The point of focus

click photo to enlarge
Walking by the River Slea in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the other day I stopped when my wife took a phone call. As she chatted I cast my eye about to see if any photographic subjects offered themselves up to my camera. The freshly growing water weed below the water's surface was making lovely shapes, but it didn't translate into a photograph because it lacked the movement that made the vegetation so appealing. Newly hatched mallard chicks whizzed hither and thither like miniature speed boats, but they didn't look like photographic fodder - too fast, too random in direction. Then my eye was caught (not for the first time) by the public seating nearby. It was metal, had words worked into the backrest and the bench seat was perforated with holes. Underneath were bright yellow celandines glowing in the spring sunshine.

I took two photographs of this subject, each with a different point of focus. What I liked about the result was the way they differed and yet offered something of interest, and the colour combination of the blue seat and the green and yellow of the grass and celandines. As some readers will know I have a jaundiced view of much that passes for contemporary public seating because it too often puts the ability to withstand vandalism well-ahead of any attempt to provide a comfortable perch for a passing posterior. One of the things my photographs show - I think - is that even the most unpromising, inflexible subject is capable of providing something out of which we can fashion a photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen


Photo Title: Bench Seat With Celandines Below
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Public benches once more

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Shopping in Spalding, Lincolnshire, the other day we passed several benches that had recently been painted. They were the sort of bench that public and private authorities buy with everything in mind except people sitting on them in comfort. They looked relatively inexpensive, vandal-proof, low maintenance and were clearly made with an eye to how they looked rather than how they performed as a resting place for the human posterior in all its manifold forms. Comfort had been given no consideration whatsoever - they wouldn't have chosen hard, cold steel if it had. Nor had lumbar support ever entered the mind of either the designer or the purchasing officer. But, they looked sleek, modern and eye-catching, particularly with their new coat of paint, and so those responsible could rest easy, knowing that the public would see that they had been discharging their duties with the required diligence. That is, if they ignored the fact that not a single person was sitting on them.

I've lamented elsewhere in this blog - several times, and at length - the fact that public benches frequently look great but are absolutely useless as a place to sit, rest and reflect upon the world. It seems that today, as these examples testified, benches can have every ancillary attribute but never the main quality required to warrant their name. In such designs form is a stranger to function.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 31.8mm (86mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Merry Christmas

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Anyone who knows me well knows that I am lukewarm about Christmas. I don't especially look forward to the arrival of the festivities, and do tend to be glad when the calendar says January 1st. It wasn't always so. As a child I couldn't wait for it to be upon me - the special food, presents, and events all being something to relish. When my children were small I enjoyed it enormously through them, and always strove to make it something special. But, as I've got older it has palled somewhat for me. I really dislike seeing the arrival of Christmas merchandise in the shops during early October, the conspicuous consumption doesn't appeal, and the frenzied shopping in December is something to be avoided or endured rather than enjoyed. I continue to like some of the traditions, and the carols have an enduring attraction for me, but on the whole it's not my favourite time of year.

What also impacts negatively on my feelings at this time is the period between Christmas and the start of the new year, a sort of hiatus when the country has ground to a halt apart from "The Sales". That particular week is the only one in the year that I'm glad to see the back of. During those days I'm ready for January to start, ready for the chance to look forward and to plan rather than to look back, and I'm ready for the daylight hours to start to lengthen. If, after reading that, you think I must be pretty miserable at Christmas, let me say that I'm not. I don't ask much of Christmas - time with my family and friends, a few good films on television, and weather that lets me get out and about, walking with my camera, - that's all I require to be entirely happy.

So why, I imagine you may be thinking, does today's photograph show a lonely, frost covered bench in the unused corner of a frozen cemetery rather than colourful holly against a blue sky (last year's Christmas shot), a festive bauble (2008), or Christmas coffee (2006)? Does it reflect an end of year gloom that has descended on the Boughen household? The answer to that is a resounding no. The fact is I've simply been too busy to shoot anything more suitable, and this was the next image in the queue for posting!

So, as I take a break from blogging for a few days, let me say to everyone who visits on a regular or a sporadic basis, Merry Christmas to you and to your nearest and dearest, and I hope you have a splendid new year! Now I'm off to see when the 1951 film version of Charles Dickens', "A Christmas Carol", is on TV. Alastair Sim is the definitive Scrooge - my hero!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 1000
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Oh no, not another bench!

