Is grey the new magnolia?

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I ask the question posed in the title not because I'm some sort of fashion sage or guru, or an arbiter of taste, or an expert on interior or urban design. No, what prompts my question is an article that I read in The Guardian entitled, "From Apple products to DIY and fashion: how grey became the colour of the decade."The author of the piece describes the colour as embodying "the spirit of the post-boom era", hard-wearing and practical. She goes on to note its presence, even ascendance, in clothing fashions, interior walls and on doors, in upholstery, sports wear, nail varnish, office and domestic equipment and much else. It is seen to be smart, elegant, neutral and a good complement to other colours.

I have noticed a slight resurgence in the use of grey but not the all-conquering shift suggested in the article. Perhap I'm not persuaded by her argument, in part, because we used it on some internal wall in the mid-1970s, and I've noticed it being used reasonably regularly since that time. But, I have seen the "tide of green paint" (particularly the sage variety) that I blogged about a while ago watered down by shades of grey that are used in similar circumstances by the same demographic. And I've seen and enjoyed its use in architecture, particularly on facades (see above). But, as for choosing grey because it fits the "spirit of the post-boom era": well, that's a stretch too far for me. It makes as much sense to suggest that it's part of the search for the new magnolia, a need for a change in the backdrop of living rooms, a colour against which other points of colour display well. Black, white, cream and grey serve this purpose especially well. This well-known among the photographic fraternity. Card mounts around photographs often feature one of these colours. Photographers who use Photoshop or one of its equivalents also appreciate the value of a mid to dark grey background against which to display digital images. In fact, why do you think I chose the colours I did for this blog!?

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28.5mm (77mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Posing, fashion and photography

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Fashion photography  too often isn't. By that I mean it is photography, but it isn't about fashion. This branch of photography seem to attract those who see it as an opportunity to create "art", and so they produce images that do everything except show off the clothing that is being promoted. Thus, models adopt contorted poses, or are photographed in harsh or dim light, or are placed in locations that overwhelm or hide the main subject, or - well I think you'll have seen what I mean.

And even when a straight forward shot of a model is taken from face-on the photographers seem to crave an awkward element such as the feet in a strange position, the eyes deliberately closed, the hand raised to shield the face etc. Or the model is asked to adopt what I think of as the "gormless pose". I think you'll have seen this one too. It involves the model standing upright,  staring straight at the camera, mouth dropped open, no hint of emotion evident, arms hanging limply with the back of the hands turned forwards. I suppose it's a reaction against the poses of the middle of the twentieth century where models sat in the sunlight, relaxed, on scooters, on garden seats, or leaning nonchalantly against a tree, all the while beaming their best smile. On balance I think I prefer the latter! There was a time when fashion photographers managed to create art (of a sort) that also showed off the fashions being sold - Norman Parkinson frequently managed it producing wonderful images. These days many aim for one or other of these goals but few achieve both.

Today's photograph shows a wall of windows at the London Tower Bridge Hilton next to More London. It's an interesting wall  for the way colour is used. Standing on a thick wooden trunk nearby is a wooden sculpture of a woman (there's also a man nearby, out of shot). She is one of the "Couple", a commissioned work by the German artist, Stephan Balkenhol, completed in 2003. It was only after I'd seen the woman a couple of times that I realised her "wooden" pose reminded me of the "gormless" poses favoured by some fashion photographers. Now, it has to be said that this lady really can't help but look wooden: even if she was contorted like an Olympic gymnast she'd still be completely wooden. But why do we have to suffer it in the living models in the Sunday supplements? Incidentally, on past experience you may have expected me to say something about the quality of the sculpture. I see them as WYSIATI (what you see is all there is) pieces, so there's not much to add, and I certain won't be describing them as totemic or poles.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 85mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reflecting on hats

