The transformational power of flowers

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Every gardener knows the transformational power of flowers. Grow a clematis, a rose or a wisteria against a dull old wall and, for the duration of the flowering of the plant, the mundane becomes beautiful. When our pots of red/orange pelargoniums, that we place to the left and right of our garages and a dark green shed, burst into flower these utilitarian buildings become more interesting and more noteworthy. The Royal Horticultural Society's "Britain in Bloom" competition is all about improving the appearance of settlements large and small by the planting of flowers.

On our recent visit to Brigg, Lincolnshire, we had a welcome and enjoyable cup of coffee at a cafe. The main area of the premises was well-presented under a glazed roof with several potted plants, palms and climbers. The "overflow" or outside area had less to offer, located as it was in a wide passage-way with block paving and rendered walls. However, this somewhat dreary location was lifted and made much pleasanter by the wall-mounted planters filled with multi-coloured petunias. My photographer's eye particularly enjoyed the contrast of the bright flowers and the plain, grey background and white furniture, the near monochrome quality of the latter making the colours of the former seem more intense than nature intended.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 30mm (45mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/50 sec
ISO:110
Exposure Compensation: 0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Model 3107 Series 7

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It's interesting to remember that sitting on something purpose-made for our posterior and back is a relatively recent phenomenon - certainly in terms of the period of time that people have lived in purpose-built houses. I've no doubt that when men lived in caves, at the end of a day's hunting and foraging, as family groups settled down by a warm fire, there was a rush for the most comfortable ledge, rock or log on which to sit or recline. And yet, as far as western society goes, even as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries most people continued to make do with either nothing on which to sit, or a flat, backless wooden bench, chairs being the preserve of the well-to-do. So it's perhaps not surprising that since that time the chair has become one of the most frequently designed and re-designed pieces of furniture.The fact that chairs, and the way we sit on them, are also seen as the main cause of back problems in western society may also be a reason for the amount of attention that designers lavish on the humble chair: get it right and customers will beat a path to your door. Or so you'd think.

We've just spent a couple of days looking after our two year old granddaughter in London, allowing me to combine family duty with a little big-city photography. On a coffee break in a cafe at the Royal Festival Hall I noticed this group of empty chairs near a small stage area. I have a passing interest in chair design and immediately recognised them as Model 3107 Series 7 by the Danish designer and architect, Arne Jacobsen (1902-1971). Now you might be thinking that remembering the model number of something designed in 1955 counts as  more than a "passing interest", but the fact is this particular line has been reproduced more than any other and so is very familiar to students of the chair. I remember reading somewhere that in excess of seven million have been manufactured. I also recall that Jacobsen said he got the idea for the design from a chair by Charles and Ray Eames, thus underlining the fact that to make a completely original chair is exceptionally difficult given all the precedents and the need to accommodate the human body. The Model 3107 is a simple, elegant, dining-height design. However, in my experience it isn't the most comfortable of chairs for extended periods unless you carry your own padding in the form of a cushion or a generous posterior. Consequently it's probably the ideal chair for a restaurant where the management wants a quick turnover of customers.

I was drawn to this shot by the variations on a theme that is very evident in the arrangement. Inevitably, when you see a collection such as this you consider which one you like best. For me it's the dark, polished wood version.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5 Shutter
Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO:800
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Normal service is about to resume

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Unusually for this blog it's been on autopilot for a few days while I've been at home and I haven't attended to it at all. We've had a family Christmas with children and grandchildren staying, and that has been my alternate focus over the festive period. But, they've now headed off to their respective homes so here's a short post to keep things ticking over. Normal service will be resumed from tomorrow - I think.

