People and landscapes

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It's my impression that most contemporary landscape photographers prefer to exclude people from their views. I struggle to find any that routinely - and deliberately - include the human form. So, in that respect, if I'm right in my judgement, I am in a minority because I often strive to include people.

Most English landscape painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth century considered their landscapes to be incomplete if there wasn't a figure or two somewhere to be found. Where people are absent an animal, domestic or wild, is used instead. Such inclusions are there as an area of focus in the composition; often a starting point for the eye's journey through the painted world the artist has laid out for the viewer. They also provide a sense of scale. And, for many artists, they say something about Nature and man's relationship to it. This is particularly so in the case of the painters of the Romantic Movement where the awe and majesty of a scene often towers over the diminutive people.

What these painters knew, and what many photographers also realise, is that the human eye and brain are adept at finding people in a landscape, whether the view is a real one or one in painted form This is probably an evolutionary trait: for millennia individuals and groups needed to be aware of other people as a potential danger and seeing them early increased their safety. Eyes became attuned to spotting the human form, and this is a trait that we still have today.

The photograph above features the view from near Hereford beacon across the nearby lowlands that includes the valley of the River Severn. As I was composing my shot I noticed a dog walker on a hill below me. When he stopped to admire the mist clearing from the patchwork of fields I seized the moment and composed my shot around him.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm (157mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tractor lines and wheat

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I've lived in Lincolnshire for five years and during that time I've taken an interest in the agriculture that is to be found here. Cereals and vegetables prevail, especially on the Fens and the better land. Beef and dairy cattle are also reasonably common though there is much less than in the west of Britain. Sheep can also be seen though again in smaller numbers than in the west. What is very noticeable is the way that the land is intensively cultivated with a view to maximizing production and profit. This is most obvious in vegetable production, but it can be seen with cereals too.

I read that the UK produces more wheat than it consumes. However, though some wheat is exported, there is also importation of wheat varieties that can't be grown in our climate. All this is good for the balance of payments, seems to produce a good income for farmers (with the help of the EU farm policy), and provides for the country's food needs in flour and animal feed. Over the past few years I've watched the cycle of the local winter wheat production. The activities are roughly as follows, modified, of course, by the weather: September - land ploughed and prepared for sowing; October - seed sown (drilled); November - herbicide application to control weeds; December - young wheat left to grow; January - as for previous month; February - fertiliser applied; March - fertiliser applied; April - nitrogen fertiliser applied; May - nitrogen fertiliser applied; June - fungicide application applied; July - wheat left to grow; August - wheat harvested. As you can see there is very little respite for the land, and the wheat fields' contribution to feeding wildlife, which was formerly significant, has been reduced to virtually zero.

On a recent outing to photograph "lines in the landscape" I saw many fields with flourishing wheat, some with patches where recent strong winds and rain had flattened the crop, and more than I've seen before with puddles of water in the tractor lines. The example above is not untypical. It will be something of a nuisance for a farmer, but for a passing photographer it's a very useful piece of foreground interest!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Simple pleasures

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Simple pleasures are always, without exception, the best pleasures. Watching your children's first encounters with what we take for granted is an experience that's hard to beat. I remember my first-born sitting in his pushchair and laughing uncontrollably at a donkey, the first he'd ever seen, that put its head through a fence to look at him. Simpler still, isn't a cool glass of water on a hot day a drink unsurpassed by any man-made mixture? Or what about the view at the end of a strenuous climb to the summit of a mountain? Isn't it just the perfect reward for your effort?

And then there's clouds. I take almost daily pleasure in looking at clouds. Formations that I've seen countless times still attract my eye and instill the same awe that I must have felt the first time I saw them. New and different takes on common configurations also draw my attention. The other evening I was out and about looking for a few "lines in the landscape" to add to my collection. The tracks left by farm vehicles as they traverse crops have a fascination for me, and when I saw the examples in the photograph above I was pleased to see the clouds overhead. Those straight flicks of cirrus looked like they were painted on to the blue sky with a lightly laden brush. The effect of the wide angle lens at 17mm was to make them converge towards a vanishing point and introduced a linear quality that echoed the lines below. It was enough to make me take a shot that gives the sky more emphasis than the land below.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Simplification

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Since my translocation from a coastal area with a conurbation to a rural area with fields and villages I've found it harder to simplify my photographs. Perhaps it's because in my present setting I see fewer opportunities for images that emphasise these qualities. Yes there are uniform areas of grass and sky, but there is little open water or sea, no expanses of beach, large buildings with plain walls are few as are expanses of concrete and tarmac. So, simple backdrops are harder to find. And, the range of subjects that I could call upon in the vicinityof  my former home was wider. Consequently, as I go about my photographic business I'm constantly on the look out for any image that exhibits the simple force of just two or three elements. Sometimes I find it by going in close either by physical proximity or using a zoom lens. But opportunities for wider shots that feature this quality are harder to find and see.