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"Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before."
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) U.S. novelist

The title of this piece wasn't exactly the phrase that my wife used when she watched me get up from our dry bench and start to photograph this nearby wet one, but it is the gist of what I thought was her rather hurtful remark (I'm a sensitive soul you know :). I've commented before on my predilection for photographing public seating. Some might think this an obsession, others a harmless character trait, and there will be those who see it as a mark of the lack of imagination in the photographer. However, in my defence I offer the quotation at the head of this piece. It is by the famous U.S. author, Edith Wharton, who was the first female winner of the Pulitzer Prize, in 1921, with her book, "The Age of Innocence". I make no claims for art in my photography, but I do think that mining the seam of a defined subject is a good way for any photographer to proceed.

Thinking further about the quotation it seems to me it is truer today than it was when it was made. Certainly many UK artists of the last twenty years have skipped from one subject to another, using a variety of media ranging from paint to concrete to elephant dung to dead animals to...well, you name it. I've often thought the productions of the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin to be shallow, juvenile, the sort of work where what you see is all there is. Edith Wharton's "that common symptom of immaturity" strikes a chord with me.
I used to think that my photographic ouvre was rather wide ranging, and I recall blogging a piece to that end. However, when I stand back and look at my output I've come to realise that I do plough a fairly defined group of furrows. And yes, one of them is public benches!

I took a few shots of this rather uncomfortable bench, including this one that is deliberately slightly overexposed. I was looking to de-emphasise the ground and adjoining wall, and, even though it took the detail out of some of the highlights on the bench itself, it's the photograph I prefer. This sepia-tone finish on a black and white conversion also appealed to me.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

An obsession?

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Sometimes you have to be honest with yourself. You have to acknowledge your weaknesses. You have to face up to your obsessions and the fact that you have an unwholesome fixation. Today is my Tiger Woods moment, my time to come clean and admit that I have a compulsion that leads me to ... photograph public seating.

Where this comes from I don't really know, but if I was to place the blame anywhere (rather than on myself that is) it would be on seaside promenades. I first got hooked at Blackpool in Lancashire. When I went further up the coast to Morecambe I found I couldn't escape the dependency. Even a relocation to Lincolnshire on the other side of the country didn't allow me to elude my desire to make images of street furniture, and I found myself photographing examples in Heckington and Sleaford. Like everyone who has such a craving I thought I could kick the habit. It was only when, during a visit to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, I found myself spurning the photogenic marina and further shots of interesting buildings old and new, and was focussing on a row of ridiculously uncomfortable stainless steel benches that I knew my problem was long term, and I needed to do something about it.

Today I take the first step in my rehabilitation. Instead of posting the original shot of the Wisbech benches for its own sake, I've included it only as the source image for today's colourful flight of fancy. This consists of the same image copied four times, rotated (and flipped), then coloured (with complementaries at opposite corners), all with the aim of turning the focus of my obsession into something quite different - a vibrant, symmetrical, radial pattern. I quite like it. The trouble is it has a sort of psychedelic feel to it, and is the sort of image that might have been projected as part of the light show at a concert by Traffic, Jefferson Airplane or some such 1960s rock band, and I wonder if I'm simply swapping one obsession for another. Don't know what I mean? See here, here and here!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Curls and curves

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I was reading the other week about back pain. I'm a tall man, and like many tall people I experience back pain periodically. I used to think it was due to the increased leverage that is associated with height. However, the writer of the article blamed it on the western penchant for sitting on chairs. She maintained that people from cultures where sitting on the floor is the norm suffer less back pain. She also observed that most chairs seemed to have been conceived with little regard for the human anatomy! That reminded me of a quotation I used a while ago by the influential twentieth century German-American architect, Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) : "A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous."

Today I came upon a modern public bench in the centre of Heckington, Lincolnshire. Like many such benches in the UK it offered seating and a sculptural/artistic experience. And, in common with many other modern public benches, it was useless for sitting on! I imagine that it was commissioned by elected representatives or local government officers, and was designed by someone who saw the "public sculpture" part of the brief as more important than the "comfort for the public's backsides" section. So, it was interesting to look at, a good subject for a passing photographer, and a hopeless bench to rest on for all except those of a masochistic tendency. I've often wondered why, after centuries of refining the design and achieving the goal on many occasions, it's still possible to buy a teapot that doesn't pour properly. The same thought applies to benches. I've sat on many very comfortable designs, so why are we still creating examples that are uncomfortable? I suppose the answer is that where any artefact is designed to fulfil two purposes simultaneously, one becomes subservient to the other, and consequently the design often fails. Still, I mustn't complain - it offered me an interesting shot with curves and curls that the day's sun multiplied very nicely! The effect of the shadows reminded me of the ripples from multiple pebbles thrown into a pond.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm macro (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off