After the colourful Christmas-themed post of bells, baubles and glitter balls I felt a need for a contrast; something simpler, starker and more restful. So, here is a photograph I took a week or so ago when we stopped off in Barton upon Humber having returned from the part of Yorkshire just over the river. It shows a rather utilitarian (and uncomfortable) chair on an equally utilitarian floor next to strictly functional walls made of painted blocks and glass bricks. On the face of it not the most inviting of rooms. However, the light through the glass wall emphasised the lines and shapes very nicely, silhouetted the chair, and gave the whole scene a luminous quality that looked like it would convert to black and white very well. And so it did. Or at least I think it did!

I've written elsewhere on the blog about how I like the effects that glass bricks produce and how I wish they were more widely used. I'm pleased to say that appears to be the case. I've seen quite a few more of them in new buildings in recent years, though I'm sure I can't claim any credit for that!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Lumix G6
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm (48mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Hither and thither and morning coffee

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Though the language police would wish otherwise, language changes. Over time spelling and grammar are modified by use. New words are introduced, existing words take on new or additional meanings and old words are cast aside. I was thinking about this the other day when, in a slightly self-conscious manner, I used the phrase "hither and thither". These two words, both singly and in this pairing, are rarely heard today; they sound old-fashioned, the sort of language you'd come across in Shakespeare or in the novels and poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The context for my use of the phrase was an explanation to someone that we'd been travelling about a lot in recent weeks and consequently much of my photography during this time had been done beyond the confines of Lincolnshire. As I uttered the phrase, I made a mental note to try and find out whether "hither and thither" was ever in widespread use and, if so, when it became replaced by "to this place and that" or, more colloquially, "here and there". A bit of research produced no satisfactory answer to the question. Most of what I discovered came from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and from that source I was interested to find the words had more meanings than I knew.

The word, "hither" has its origins and equivalents in Old English,Old Norse and the Germanic language. "To or towards this place" (now "here") is its principal meaning. However, it was also used to mean, "to, or or on this side of", "up to this point in time", "to this end" and "in this direction". A United States variant is, apparently, "Hither and yon" (or yond). The earliest recorded use of the phrase as I used it (though with somewhat different spelling), dates from the early A.D.700s. "Thither" has a similar lineage to hither, as does "whither" ("to what place" or "where").

One of our recent "hithers" (or was it a "thither") was London. Whilst there I visited the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and took this photograph of people taking morning coffee. The bird's-eye-view of the tables and chairs, the subtle colours and raking light that produced elongated shadows, appealed to me and so it became the subject of one of my better photographs taken at that location.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14.2mm (38mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Fitting in the photography

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Recently my photography and blogging has suffered, having been fitted into a schedule that has involved a lot of travelling and time spent with an ailing family member. Consequently, though there have been one or two outings where photography has been planned, the activity has frequently been something of an afterthought, a shot or two grabbed here and there.

Today's photographs are a case in point. During a day away from home, with a little time on my hands, I looked around the garden in which I was sitting to see if I could snatch a few shots. The metal garden table and chairs with their shadows on the lawn seemed the best available option. Sometimes a self-imposed determination to get a photograph from a particular subject prompts a level of invention that otherwise lays untouched. To the amusement of my companions I circled the furniture, composing shots from every angle. The two shown here are the best of the crop: nothing startling, but pleasing enough in their own way.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

Chairs and visual connections

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As a child I used to see faces in the front of motor vehicles. The headlights were eyes, the radiator grilles were mouths and the often prominent maker's badge represented the nose. Sometimes the wing mirrors managed to suggest ears. I have the feeling that the car designs of the 1950s and 1960s prompted my imaginings in a way that the designs of today wouldn't. Or perhaps, underneath all this, is the primitive ability and necessity of quickly recognising faces because your life may depend on it. Maybe that's something that is stronger in childhood, but declines as you age. What I do know is that these sort of visual connections work at an unconscious level and come upon you when you least expect it.

