The musical "dead head", or rather "Dead Head", is a devoted follower of the San Francisco-based band, the Grateful Dead. I can't claim the level of adoration that qualifies a person to be a "Dead Head", but I do own some of their music and have a particular liking for the albums, "American Beauty", "Workingman's Dead" and "Live Dead". The gardener understands a dead head to be the product of "dead-heading", that is is to say, the removal of faded flower heads so that they don't turn to seed. Regular removal of declining blooms encourages the host plant to put out more flowers than it would otherwise poduce, and thereby extends its period of flowering, something that gardeners like to encourage.

Recently, I was doing the rounds of the flower beds and pots removing such blooms and picking up heads that had been blown off by the wind or knocked down by recent heavy rain. I put the heads of the begonias, cornflowers, marigolds and the rest into my bucket, and in so doing glanced down at my work of the past hour or so. The decaying beauty of the spent flowers caught my eye so I put the macro lens on my camera and took this photograph. There's something rather melancholic about the sight of flowers that are past their best. Perhaps it's the way we see in our minds eye the ripe beauty that was, as well as the dishevelled reality that is, and in so doing are reminded of the mortality of all life, including our own.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33
Image Stabilisation: On

Just mud and water

click photo to enlarge
"There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful."
John Constable (1776-1837), English landscape painter

People, in general, have little hesitation in pronouncing things "beautiful" - a person, some flowers, a sunset, an upland landscape - all will readily be awarded the title. Nor too, do people shrink from bestowing the word "ugly" - a graffiti-covered facade, overflowing bins, a weed-strewn urban wasteland, or a dead fox by the side of the road would all invariably be thought so. But John Constable said he'd never seen anything that is ugly. How do we account for this?

It certainly isn't anything to do with today's world compared with Constable's. What we would call ugly certainly existed in his time, possibly more so. No, it's more to do with what we see when we look at the world. The eye of the painter (and the photographer) looks at the world in the same way as everyone else, but often sees it in a different way. One of the principal aims of these people is to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, the marvellous in the mundane, and the beautiful in the "ugly". Sometimes it's difficult to explain why a photograph (or a painting) looks the way it does: to say why, in the eyes of some it is "boring", "simple", "empty" or "nothing". I can see those words being levelled at this photograph. After all, it shows just mud and water. Yet from the moment I saw this particular piece of estuary, revealed by the receding tide, I liked it. I'd hesitate to call my photograph beautiful, but I do think it has a certain attraction. I suppose what I like is the contrast between the "substance" of the flat, glistening mud and the dark, angular shadows of its broken edge, with the smooth, only slightly rippled sheen of the water. I like, too, the ragged line going up the centre of the image, and the way it curves away into almost nothing in the fog. I'm pleased by how the foreground mud and inlet give the composition a base, and I appreciate the tonality across the photograph.

Now, all that sounds a touch pretentious! But then trying to explain in detail what you like about a painting or a photograph sometimes tends to veer in that direction. Yet, it's worth enduring the risible remarks it can provoke because giving voice in this way adds more to our understanding than just applying the over-worked, over-rated, and frequently wrong epithets, "beautiful" and "ugly"!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm (90mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On