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It's not only fashions in hats that come and go, hats themselves fall in and out of favour. When I was a callow youth the trilby and other styles of men's hats with brims were on the way out. Flat caps were following a similar course to near extinction, being favoured by older folk only. One hat that was worn by a few men, and which is rarely seen as daily wear now, was the beret. Some men had got into the habit of wearing one during the war, and continued (without the badge) when they returned to "civvy street". Women wore hats on more formal occasions, but not too often as everyday wear. However, the headscarf was common, though like the men's hats it was in decline. Children wore the hats that their parents told them to wear: caps and balaclavas were common for boys, and bonnets for small girls. However, once the 1960s appeared few self-respecting teenagers wore anything on their heads except their flowing locks that grew in length as the decade progressed.

Consequently, for someone of my age it has been interesting to see which hats continued through the period of relative drought that the 1960s heralded, and how hats then made a comeback to the point where many teenagers have lost the habit of removing it when going indoors. Older men have always favoured hats, especially if their hair disappeared or thinned to the point where the summer sun would burn the top of their head. So, Panama hats never disappeared, and in Britain remained as sure a sign of summer as the thwack of leather on willow (cricket for the unenlightened) or the unveiling of tattoos on the midriffs of young women. But it's the rise of the American-style baseball cap that is the real surprise for me, given that baseball has about as much exposure in Britain as cricket has in the U.S. However, I suppose that these caps have been adopted world-wide as both headwear and a medium of advertising, so it's probably inevitable that they should fetch up on our shores too.

The other week I attended the Steam Threshing weekend at Bicker in Lincolnshire. This event, a small country fair that raises funds for the local church, features a variety of attractions but especially traction engines and an old-style threshing machine. As I made my first circuit of the field looking for photographs I came upon this group of men sitting on straw bales watching a traction engine. They were wearing a fine collection of hats - two Panamas, a baseball cap and a fisherman's hat (also, I believe, called a bucket hat, a "beanie"). They seemed perfect for one of my rare forays into people photography. Incidentally, I went to this event a few years ago and photographed a quite different collection of hats - see here.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 271mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1260 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Orange and purple

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Orange and purple don't rank high in the colours that I like. I prefer orange over purple, but I'll take green, red, blue and violet over either of them. When I see the two colours I think of the 1970s, a decade when they seemed to rise in prominence and find uses in the most unlikely places. I recall seeing houses and shops with their exterior woodwork painted a deep purple; not very many admittedly, but it only takes a few to catch your eye and cause you to wonder about the aesthetic sensibilities of the owners of those premises. Then there were the bright orange walls in rooms - not every wall, just one or two to contrast with the more muted colours elsewhere. Clothes often featured the two colours as well, usually to the detriment of those wearing them. A few years ago the seventies came back into fashion and orange, more than purple, re-surfaced as a colour of choice. In this latter-day reprise it was often paired with strong lime green. I remember seeing the combination used for plastic kitchen implements. The very thought of them makes me shudder.

It has been said that as far as putting one colour next to another goes you have to be careful except in one very particular circumstance. Flowers, many believe, go together whatever the colours. I think there's some truth in that statement. Perhaps it's the omnipresent green of the leaves acting like a flux, binding one hue to another. In our garden we have a fine show of French lavender (Lavandula stoechas). We've grown a variety of annuals and perennials next to it without much thought for the colour combination, and we have not been disappointed by the display that has resulted. Last year we were given some poppy seeds that produce orange flowers in profusion, day after day, even though each bloom lasts for only a single day. When I saw the first flowers appearing against the blue green foliage and purple flowers of the lavender I wondered how it would look. But, despite my feelings about each individual colour I like the combination. So much so that I took this photograph.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 191mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Boxpark photo shoot

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The history of these islands is written across its face and is still visible in the planning, buildings and monuments, landforms etc, wherever you go. In fact, heritage is big business in the UK and one of the main attractions to holidaymakers who live here and who visit from other countries. However, there are many people who care little for castles, cathedrals and quaint cottages, but who do value the transient qualities that Britain offers: such things as popular music, style and fashion.