However, the other day as we walked across the field of winter wheat around which is the village of Tetford on the Lincolnshire Wolds, one of these simple images presented itself to me. My wife was walking ahead, bum-bag bouncing, map in hand, as we came towards the end of a long morning walk. As she strode along the uniform greenness of the wheat, the long and sinuous path, and her figure suggested a shot. So, I stepped to the side to make the line of the foorpath fill the right of the frame, placed my wife on the left, and took a couple of photographs. This is best one.


For more thoughts on simplifying photographic compositions see here, here, and here. Examples are spread throughout (mainly) the years 2005-2007 of the blog!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 271mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Writers and locations

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When I was growing up in the Yorkshire Dales I was always aware of the relative proximity of "Bronte Country", the hills around Haworth where the Bronte sisters and their family lived, worked and wrote. I also noted that in more recent times the northern Dales assumed the title, "Herriot Country" on the back of the popularity of James Herriot's books and their TV adaptations, though I confess to never having read or seen any of his work. This mania for giving areas names based on the works of writers or painters is of relatively long standing, though it does seem to have increased in the past thirty years or so.

Thomas Hardy's books are largely set in Wessex, an old name that describes an area that includes including Dorset, Berkshire, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire. He gives fictional names to actual towns - Puddletown becomesWeatherbury, Bridport is changed to Port Bredy, Bournemouth to Sandbourne etc - and this has, for tourist authorities and readers, created an area that is now recognised as "Hardy's Wessex". This kind of association is sometimes disputed when more than one artist is connected with a location. Thus, the Lake District in the minds of some is linked with Beatrix Potter, but others see it as closely intertwined with the "Lakes Poets" - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey and others.

What has this to do with my photograph of oilseed rape and ash trees? Well, it was taken over the past couple of days when I spent some time walking, cycling and driving in a small part of England that has acquired the title of "Tennyson Country". The rolling hills of the south Lincolnshire Wolds in the vicinity of Somersby, Bag Enderby and Harrington is the area where Alfred (later Lord) Tennyson was born, grew up, and where he wrote much of the early poetry that led to him becoming the most admired poet of Victorian England.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

December, fields and Pixlr

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Apparently December 2010 was the coldest for the past one hundred and twenty years. It was certainly the coldest I can remember in terms of average temperatures and the minimum values to which we were subjected. Thinking back through my experience of winters, that of 1963 beat it (thus far) in days of continuous snow on the ground, but the four weeks or so we have had is much more than usual. Many have lamented the weather because it has restricted what they can do, has resulted in higher than usual heating bills, and has been depressing. Certainly I haven't travelled as far afield as I would have done in more typical December weather, and the higher heating bills will follow our higher energy usage as surely as night follows day. But depressing? No! In fact, it has been a real gift to photographers. The days of compete white-outs, hoar frost, frozen water and fog have presented familiar subjects in unfamiliar guise, and photographic subjects haven't had to be searchd for - they've simply popped up at every turn.

Today's photograph is probably the last of the hoar frost images that I will post. It shows a small-holding across a cropped field. Without the heavy dousing of white I doubt whether I would have pointed my camera at it.

This particular image has one attribute that none of my other photographs posesses. All my post processing is done using one or more of the "heavyweight" image processing packages. This one, by way of an experiment, I ran through a free online photo-editor called Pixlr. I like to keep up to date with freeware, open-source and online software offerings, and make good use of several such packages that are as good as, or better than, commercial equivalents. Though this particular image didn't need a great deal of editing, Pixlr (daft name!) did what I wanted very well, and the user-interface was quite intuitive. I won't use it on a regular basis, but I could see a use for it when away from home, or as something to recommend to friends who need to edit images only occasionally and don't want to download and install any of the free packages. It's worth a look.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 92mm
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Who eats the cabbages?