The other day we passed an old watermill that also houses a cafe. Outside were tables and chairs for the use of customers who fancied their coffee and cake en plein air. Rather optimistic, I thought, given the fact that rain and unseasonally low temperatures have been an almost daily feature of recent weeks. Most of the chairs and tables were the sort of thing one can see anywhere. But the examples shown in today's photograph attracted my attention because they seemed to be the outdoor equivalent of a bar table and stools. The elongated legs of the trio made them look different and slightly odd. They also prompted one of those unconscious visual connections. As soon as I saw them I thought of Salvador Dali's elephants in "The Temptation of St Anthony"! I think it's the fact that if you cut the legs down to size they would be like any other table and chairs, just as Dali's surreal elephants would become much more "normal" with regular legs.

I took the photograph because tables and chairs often provide visual interest in the form of strong, interesting outlines and, if the sun shines, shadows that reveal more about their structure. The backdrop of old bricks, steps and railings seemed to add to the image too.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Summat an' nowt

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When I was growing up in the Yorkshire Dales the phrase "summat an' nowt" could often be heard, frequently as a dismissive term. "Ay lad", a grown up would say, "I saw that programme last night on t' telly. It were a bit o' summat an' nowt." The literal translation of the phrase is "something and nothing", and the meaning leans heavily towards the final word of those three. "Devoid of substance" is too grand a conversion, but that comes pretty close to what most users of the phrase intend.

"Summat an' nowt" is a phrase I associate with photographs such as today's, or shots like this beach scene, this crow, and this number and boat. They are images that have a small amount of a not very interesting subject and a seemingly large amount of very little. "Something and nothing" is the phrase I've heard used a couple of times to describe such photographs, and when I do my Yorkshire-raised mind supplies the vernacular version. And yet this kind of minimalist image frequently provokes longer and deeper thought on the part of the viewer than does a nominally more interesting subject such as a landscape, portrait or architectural shot. There's not only the "why" of it to consider, but the spare composition invites attention too, and the space concentrates our attention on the details of the "subject". Take my chair on the stairs at Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire. Is it about the chair? Is it a record of this part of an old, mainly ruined building? Neither really. What interested me here was the arrangement of lines in the frame's rectangle that are anchored by the chair. This photograph of part of a school building was also taken mainly for the arrangement of lines. Something else I liked in today's photograph was the washed out, muted colours. There's nothing in the photograph that jumps out and grabs you, everything is calm, still, serene. But not entirely devoid of substance I hope.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Seeing the world in black and white

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When I was young I remember being told that some animals see in black and white. Bulls, it was said, weren't enraged by flapping a red cloth at them as matadors do because their eyes could not see colour: it was the movement alone that caused them to charge at people. Dogs, cats, and many other mammals, I was given to understand, saw in monochrome, though it didn't handicap them very much. At the time I can remember thinking there could be worse things than seeing the world like a newspaper photograph or a B movie, in only two "colours". Today the more widely held view is that mammals do see colour, but that their experience of the range of colour in the world nowhere near matches ours. A dog's vision has been likened to the world as seen by a red-green deficient person. However, scientists say that fish and birds have a much better perception of colour than we do.

When I was starting out in photography black and white prints were still very common, and were the medium of choice in "art photography". I began by shooting black and white alongside colour, and always found the monochrome images quite hard to visualise. Eventually, through experience, I learned to see those aspects of a shot that would be de-accentuated in black and white, and thereafter I found composition easier. I didn't always get it right, but I did more often than not. That knowledge has stayed with me through into the age of digital, and I continue to rely on it. Consequently, when I'm framing a shot that I know I want to be seen in black and white I never switch the camera so that it displays the image in monochrome, and I never take a shot in black and white, only in colour. It's not just that I can often "see" the final outcome reasonably well, its also because I may want to change my mind and have the shot in colour (and I'm too lazy to take one of each)!

Today's image is one that I knew would make a shot that I'd definitely prefer in black and white. The sunlit paving and the shadows were pretty much that already, but the illuminated green chair and the visible part of the table really stood out. However, I could see that their shadows, highlights and shapes would merge into the composition when I converted it to black and white. And so it proved. I'm fairly happy with the result.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On