I was reminded of this the other day as we walked through Shoreditch in London. This isn't a part of the city I know very well, but I have photographed there before. On this occasion we came upon a shopping development that didn't exist last time I visited, but which sprang up very quickly and opened on 3rd December 2011. It's called Boxpark, and the reason it appeared almost over-night is because it is made of shipping containers. Sixty shipping containers to be precise, stacked two storeys high and five rows wide. The "facades" are painted black and have glass door/windows. The development, that describes itself as "the world's first pop-up mall", fronts Shoreditch High Street, has a five year lease, and consists of units selling mainly fashion. Most of the traders are independents with, it appeared to me, a few containers housing well-known labels seeking a bit of "street cred". I'm no follower of fashion, in fact I'm pretty much anti-fashion, but I'm very much for innovative, visually interesting ideas such as this.

It became a subject for one of my photographs not for the "architecture", though I may return and try a few such shots in the future, but because of the photo-shoot that was taking place on the pavement outside one of the units. A few men were modelling clothes and being photographed by a couple of photographers. This was providing street entertainment for, not only passers-by and this passing photographer, but wandering St Patrick's Day revellers too.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 85mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Building fashions and external louvres

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Building fashions come and go; they have always done so. During my lifetime I've experienced fads and fancies as diverse as concrete with the wood shuttering imprint deemed suitable for external walls, glass and aluminium cladding, external glass lifts, X-braces on skyscrapers, tensioned plastic awning roofs and much else. As the millennium approached it seemed that no superstore or industrial estate offices was complete without an entrance picked out with a partially glazed metalwork structure in blue or red. In recent years an increasing number of new flats, offices and other buildings have been sheathed with slats of hardwood that very quickly pick up stains from rainwater.

The dark cuboid block on the right of the building in today's main photograph of the Boathouse Business Centre is faced in just that kind of wood, and exhibits just that kind of problem. However, it's not the modern use of timber that I've been thinking about recently; rather, it's the proliferation of aluminium aerofoil fin louvres. If any one detail marks out a building as being constructed in the past dozen or so years its these high-tech slats fitted to manage solar gain. They are mounted on the outside of the wood-faced block above. You can see them on the building in the smaller photograph - the Red Lion Quarter in Spalding. There are further examples on my photograph of Hayes Wharf Tower, Lincoln, and even this car park in King's Lynn has a facade that mimics them. Are these louvres the only way that architects can deal with solar gain? Of course not, but they are fashionable, and clients surely like to feel that a building they commission is of its time. And it seems that, at the moment that means these aluminium fins.

Incidentally, when I was looking at the Red Lion Quarter building it occurred to me that, in coming up with the elevation that I've photographed, the architect looks like he's been influenced by 1930s cinema design. The small flight of steps leading to the glass doors, the slight overhang with columns, the bordered horizontal window band above, all say to me English "moderne", a variant of Art Deco beloved of pre-war cinema architects.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shoes and fashion

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"And, after all, what is a fashion? From the artistic point of view it is usually a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish playwright, poet and essayist

Oscar Wilde's jaundiced observation on fashion will not find favour with those who design, sell and buy it. But, as ever with him, there are serious points within his outrageous and forceful remark. All fashion is transient and consequently, though "looks" re-appear periodically, it is concerned with changing the surface appearance of people and objects and coming up with a "new look". But, the simple fact is you can't do that for decades - centuries even - and always end up with something that is a pleasure to look at: so often fashion is most certainly "intolerable" in one way or another. Many people will object to this and say that fashion is fun, interesting, harmless. I would argue that it is wasteful of resources and, because its main purpose is to transfer money from the pocket of the consumer into those of the manufacturers and sellers, wasteful of our hard earned cash. Moreover, good design (not usually the same as fashion at all) is perfectly capable of investing products with innate (rather than superficial) qualities that will make us choose one thing over another. For more of my thoughts on fashion, style and design see this post called, appropriately enough, Fashion, Style and Design.

