Old Triumph Mayflower

click photo to enlarge
I don't know much about cars, care even less, but I do know a wreck when I see one. And, as wrecks go, decaying and decrepit cars make interesting photographic subjects. The vehicle in today's post is one that I've passed a few times without taking a photograph. However, a couple of days ago the light seemed better, the vegetation was hanging down nicely against the darkness of its resting place, and I got out my compact camera and took a quick snap. The person I was walking with identified it for me as a Triumph Mayflower. It was a shape that I recognised from the 1950s but I'd have thought it was one of the Riley/Wolseley look-alikes.

A quick scan of the internet tells me that this particular model of car was manufactured from 1949-1953 by Triumph in both the UK and Australia,  shortly after they'd been taken over by the Standard Motor Company. Apparently it was an attempt to build a small car with an up-market appeal, hence the traditional"sit-up-and-beg" styling and what were called at the time the "razor-edge" lines of the coachwork. It can't have been a great success because four years in production isn't very long and only 35,000 were manufactured. In fact, the only Triumphs I really remember from my childhood and youth were the Triumph Herald, the Vitesse, Spitfire the TR Series sports cars and the Stag - all later than the Mayflower, and many of them redolent of the "swinging sixties". I imagine this Mayflower has been bought as a restoration project. I wish its owner many happy hours sourcing wing mirrors, bumper over-riders etc and much satisfying, fulfilling work of rejuvenation.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32.2mm (87mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

"Good bad" books and styling

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In his "Tribune" essay of 1945, "Good Bad Books", George Orwell argued for the existence of a type of book "that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished." He borrowed the idea and title from G. K. Chesterton and applied it to authors that today are all but forgotten, people such as Leonard Merrick, Ernest Raymond and May Sinclair, but also to some who are still read and more widely recognised: E. Nesbit, Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and others. His essential point was that "good bad books" are works that don't aim high but do score in terms of entertainment, effective and affective writing, and incidental insight. Moreover, he opined, they would be read long after the likes of Wyndham Lewis were forgotten, and cites in support of his case the enduring appeal of the less serious Anthony Trollope, over the more weighty but unreadable Thomas Carlyle.

The notion that something "bad" can be "good" has been applied in areas beyond books. For example, early British Pop Art practitioners such as Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake drew inspiration from the vigour and vitality of commercial graphics, posters, the circus and other "low" art, seeing in them qualities that they admired. In mainstream popular music there are a small number of artistes who rise above their medium and are liked, within their limitations, by people who generally wouldn't give the genre the time of day. I wouldn't dare to suggest examples!

I've often felt that manufacturers sometimes produce examples of car styling that have this "good bad" quality. In 2006 I posted a photograph of a Cadillac's fin and tail light cluster saying, "It's the sort of styling that you think should never have happened, but part of you is glad that it did." Today's photograph shows the front of the bonnet of a 1936 Ford V8 Coupe. The radiator mascot is a greyhound in the act of leaping over an 8 nestled in a V. This chromed device must be some kind of bonnet release. When I first saw it I immediately thought of what the protrusion might do to a pedestrian unfortunate enough to be struck by it. As I considered it further the ludicrousness of this piece of bad sculpture sitting on the bonnet like a canine parody of a Cellini salt-cellar struck me. And yet, all that notwithstanding, I felt a touch of admiration for the person who had crafted his (or her) artistic vision and persuaded Ford that it should adorn hundreds of thousands of their cars. Perhaps it was the way the chrome and the black bonnet were picking up the tinted late afternoon light that filtered through the clouds. Maybe I was just feeling more charitably inclined than usual towards what I consider bad design. Whatever the reason, I took the photograph and I'm glad that I did.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

Co-operating with the inevitable

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"If at first you don't succeed - give up!"
anonymous modified proverbial saying

Perseverance, they say, is one of the main qualities that produces success. Intelligence, education (not the same as intelligence), aptitude, money, connections and other desirable attributes are all important, but if you haven't got perseverance then there's a good chance you won't achieve your goals. Moreover, if you do have perseverance but are lacking one or more of those other qualities then you may well succeed anyway. I think that's something that many people learn in life. And just as many don't. They are the people who follow the counsel quoted above.

