The delight of fossils

click photo to enlarge
If my memory serves me well I spent a fair chunk of my childhood looking for fossils. Growing up in the Craven District of Yorkshire with its plentiful outcrops and drystone walls of Carboniferous limestone was clearly the prompt for this fascination. I had only to walk along a road or lane that was bounded by walls to be surrounded by fossils. Each rock had tiny shells, corals etc. A desire to know more about how small creatures came to be rock led me into the world of crinoids, brachiopods and rugged outcrops that had once been coral reefs beneath tropical seas. From there it was a short step into identifying types of rock, the lines of faults, and the characteristic forms of the karst landscape.

Like many children I made collections. Fossils and rock specimens comprised two such hoards. Interests developed in childhood often stay with you throughout your life and so it has been in this case. There are things that I pursue more avidly, in greater depth, but the why and wherefore of landforms fascinated me then and still does. So, unsurprisingly, when I was in an English Heritage shop the other day and I saw these cut and polished ammonites for sale, at a very reasonable price, I bought a couple. Not for me as it happens, but for my grand-daughter. Perhaps the story of how these pieces of rock came to be formed from the body of an ancient creature will spark in her the interest to know more and she too will cultivate the same interests that have brought me such pleasure.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5D2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 0.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Crab apples and forbidden fruit

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"Forbidden fruit always tastes the sweetest", or so they say, but that certainly wasn't my experience as a child. In the small market town where I grew up there were abandoned and neglected apple trees, probably the property of someone somewhere, but which seemed fair game for young boys. On more than one occasion I gave myself stomach ache by eating the sour cooking apples and crab apples that hung heavily from the drooping boughs. Elsewhere there were tempting gooseberry bushes, and, even though we knew they were tart to the point of being inedible, still we ate them, and always we regretted it. Then there was the rhubarb. In a few places this grew on the grass verge by a roadside garden: in other words off private property, but probably deliberately planted there by the householder. A stick of this was palatable if eaten raw after each mouthful had been dipped in sugar, but the after-effects were uncomfortable to say the least. So no, I never found that forbidden fruit was the sweetest.

At the front of my house is a crab apple tree. It has become more than a little wayward over the years, and in the time since I have lived with it, I've started to bring it under some sort of control, cutting crossing branches, revealing more of the lower trunk, etc. Each spring it produces fine blossom, and each autumn a copious amount of fruit. Thus far the latter has been left for the blackbirds or has been composted. Perhaps my reluctance to do anything useful with the crab apples stems back to my childhood experiences with the fruit. However, this year, as I photographed the delicate blossom, I thought that perhaps we should look into using it for making jam, jelly, wine or something of that nature.

Today's image shows the end of one of the lower branches of the tree. I chose this one for a shot using the macro lens because it allowed me to have a large petal as the focal point towards the bottom right of the frame, the rest of the nearby leaves and blossom framing it and filling the upper left (the latter out of focus and therefore emphasising the foreground). And it gave me the opportunity to include some dark areas to give a little more contrast across the image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Mazes, trampolines and play

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A few years ago I was using Google Maps to look at a city that I know quite well when I became aware that many of the back gardens in suburban neighbourhoods featured large blue circles of varying sizes. It took me a moment to realise that they were outdoor trampolines. The number of these pieces of play equipment staggered me, and I looked at a few other towns and cities to see whether this was a local or a national phenomenon. Sure enough, wherever I looked, there they were. It seemed to me a testament to the pester-power of children that so many parents had bought one of these trampolines, particularly since they are known to be a prime cause of broken bones, but more especially because they are also recognised to be something that children quickly tire of. Perhaps they are bought by parents who envisage the exercise they induce being an antidote to the increasing childhood obesity!

However, the sight of so many of these trampolines caused me to reflect further on the deeper reasons why parents fill their gardens with swings, play houses, wooden towers, slides, etc. Clearly it's most obviously a physical expression of affection. It's also, unfortunately, partly due to the guilty feelings they have for not giving enough time to their children due to the long hours they work. There's clearly, too, an element of "keeping up with the Joneses", or at least the Jones's children. Then there's the fear of letting children play unsupervised in the street, the immediate neighbourhood or the local park. I've long been concerned about the retreat from public spaces, and the valuing of private property over that owned by the community.

Two thoughts follow from my reflection on garden play equipment. Firstly, children get much more play value and satisfaction from a pile of wooden beams and flat panels than they do from any ready-made equipment supplied by a manufacturer. A home-made kit of this sort, with a few pieces of rope and large nuts and bolts can be made into whatever the child can imagine. And secondly, using the public park rather than the small, inferior one that parents provide offers more than simply exercise: it gives the child social interaction and responsibilty. It also gives them the chance to experience a maze of the sort shown in today's photograph. Of itself this hasn't a great deal of play value. But, there are other pieces of equipment nearby to sample too. And there are other parks elsewhere to try. Much more fun, I think, than being cooped up in the back garden with a circular blue trampoline.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen


Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.2
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Horse chestnuts and water babies

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When I was a boy autumn was the time of year for gathering the seeds of the horse chestnut tree, known to children throughout Britain as "conkers". Of course part of the fun of childhood is anticipation, and as August turned into September, and the growing, green, spiky shells that held the coveted conkers became visible high in the trees, we could often wait no longer for them to fall to earth. So, armed with short, stout sticks we went to where the favoured trees grew and hurled our pieces of wood, aiming to knock the conkers down, remove them from their shells and carry off our trophies to be hardened, skewered, strung and used in our playground game.

The trouble was, the first conkers we knocked down were often not ready, and instead of being glossy brown were white or skewbald. Those that fell due to the wind or ripeness were invariably the biggest, brownest and best, but that meant waiting until the end of September and often into October - and small boys hate to wait.