Today's photograph was taken near Covent Garden in London. What amazed me about this shop was the way the shoes were displayed like works of art or revered pieces in a museum. I was also intrigued by how similar most of them were. Clearly these are shoes that are designed to be looked at rather than worn in any utilitarian, work-a-day way. Wouldn't it be interesting to return to the shop in six months and test the veracity of Wilde's remark.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 205mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1250
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Fashion, lingerie and shadows

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"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish playwright, poet and author

Wilde's sentiments, you suspect, would not be shared by most people today, so effectively have we been brainwashed into believing that new is better, that being fashionable is desirable and makes us desirable, and that anyway it is inevitable so we might as well enjoy it.

Fashion is, it seems inevitable, but that doesn't mean we should enjoy it or that it is intrinsically enjoyable. I think we sometimes forget that its sole purpose is to part the public from their money, and fashion shouldn't be confused with "styling" or "design". I've sounded off elsewhere in the blog about the idiocy and wastefulness of the fashion for bottled water, the stupidity of the public in paying more rather than less for clothing that has large adverts for the manufacturer plastered all over it (watch the current soccer World Cup spectators for mind-blowing evidence of this), and the craziness of the fashion for jeans that are artificially aged and torn before you buy them for a sum of money that is greater than you'd spend on a new, undamaged pair.

However, yesterday, when I attended an exhibition at The Hub, Sleaford, of women's underwear with my wife (I definitely needed to add those last three words in this sentence!), I was reflecting on the amazing discomfort that women put themselves through in the name of fashion. From the 1920s bras designed to minimise the size of the bust to the 1950s Playtex rubber corset that claimed to reduce the size of hips, there seemed to be no form of self-torture that wouldn't be sold and bought in the name of fashion. And when underwear wasn't being purchased with the intention of making parts of the body smaller, it was manufactured with the opposite in mind, as with the wired uplift of the "Wonderbra", or the bra that had inflatable sections to increase the apparent size of the bust at will, amply demonstrated.

Well, the ups and downs (and ins and outs) of female fashion was very interesting, and the exhibition was certainly worth seeing, but as well as illumination about the history of female undergarments, I was also pre-occupied with the possibility of finding an image with which to feed the blog. This is the one that caught my eye, a mannequin and its multiple, overlapping shadow, the result of the strong display lighting. The image looks a little like an example of "colour popping", but it isn't, as a close inspection of the shadows will reveal.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 8.8mm (41mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.5
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Swaledales and fashion

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Striding out on the limestone grasslands of the Craven uplands of North Yorkshire I was starting to feel sorry for the sheep. For the Swaledales in particular, the breed that is the mainstay of the local farms. A very dry spell of weather meant that the grass wasn't growing as lushly as it should have been in late May, and the animals were having to be fed supplements brought to them by shepherds on quad bikes. The temperature was unseasonally cold too, with a northerly wind causing me to don a jacket. The lambs looked to be faring quite well, their mothers' milk and what food there was stimulating the thick, curly fleece that offers very effective insulation against the bad weather. No, it wasn't the youngsters that I was concerned about, it was the ewes. Quite a number of them had fleeces that were dropping off their backs, hanging down in rags, the missing pieces blowing about among the nardus grass or caught on the drystone walls and barbed wire. Sheep shearing in the Dales usually starts at the end of May. Had it been postponed due to the weather, I wondered, or was there some other reason for the dishevelled look of the local inhabitants?