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In the Monty Python sketch set in a "greasy spoon cafe" every item on offer includes Spam. When reciting the menu the waitress notes the presence of the once ubiquitous industrial meat with a barely disguised relish. However, if you think that establishment's offerings are the depths of culinary monotony, spare a thought for the sheep in this Lincolnshire field: breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper consists of cabbage. And then, by way of a change, the next day they have...cabbage. Still, it's probably better than grass.

I pass this field fairly frequently in my car, and I've watched these sheep eat their way across it in sections that are divided off with a moveable electric fence. The field is quite a large one, and the part that was eaten first (in the background) has already been ploughed. I've discussed elsewhere the Lincolnshire custom of sheep being wintered on fields of vegetables that are either the cropped leafy remains, or those that are unsold. Being brought up in the sheep country of the Yorkshire Dales, I initially found it odd to see the animals on anything other than grass, but I've got used to it by now. However, there is one thing that puzzles me, and seeing these sheep eating what appear to be perfectly good cabbages, set me thinking about it again. The puzzle is this: who eats all the cabbages that I see growing in Lincolnshire? I know that people of my generation eat cabbage (in all its varieties) as a cooked vegetable. I even grow some. But what about younger people? Just about the only cabbage I see them eating comes in the form of cole slaw. A couple of years ago, when speaking to a farmer, I learned that the big, round, football-like cabbages in the field next to us were for that product. I do still see cabbage offered on some restaurant menus, but it has definitely moved from being a staple of the English diet to something of an unwanted relic.  However, the acres of Savoys, pointed varieties and others that I see must be being eaten by someone. But who, and when, and where? It's a puzzle.

When it comes to photography sheep are exceedingly unco-operative creatures. I knew that when I got out of my car with the camera at the ready those nearby would flee, presenting me with a shot of rear ends. So it proved, but then curiosity got the better of them and they stopped and turned to look at me. I wondered what they thought as I snapped away, and I wondered too what the drivers of the passing vehicles thought when they saw me snapping this unpromising subject!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 168mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Gates and Thomas Hardy

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On December 31st 1900, Thomas Hardy wrote what has come to be one of his best loved poems. Apparently it was published in The Times newspaper on the following day, a fact that I find remarkable.* The original title was By the Century's Deathbed but today we know it as The Darkling Thrush. As I took my photograph of this field gate that leads into a pasture in the village, it was the first line of Hardy's poem about a bleak and wintry landscape that came to mind - "I leant upon a coppice gate when Frost was spectre-grey". Of course my gate wasn't the entry to a coppice, nor was the sun "the weakening eye of day" - it was rising. My mood wasn't quite as sombre as that of the poet either, perhaps because it was morning light that I surveyed as opposed to his end-of-day gloom.

In some respects this is an unusual poem to have achieved such popularity, and it must surely be not only its accessibility, but also the introduction of the thrush's song and the note of hope that it brings, that makes it so well liked. I don't know if this is the last of the snowy morning photographs that I'll post, but Hardy's poem makes me think I need to get out at the end of the day and take a few more downbeat images.

*Addendum: The poem had been published in The Graphic some time before Hardy added a note that it was written on 31st Decemeber 1900, so publication in The Times the next day isn't so remarkable after all.

For anyone who doesn't know the poem, here it is. Hardy died in 1928 and so his work is now out of copyright.

The Darkling Thrush
 I leant upon a coppice gate
    When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
    The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
    Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
    Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seem’d to be
    The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
    The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
    Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
    Seem'd fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
    The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carollings
    Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.6 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Unidentified crops and Martin Crane's chair

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It was all so much easier when I was growing up in the Yorkshire Dales: fields in that part of England were either rough grazing, improved pasture or meadows, and the only crop was grass. It's true that there were varieties of grass, but it was pretty easy to distinguish Nardus stricta from the fescues and bents, though separating the varieties of those two did usually defeat me. When I moved to eastern England it became harder - so many crops that look so different at different times of year. Being a vegetable gardener I had no trouble with the mainstream varieties - potatoes, sprouts, cauliflowers, cabbages, carrots, beans, peas, etc. Even the less common asparagus, kale and so on weren't a problem because they are quite unique in their shape and size. And wheat, barley and oats are certainly not difficult to identify once they've attained a certain maturity. No, it wasn't those that presented the problem, it was the leafy root crops and "green manure". Sugar beet, mangolds, turnips, and the like have, to the layman, big similarities, and differences that are not always apparent, or that can only be seen when they have been picked.