The group of trees where we usually gathered our conkers grew in a row by a public footpath, and one of the rites of passage for boys in my Yorkshire Dales market town was to learn to distinguish between the trees that were "good uns" and those that were "water babies" (this name pronounced in Dales-speak with "a" sounded as in cat!) The latter were conkers that were small, remained white, never hardened, and were soft because they were full of a watery liquid. Their shells were a duller green/brown, and they had fewer (often no) prickles, compared with the big, spiky light green shells of the good uns. Another distinguishing feature was the leaves. They had the big "fingers" characteristic of the tree, but these were usually smaller, less vigorous, and as the autumn progressed they coloured in a different way to the favoured trees.

The other day, as I walked near Aswarby in Lincolnshire, I came across a group of horse chestnut trees, and noted with surprise that every one was a water baby. Why, I wondered (temporarily rolling back the years) would anyone want to plant such trees? Near the front of my house is a row of horse chestnut trees by a stream, and, I'm glad to say, each one is a "good un"! So, today I present, for your edification and delectation images of leaves from these locations, with the good un first and the water baby second.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Photo1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 79mm (158mm/35mm equiv.):(150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f4.7 (f5.6)
Shutter Speed: 1/800 (1/640)
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Playing in the great outdoors

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According to a recent survey by the National Trust 38% of Britain's children spend less than one hour outside each day, and about a quarter spend more than 14 hours a week in front of a television or a computer screen. In the same survey the favourite memory for the vast majority of parents involved playing outside.

My favourite memory of childhood would also be of playing outside, in my case on the limestone uplands of the Yorkshire Dales: exploring caves, streams and rivers and woods, catching fish, watching wildlife, taking home leaves and flowers to identify. When I was young most children were allowed to roam the area in and around the market town where I lived. It wasn't unusual for a group of us to come across another band of children playing in the fields or on the hills, perhaps making dens out of the scree at the bottom of a cliff. During my walks in that same area today I never see children, either accompanied or unaccompanied. In fact, I don't often see people below the age of forty taking their leisure in the countryside, so perhaps this particular rot set it many years ago!

One of the pleasures of growing up is discovering the beauty that is all around us; the plant and animal life, and the history, that is freely available to us all, almost regardless of where we live. We are so much the poorer if our main experience of the world is mediated through television or computers. Direct experience, looking closely at our surroundings, finding out things for ourselves, experiencing the freedom to wander, is crucial to the rounded development of children, and provides them with enjoyment and healthy activity at very little cost. The safety concerns of parents and society, that lead to children being restricted, are greatly overstated and need to be toned down otherwise today's children, when they are adults, will be citing their favourite memory of childhood as reaching Level X of Computer Game Y!

As I was photographing this track that cuts through a wheatfield on the gently rolling hills near the village of Folkingham, Lincolnshire, I wondered where it went to, and what was at the end of it. As a child I'd have followed it to find out. I'd like to think there are still some village children who are doing that sort of thing today. What appealed to me about this shot was the mutiple lines of the track, the way its arc was almost followed by the line of the clouds, and how the area of blue above nicely echoed the area of dark grass below.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Down among the hostas

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Grass, tree roots, flowers, insects, leaves, the kerb edge, paving stones, holes, pebbles, sticks. Like many children I spent much of my childhood in close proximity to these things. One of the regrets of growing up is that you leave them behind. You become taller and much farther away from them. Your view changes, from your immediate, low-level surroundings, outwards to school, to the next road, the next town, next week, and to the rest of the world of grown-ups.

One of the joys of the macro lens is that it can make you feel like a child again. It encourages the exploration of the minutiae that surrounds us, and often takes us down into the low-lying regions that we last looked at when we were small. For some photographers it becomes an obsession, with the camera trained on (particularly) every passing insect. For me, the shapes, patterns and colours that this kind of lens reveals make for exciting compositions without the need to leave my home and garden.

The part of Lincolnshire in which I now live had been without rain for the past four weeks. Plants were suffering. So, when the weather broke, and rain fell, bringing relief to farmers and gardeners alike, the photographer in me also felt relieved that I could now look for shots with glistening highlights. I spotted these wet hostas from my living room window, and rushed out to photograph them as soon as the rain stopped, bending down low and close to get a child's-eye view of the patterns made by the leaf veins and water drops. I fired off a dozen or so shots, and couldn't decide which of these two compositions I liked best.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/60 (1/100)
ISO: 200 (400)
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Pebbles paused

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"Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in."
from "Dover Beach", Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), English poet, writer and school inspector

Not Dover Beach, but Walcott beach, Norfolk. The shape of these pebbles shows that they have made many a "grating roar". However, their noise is now silenced, for the moment, jammed as they are in the gaps between the planks of a groyne. Yet, the next storm may well free them to continue their life of attrition, and their descent into sand.

When I was taking this photograph a couple of children were collecting pebbles in their small buckets. They scanned the beach carefully, selecting only those that appealed by colour, or banding, or distinctive shape. A man, presumably their father, was accompanying them, also intently selecting the pebbles that caught his eye. Perhaps they would be studied then returned to the beach. More likely they travelled home at the end of the afternoon and found a drier resting place decorating a garden, a backyard or a plant pot. Children are instinctively drawn to pebbles, finding the smooth shape and multi-colours attractive. Like flowers, sticks, insects and leaves a child sees them as abundant, attractive and hence, collectable. Interestingly, and almost uniquely, the childhood fascination with pebbles continues into adulthood, perhaps being driven by a primeval attraction based on a long-forgotten utility as well as their intrinsic beauty.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm (90mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off