Then it struck me. Perhaps this wasn't a case of shearing delayed, but was a matter of sartorial choice on the part of the Swaledales. Could it be that a quirk of the evolutionary process was causing them to follow the precedents of some of the higher life forms who pass their way; in particular the fashionably dressed youngsters on outdoor pursuits courses, or those dragged on to the hills by enthusiastic parents (my children know that of which I speak). The sheep must have seen the ripped jeans, stonewashed shirts, artificially distressed jumpers and artfully revealed midriffs, and thought, "At last, the humans have a fashion that we can copy!" Either that or they're taking the rip and having a good laugh at our expense. What do you think?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 83mm (166mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Conventional wisdom

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You may have read a couple of weeks ago, the claim by the University of York's Peter Thompson that, contrary to popular belief, horizontally striped clothes are better at disguising excess weight than those with vertical stripes. To reach his conclusion he took 200 pairs of photographs of women in vertically striped and horizontally banded clothes, and asked viewers to decide which looked slimmer. By a margin of 6%, those wearing horizontal stripes were judged to appear more slender. To underpin his findings Thompson pointed out that the more beneficial effect of horizontal lines in clothing was first noted by the German physiologist, Hermann von Hemholtz, nearly a century and a half ago in his "Handbook of Physiological Optics", published in 1867.

This snippet of recent news came to mind as I was processing my image of the reflection of a footbridge in the stretch of water known as the Sleaford Navigation. I had deliberately composed the shot with the strong band of the footbridge going diagonally across the frame. The conventional wisdom about composition is that horizontal lines are stable, calm, and give a sense of space, and diagonals are dynamic, and give a greater feeling of energy. However, looking at my shot I didn't think that the diagonal had that effect at all. Maybe it's a consequence of the strong vertical counteracting the diagonal. It could be the almost moire pattern of the wire mesh reflections. Or perhaps it's the effect of the ripples breaking up and softening the straight edges that negates those lively qualities. On the other hand, it could be that, as with verticals and horizontals in clothing, the accepted view is wrong and diagonals really don't impart the qualities claimed for them. What do you think?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 98mm (196mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tiles and styles

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It's nothing short of criminal that tiles, a wall and floor covering that is made to last, should be subject to the capricious fancies of fashion, and that people should feel pressured to regularly change the perfectly sound surfaces of their kitchens, bathrooms and showers. Anyone who has lived through the last fifty years can very easily assign a tile to the decade in which it was manufactured. From the mottled beige of 1950s fireplace tiles, through the "cracked ice" tiles in sage, turquoise and pink of the 1970s, to the small fabric-backed mosaics of the turn of the millennium and the elongated "stone" of today, the pernicious march of fashion seems, ridiculously, to affect durable tiles just as much as more flimsy housewares, clothing and vehicles.

Was it always so? Not really. The Romans introduced tiles to Britain in the form of mosaic flooring, and many examples of their figurative and decorative designs can be seen in museums. But it was not until the monasteries of the middle ages wanted to floor their buildings with something better than trodden earth, rushes and stone, that floor tiles became common again. Their pattern-impressed and slip-decorated designs using symmetrical crosses, circles, part circles, birds, shields, etc remained, to the untutored eye, much the same for a few hundred years. And, the beauty of what they produced so appealed to the Gothic Revival architects of the nineteenth century that they faithfully copied many of these earlier designs.

Today's photograph shows the font and some of these Victorian tiles in the medieval church of St Mary, Swineshead, Lincolnshire. The fact that the designs of such tiles derive directly from medieval examples, or from catalogues of drawings of early tiles such as Parker's "Glossary of Architecture" (1840), and from original designs that often re-worked the motifs of the middle ages, makes identifying the manufacturer quite difficult to anyone but an enthusiast. As in many British churches those at Swineshead are probably made by Minton, but could well be by Campbell, Maw, Godwin or one of the smaller makers. Victorian tiles are commonly found in the chancel, the most sumptuously decorated part of a church. Here at Swineshead they were also deemed suitable for the area around the font, reflecting its importance as the place where a Christian is received into the the church through baptism. I was attracted to this shot by the sunlight streaming through a clear glass window, illuminating the font and its surrounds, throwing a lattice of shadows over everything, and leaving the background in relative gloom.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -3.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Peonies and WAGS

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The styling of cars goes in waves - one decade, say the 1970s, it's all angular edges like the origami folds of the first VW Golf. Move on ten years and curves are back. Then, just as we've got used to those, retro pops its head up in the guise of cars like the PT Cruiser, the "new" Beetle and the re-vamped Mini. So too with clothing fashions. Year after year corduroy jackets are available, then suddenly the rails sport not a one. You resign yourself to life without this essential, then one day are amazed to see them back again!

