Primary and secondary colours

click photo to enlarge

A tradition of English schooling is that, from the age of 11 children are taught in ability groups, but are also placed in "Houses". Typically, on entry to their particular form of secondary education, they are assigned to one of (usually) four houses in which they remain until the end of compulsory education. The houses are not selective, the aim being to have an approximate balance of boys and girls and abilities. These cohorts come into their own during sports day and other competitive events, form periods, and occasions when there is a requirement to subdivide pupils into mixed groups. It's interesting that a tradition that arose in public (i.e. private) schools where pupils did (and do) live in actual houses, should have been so warmly embraced by state schools.

I was first placed in a "house" in the junior years (age 7-11, Years 3-6 in modern parlance) of my primary education. It was called Penyghent House, and accompanied the three other houses of Ingleborough, Whernside, and Pendle - the "Three Peaks" of Yorkshire, and the nearby Lancashire summit, all of which were visible from where my Yorkshire school was located. For better recognition each house was linked to a colour - red, green, yellow and, in the case of Penyghent, blue. When I moved to secondary school, as luck would have it, I remained a blue, but was assigned to West House. You can guess the other houses and colours! It may be my school experience of these four colours as a group that leads me to use them still in that combination. Or perhaps wider society uses them whe there is a requirement for four colours. Whatever the reason, it wasn't until I'd rotated and tinted this photograph of a couple of pine cones four times that I realised I'd chosen those four colours once again. Though I hadn't placed them in the sequence that I always recall them i.e. red, blue, green and yellow!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

I've got those faded-jeans, knocked-about-a-bit blues

click photo to enlarge

It must have been around 1980 that I stopped buying denim jeans. I went to the shops to buy my preferred make - Wrangler as I recall - and nowhere could I find a pair that hadn't been partly worn-out by some kind of stone-washing. Now call me old-fashioned, or tight-fisted if you prefer, but I like to buy my jeans made of pristine, indigo blue denim that the originators in Nimes might have recognised. Don't get me wrong, I like the faded effect, and that "knocked-about-look", but I want it to be gradually acquired through regular use and the rough-and-tumble of life. A few hours rotation in a drum full of pebbles in a Chinese factory doesn't cut it for me - it's ersatz, not authentic. A bit like - to digress more than somewhat - the famous black and white photograph of James Dean, his collar turned up against the New York rain, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, looking world weary. World weary at 24! If you believe the message of that shot you'll believe in fairies.

But - here comes the confession - last year I bought some partly worn-out, stone-washed, already-faded jeans. After 27 years of holding out I succumbed. I'm not proud of it. They were inexpensive, and I was tempted by the price. They undoubtedly do the job (though it won't be for as long as it might have been). Yet, each time I slip them on I feel that the jeans have got to that "knocked-about-look" under false pretences. Their patina is not of age but artifice. Their paleness isn't from the trials and tribulations of life. What's more their looks aren't as a result of a journey shared - with me.

So, you may be wondering, what has this to do with a photograph of the church of St Margaret at Braceby in Lincolnshire. Well, I like a full-on Gothic-masterpiece of a medieval church as much as (no, probably more than!) the next man. But I also have a soft spot for a knocked-about wreck of a building like St Margaret's. It's had clerestories added, aisles swept away, windows re-positioned, arcades filled and roof-lines altered to the point where it looks a real ugly duckling. But, importantly, it wears its past honestly, with no shame: there is nothing ersatz about St Margaret's. If it was a pair of jeans it would have had no truck with pebbles! So I was very happy to photograph it among the crazily leaning gravestones of its churchyard, as the sun broke through the clouds on a cold January morning.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: Off