Perseverance can be summed up in a home-spun sort of way in the proverbial saying, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again." That's sound advice, and following it can take people a long way. However, there comes a time when perseverance is pointless because you can clearly see that no good consequences will come from it. In these instances the modification of the saying proposed by W.C. Fields has a lot to recommend it: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again. Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it."

A variation on this kind of advice that I've always liked says that sometimes it's wise to "co-operate with the inevitable." In other words, don't persevere where success is clearly unattainable: if the alternative is in some way satisfactory, just go with it. It was this kind of thinking that produced today's photograph. I'd gone out on an afternoon that the weather forecasters promised would be "changeable". I expected squally showers alternating with periods of sun with dramatic clouds. Well, I got about thirty minutes of that. Then, as I sat in the car park in the centre of the village of Folkingham a squall turned into a spell of prolonged heavy rain. After about forty minutes I said to myself, "It's time, Tony, to co-operate with the inevitable." So I did, took this photograph of the rain through my windscreen, then drove home. And, yes, as I turned into the road leading to my house, the sun made an appearance.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 360
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Choosing a Jaguar

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Don't worry, I haven't taken leave of my senses, I'm not agonising over which Jaguar to buy. My views on sports cars (and 4X4s) remain as they always have done: I think they are silly forms of transport, that say something about their owners (and not what they think they say). No, today's piece is about choosing photographs to display.

Evidence that many find this a difficult task is well illustrated on virtually every photographic forum. People find it hard to select a single, best image to represent their labours, and end up posting too many. But it shouldn't be quite the problem that it seems. Once you've filtered your photographs for technical quality (sharpness, noise, light etc) you look at composition and the other "artistic" aspects of picture making. That, for most people (the odd photographic genius excepted), reduces the number down to a manageable few, and then it's a matter of taste. During my few hours spent at the Bicker Steam Threshing country fair I took several photographs of some of the veteran and vintage cars that were on display. This Jaguar 3.8 Mk II (helpfully labelled or I'd know little about it) presented a few interesting details for the passing photographer (yes, even one who has no time for sports cars can find visual interest in them), and I took several shots. The only two that I thought worth anything as pictures were these of the radiator, badge and mascot. I present them both because each has a different quality that appeals to me. The bigger image is the more conventional, showing off the colour and details best. I think its composition, though similar to the other, is slightly better. The smaller shot appeals because of the subdued reds, and the clouds and light that enliven the bonnet.

I've photographed Jaguars of this era before. See here and especially here for a very similar composition (and better photograph), though a different colour. And if you are remotely interested in my views on why I find sports cars and 4X4s risible and ridiculous, those posts say more.

photographs and texts (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 86mm (172mm/35mm equiv.) (79mm (158mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100 (100)
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A quandary

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I was standing in a Worcestershire orchard on a recent afternoon when my youngest son arrived in his car, parked next to me, and presented me with the image of today's photograph. His car is dark blue, the sky was blue, and the sun had just slipped behind one of the plentiful white clouds. The reflection that started on the car's bonnet near to my feet, extended up to the wiper blades, then was repeated on the windscreen, was very arresting and almost stood up and demanded to be snapped. I immediately knew the image would work in colour but also wondered about black and white, so, breaking a habit of my digital lifetime I took two shots, one colour and one in monochrome.

However, when I came to process the images the colour shot was clearly a better composition, so I binned the black and white shot and did a conversion on the colour image. The resulting photographs are shown above. I've posted two because I'm not sure which I prefer: the impact of colour or the more abstract looking black and white where the bonnet and windscreen are more homogeneous.

N.B. This post should have the title, "A quandary and a puzzle" because I have NO IDEA why the colour image doesn't offer an enlarged version when clicked.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On