I thought about this the other day when I was looking at a photograph of a group of "WAGS" in my newspaper. For the uninitiated these are the "wives and girlfriends" of our over-paid Premier League footballers. As with cars and clothing their appearance has converged to a "type" that is tanned, lip-glossed, ear-ringed, with long streaked blond hair, short skirts, and a glass of champagne in the right hand. How, I wondered, do their partners tell one from the other? And does it matter? However, my wife was on hand to enlighten me: "That's what the tattoos are for!" she perceptively said. I hadn't thought about it before, but there had to be a reason for tattoos beyond vanity and group identity: and, after it was pointed out to me, their role in helping their men to tell one from the other now seems so obvious. Maybe, in time, today's tribal patterns, fey flowers and dinky Chinese script will gradually evolve to a more functional tattooed barcode that more properly reflects their status as the property of the rich? Now that I know the real purpose of these tattoos life makes a little more sense than it did!

What has this to do with a close-up of a peony bloom? Well, colour combinations come and go in waves too. Turquoise paired with brown has recently forced itself on my consciousness, appearing on household goods ranging from duvet covers to place mats. The designs have a retro/Op Art/1960s feel. Presumably one designer felt it was time to look back, and the rest agreed. I hope that pairing pink with yellow isn't the next combination. This mixture reminds me of ice-creams and fun fairs - a garish combination that no right minded person would put together. However, it is said that the colours in nature never clash, and though I have seen the occasional garden planting that disproves that rule, it is broadly true. So I do like the pink and yellow as it occurs in this plant in the photograph. I captured the bloom on my window sill, a warm shaft of sunlight to the left, the colder light of the room to the right. I increased the intensity of the blue just a touch to introduce a third colour to the ensemble.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

What goes around comes around

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No one who knows me would say I was at the leading edge of fashion. I search out boring, sludge-coloured clothes and moan if I can't find the same garments from one decade to the next. And yet, I was wearing trainers as casual footwear in 1970! I suppose someone will tell me that wasn't unusual back then, so to bolster my credentials (I think!) I will say they were white with turquoise stripes, were made by Dunlop, and they definitely weren't black and white baseball boots (which were quite fashionable at the time).

That's probably the last occasion I was in fashion. However, I do notice fashion, even if I don't wear it, and I'm now old enough to see styles and colours coming round for the second or third time. I went to buy a lampshade the other day. The shop I entered offered any colour you liked as long as it was beige. On display nearby were cushions in various shades of brown, cream, or brown and cream. Ah, I thought - we're back in the 1970s again! I'm also old enough to know that an object becomes fashionable as soon as everyone's got rid of the old, out-moded version. I predicted that stained glass details in house windows would make a come-back in the 1980s and 1990s, because in the 1970s people were throwing the Victorian and 1930s versions away with great disdain. But, I wouldn't have predicted the re-appearance of the mortar and pestle in kitchens. I'm sure there is a high-tech kitchen gizmo that whines and grinds and produces what this old-fashioned pairing does. Yet, many kitchens I know have a copy of the original article, including my own! Truly, what goes around, comes around.

The other week, I thought I'd combine 1970s colours with a shot of our mortar and pestle. I set up this still-life to provide an assortment of textures, colours, tones and shapes. As with recent images I put the collection on a mirror, and lit it with an on-camera TTL flash bounced off a home-made reflector. I used a 70mm macro lens (35mm equivalent), with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f18 at 1/80 second), ISO 100, with -1.0EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen