A few of my best photographs

click photo to enlarge
For a number of years I've had a link in the sidebar of the blog to a "Best of PhotoReflect". This showed some of what I consider to be my better efforts with a camera. However, the external service I used for that purpose kept introducing changes and "improvements" in a way that has caused me to ditch them.

So, to give anyone who wants a flavour of what the blog is about, at least as far as the photographs go, I've put together a page of ten colour shots and a page of ten black and whites. These can be reached through the side bar links as usual. I say they are my ten best in each category, but that isn't strictly true. Why? Because those lists are going to be different each time I compile them. I'd like to think any future changes will be due to me becoming a better photographer and producing images that I rate more highly than earlier ones. But that isn't going to be the case, or it will apply only in the odd instance. The fact is, once I get past the first couple of shots in each category the rest that I add depend pretty much on how I feel at the time.

I will change these lists periodically, though not too often. Incidentally the borders of the photographs differ. That's because I'm an inveterate fiddler and change my presentation now and again. I haven't linked any of the photographs to their blog posts. I may do that at some point in the future.

Today's photograph isn't one that I count among my very best. In fact its a reject, one I prepared for posting then cast aside after I changed my mind. It shows a bier and a tomb in the church of St Andrew at Rippingale, Lincolnshire. The wheeled bier, probably Victorian, is still used to transport the coffin into the church and, after the service, to the grave in the churchyard. It stands in front of a wall tomb-chest that has a lady on top. She is surmounted by an ogee canopy with damaged cusps, fleurons and plentiful ballflower ornament. All the indications - dress, ornament etc - are that it dates from the the period 1300 to 1350.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Victorian memorial

click photo to enlarge

Memorials interest me for their design and what they say about the time in which they were erected. I also look at them with an eye to what they say about the person commemorated, and about those who had it made - sometimes the same person, often not.

I don't know who had the tomb in today's photograph erected in the modest chapel at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk, but it dominates it, an enormous altarpiece with elaborate sixteenth century Flemish carving notwithstanding. This is partly because it is pretty much the first thing you see when you pass through the main entrance. The simple brick-built, rectangular church with an apsidal end was built in 1836 after the restrictions on worship by Catholics had been lifted in Britain. The stone-clad, projecting chapel that houses the tomb and effigy was built on to the existing structure after the death of the person who is commemorated in it, so I imagine it is a tribute from his family, rather than a self-aggrandising monument. The light from the nearby windows illuminates the white Carrara marble effigy in a way that makes it seem quite ethereal, almost as though it is floating on the ornate alabaster chest below.

I tried a few different approaches to photographing the tomb, positioning myself at an angle near the feet, shooting over the surrounding rails, and concentrating on the upper body of the effigy. However, I preferred this one that uses the ornamental metalwork and wooden bench ends as a pierced silhouette through which the brighter tomb is viewed.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.2mm (48mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -1.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Defaced and refaced

click photo to enlarge
It is all too easy to imagine the zealots of the English Reformation rampaging through our churches, smashing the "idolatrous" medieval stained glass windows, flinging the statues of saints from their niches, scraping and scoring the wall paintings and knocking lumps off the effigies that decorated the tombs of the well-to-do. The fervour that gripped many following the split with Rome, and particularly during the Puritan period of the seventeenth century Civil War, led to many such crimes against art, history, culture, and yes, religion.

Visit a few English churches and you can't help but notice tomb effigies with missing noses, with hands broken off at the wrists, snapped swords and headless mourning angels. The parts that projected from the tombs were the easiest to destroy, and the evidence of the depredations of these early Protestants remains today. Interestingly it wasn't all tombs, or all areas that suffered in this way: many medieval masterpieces remain largely untouched by either religious fanaticism, casual vandalism or the accidents of time. In some churches subsequent generations took it upon themselves to restore damaged tombs, with varying degrees of success. In the church at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, I recall seeing alabaster effigies with noses replaced by stone that is a fair match in terms of colour, but which is much more translucent than the original material. Consequently the noses of the deceased glow when the sun shines upon them from a certain angle, and their pious countenances become comic.

Today's photograph shows an early fourteenth century alabaster tomb effigy of a lady flanked by mourning angels. It is in the church of St Mary at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The identity of the person is unknown. However, at some point in the past - probably the nineteenth century - the church took the decision to restore the tomb. They did quite a good job in terms of making it convincingly whole, though to what extent it draws upon the original I can't be sure. If you look carefully you can see the edges of the joins where the replacement pieces were inserted. I took my photograph in "challenging" lighting, but managed to hand-hold this shot, the best of the series that I captured. Some post-processing has been done to minimise the distracting background and also to emphasise the main areas of interest of the effigy.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20 seconds
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Neophilia and listmania

click photo to enlarge
Yesterday's post was, in part, about neophilia, the love of novelty and new things, a fondness that is often taken to excess and whose corollary is usually a dislike of that which is old. I've been thinking about this in the context of "listmania" - the drawing up of lists and, particularly, "best ofs". For a number of years it's been impossible to avoid these inane compilations. Guitar solos, footballers, movie themes, overtures, hoaxes, cartoon characters, love songs, jokes - it seems that everything has at one time or another been subjected to a list that purports to rank the 100 "best" (or sometimes "worst") examples. There are legions of magazine articles and books based on this idea: there's even a website that professes to list the 100 Best Everything! The most loathsome list that I've come across is in a book called Crap Towns: The 50 Worst Places to Live in the UK, a particularly repugnant mixture of smugness and bigotry. This nasty little volume would be number 1 in my "50 Worst Books" list (irony alert!)

There's also a television channel, not one that I've watched I hasten to add, but which I've noticed on my electronic programme guide, that seems to consist of day-long offerings of musical lists - the 100 best-ever comedy songs, the 100 best-ever disco hits, the 100 best-ever "weepies", etcetera, ad nauseam. What you notice about most of these lists is that they are based on the perspective of a few twenty-somethings so they reflect only their experience, and in many instances encompass only the past 10 years. That's not surprising, I suppose, since the whole "list" phenomenon seems to be designed to appeal to a section of the younger population. That such a concept is entirely fatuous is indisputable. But it's worse than that, it's dangerous. Not in a life-threatening way of course, but in a cultural sense. The idea that someone has the audacity to suggest that they know what is best is one thing, but that people should blindly accept this judgement, and then act on it in terms of buying, consuming and informing their own judgement and appreciation, is quite another.

All of which has little to do with today's photograph of a chest tomb and a gravestone, Grade II listed structures, in a Lincolnshire churchyard. Both are made of limestone ashlar, are old (eighteenth century) so won't appeal to neophiles, and both are unlikely to appear on any list other than those compiled by English Heritage. The gravestone is rectangular with a segmental top and the most elaborate scrolled cartouche with cherubs. It has a much faded epitaph commemorating William Base d.1749. The chest tomb has inscription panels on the sides recording John Spur d.1761. At each corner are gadrooned pilasters, and on the west face is a semi-circular headed niche with a very weathered sculpture of Christ Triumphant Over Death. If you look carefully you can see that Christ has his foot firmly placed on a skull!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On