Pink and black

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Pink always seems to me to be the right colour for carnations (Dianthus) because their colloquial name is "pinks". These flowers come in a range of colours yet pink, to my eye, is just the right colour to go with the blue-tinged green of the stalks, thin leaves and buds.

I think I've said elsewhere in this blog that pink is a colour that I never especially liked but, as I've aged, it has grown on me. It's a colour that cries out to be paired with another colour. I like to see it with turquoise or grey though I'm not fond of the popular pairing with red or purple. When I came to take this photograph of some pink carnations in a vase in our hall I opted for a black background. Pink and black are often put together quite successfully. In this instance it allows the relatively muted colour to display an intensity that it loses when other colours are paired with it, and makes the most of the outline of the blooms. The trouble is that that pink and black have a particular association in my mind, one that I can't shift. Such things are very powerful and can prevent one seeing something for what it is. For example, I can't see the colour mint green alongside brown without thinking of a dessert (pudding) that we had in primary school - chocolate sponge with mint flavoured (and coloured) sauce.

So what association pops into my head when I see pink and black. Nothing less than Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts, a sweet of my childhood, still available today, though one I haven't tasted for decades!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Carnations and the language of flowers

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Flowers have been used symbolically throughout human history. The ancient Egyptians used the lotus flower (water lily) to represent Upper Egypt and the papyrus Lower Egypt. The ancient Greeks saw the daffodil as a symbol of death and imagined that Hades, the underworld and abode of the dead, was covered in them. In contrast the Romans saw roses as symbolic of death and rebirth, and planted them on graves. The early Christian religion used the lily as a symbol of purity and it can often be seen on Byzantine icons and in Renaissance paintings being handed to the Virgin Mary by the angel Gabriel. It's a moot point whether members of the early Christain church appropriated this idea from the Greeks and Romans who linked the lily with their respective queens of the gods, Hera and Juno.

Early nineteenth century and Victorian writers such as Charlotte de la Tour (Le Langage des Fleurs, 1818), Kate Greenaway (The Language of Flowers, 1885) and John Ingram (Flora Symbolica, 1887) popularised the notion that many flowers can be used to convey meaning through the ideas associated with them. Thus, a woman receiving anemones from a man, on consulting one of the books about the "language of flowers", would read the gift as a tribute of unfading love (or forsaken, or sickness, depending on the tome referred to.) Orange lilies, however, were a symbol of the giver's pure hatred for you, though candytuft implied mere indifference.

With that in mind I wondered what the symbolism of the carnations that fill a vase in my house at the moment might be. In the language of flowers they mean fascination and devoted love (in general), I'll never forget you (if pink), admiration (red), alas for my poor heart (deep red), capriciousness (purple), no (striped), innocence (white), rejection (yellow). Phew, I thought, that's too complicated for me; the possibilites of pitfalls are much too great for me ever to take the language of flowers seriously. I mean, what might I be inadvertently saying with these white carnations edged with red? I could hand them over to my true love and receive a slap on the face for my pains without ever knowing why!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/15
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: +1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

The knight and the carnations

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One of the basic themes found in all forms of art is the pairing of unlikely bedfellows. The story of Beauty and The Beast exemplifies this very well, so much so that its basic idea was plundered, and subtle changes introduced, in stories such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Cyrano de Bergerac.

Fashion photographers are particularly drawn to this theme, placing their model and the the clothes they are showing off in the most unlikely of contexts. The English photographer, Cecil Beaton (1904-1980), renowned for his photographs of Audrey Hepburn and other film stars, as well as for photoshoots for the big fashion houses, is generally remembered for the images of elegance that he produced. However, one photograph that sticks in my mind is of a refined woman, coat casually draped around her shoulders, reading a newspaper that she holds in her white-gloved hands, whilst sitting on a concrete splattered saw-horse among grimy buckets, spades and the like. The contrast between the subject and setting was what drew the viewer into the shot.

Today's photograph is also an unlikely pairing, but one which I think works really well. It shows a tomb of a Knight of the Order of St John, dating from the 1400s, in the church of St Botolph's, Boston, Lincolnshire. I posted an image of this knight on the blog a while ago, and it depicts the tomb as one is used to seeing such things. However, when I visited the flower festival at St Botolph's (see yesterday's post), I found that someone had surrounded this fine piece of sculpture with pink carnations (and a few orange daisies). That simple act transformed the cold, dead stone, injecting life where there was none, lightening the mood surrounding the effigy, and introducing a colour that complemented the bluish tones. It was a photographic opportunity not to be missed, so I composed this shot using the out-of-focus blooms on the left to balance the head on the right.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/50 seconds
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Still life with aphorisms

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If I wasn't interested in quotations it is unlikely that I'd have come across Malcolm de Chazal (1902-1981), but I did just that the other day, and I haven't yet decided whether he was a charlatan or an interesting oddity. A Frenchman who spent most of his life working in Mauritius as an agronomist and civil servant, he is best known for his several volumes of numbered thoughts and ideas, in particular Pensees and Sens-Plastique, which he began publishing in 1940. At George Braques' prompting he took up painting in the 1950s.

The quotation that brought de Chazal to my notice has a bearing on today's photograph: "The flower in the vase smiles, but no longer laughs." It reminds me of a cod-Confucian saying that might have been slipped into a bad* 1970s Kung-Fu movie. In fact, a lot of his "aphorisms" have that quality: try these - "accidents happen only when roads change their minds", "the rock needs no burial when it dies", "our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the animals don't understand us." But then he comes up with a few that, while still having that pseudo-mystical feel, also have a quality that by-passes our conscious mind and seems to stir something deeper: for example - "art is nature speeded up and God slowed down", or how about, "monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey." But perhaps I'm trying too hard to find something in the writer's words that just isn't there! Look him up, read what he has to say, and make up your own mind.

Today's image is one of an ongoing series of still life photographs that borrow their subject and composition from painting. This one is an arrangement that my wife assembled from our garden and put on a chest in the hall. The combination of colours, particularly the red/pinks of the flowers with the greens of the leaves and vase, appealed to me, so I grabbed it and photographed it against a very dark background in strongly directional natural light to show off the blooms. The final image has had the contrast increased to emphasise the flowers further.

Here are links to other photographs in this series - 1, 2, 3, 4

* Afterthought: isn't the phrase "a good Kung Fu movie" an oxymoron?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/2
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Thinking about favourite colours

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As far as colours go I'm a fairly stereotypical person. When I was a child I preferred a strong blue - royal blue in my case - and this is the colour that most boys name as their favourite. As I grew older my allegiance changed to green, the second most favoured colour amongst boys and men, and one that remains so until they get into their fifties (blue remains top for life!) At that point, in most surveys, green drops off the radar to be replaced by purple. It's here where I step out of the mainstream, because I have a deep dislike of purple, the colour that is usually cited as the third favourite colour for men between the ages of 20 and 50.

As far as disliked colours go, I partially agree with the colour surveys of men - orange and purple would be top of my list of loathed colours, whereas they are usually second and third, after the reviled brown, a colour I am not especially averse to. In my boyhood I always named pink as my least favourite colour (perhaps for its "girly" associations), followed by purple. I had a particular dislike of both of these when they were partnered with yellow. Nowadays my feelings against pink are not as strong (though I am still anti-purple), and I particularly like it next to shades of blue/green. I even find myself seeing some admirable qualities in pink next to yellow, overcoming my "raspberry ripple" associations, though only when they are represented by subtle hues, as in the example above.

I took these carnations out of separate vases and placed them together for a photograph. If I can rid my mind of the thoughts of weddings, Valentines, Mothers' Day, and romantic novels (!) that the image conjures up, I can find qualities to admire in this pairing that would have been completely lost on me in my younger years, so clearly my tastes are changing. Perhaps though, choosing flowers to test ones liking for colours and colour combinations is cheating, because it has been wisely said that as far as colour goes, flowers never clash!

photograph & text (c) T.Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/20 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off