Today's photograph is a case in point. The field in the photograph looks like it was made from the ribbed, wool-like fabric that was the vogue for sofas and armchairs in the 1970s. It even has the same stripes and colours (think Martin's chair in "Frasier".) Just what is growing in that field? It will doubtless be obvious to someone because the colours and method of cultivation are very distinctive. But that knowledge hasn't been imparted to me yet. Is it green manure? Is it a root crop of the swede/turnip variety? Why are the lines different colours? Is it a consequence of chemical weeding? Perhaps someone can enlighten me.

I took this photograph over the hedge that surrounds a building that I'd gone to visit, one that will be the subject of a future post.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

England's patchwork quilt

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Visitors to England, and particularly to the lowland areas of these islands, frequently comment on the way much of the landscape is parcelled up into fields bounded by hedges. Natives returning from faraway places often only really notice the contribution that the patchwork of fields makes to our environment when they have been absent for some time and have the opportunity to see English farmland with fresh eyes. And in the minds of many - natives and non-natives alike - there is a feeling that this quintessentially English scene is one of long standing: that it has always been thus.

In fact, the hedges and the fields that they enclose are, for the most part (and especially those of the English Midlands) the product of planning and planting that took place only two hundred years ago. At that time, under a legal process known as "enclosure", the common fields shared by multiple farmers were parcelled out to individual landowners who then enclosed them with hedges. In a few areas of the country, such as the South West, small fields with hedges had long been used, but elsewhere they were imposed in the interests of agricultural efficiency. Many saw the enclosure process as a usurping of ancient rights and a re-distribution of land from the poor to the rich: hedges were disliked because they were part of that process. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the disappearance over the past fifty years (in the interests of agricultural efficiency!) of more than half our hedgerows, is widely lamented.

Today's photograph shows the patchwork effect of the fields near Breedon-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire. Each field is a slightly different colour depending on whether it grows wheat, barley, pasture, hay, oilseed rape etc. The dividing hedges are either neatly cut to a uniform width and height, or left to grow in a more natural way, depending on the owners' predelictions, and may or may not contain trees for similar reasons. The best view of this effect is from an aeroplane, but a prominence that rises above the general area, such as Breedon Hill from where I stood to take this shot, serves almost as well. The distant power station with its cooling tower plumes and man-made cloud is at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in nearby Nottinghamshire, and the large buildings in front of it (and actually some distance away), is East Midlands Airport.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 34mm (68mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yellow

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It struck me as somewhat odd that the Conservative Party's slogan in the recent election campaign was "Vote for Change!" Isn't conservatism about resisting change, about lamenting the disappearance of the "good old days" when the Great in Great Britain was an adjective as well as a noun, the streets were a safe place to park your Bentley, and the poor tugged their forelocks and raised their flat caps to their Tory-voting betters?

That imagined past, of course, was a time when oilseed rape wasn't the feature of the English landscape that it is today. There are many - mainly conservatives with a small "c" - who deplore the yellowing of England's "green and pleasant land" and see the crop as an alien intruder. However, anyone who thinks that Britain's landscape always looked as it did fifty or even a hundred years ago - the usual time frame when gazing fondly backwards - doesn't appreciate that our farmland is constantly evolving. In the past two hundred years Lincolnshire has increased its arable acreage and reduced its pasture: animals are much less in evidence than formerly. Fields have, on the whole, increased in size, and thousands of miles of hedges have disappeared, with those that remain being much more manicured than previously. Farms have increased in size too, so fewer farmsteads are to be seen. Some crops - hemp, woad, flax for example - have either disappeared or feature in greatly reduced acreages. On the Fens the growing of flowers commercially is a relatively recent phenomenon, as is the use of plastic on vegetables to hastening growth in spring. A farmer of seventy five years ago, surveying Lincolnshire's landscape today would notice enormous changes. But, if he were sent back seventy five years before his time he would see similarly great differences.

I like to see the yellow fields that are currently in full bloom. I find them uplifting in the same way that I do a field of poppies. Moreover, as a photographer I find their bright glow extends the palette that I have to work with. In a couple of weeks the oilseed rape will have faded to green, but while the fields are here in their day-glo brightness I'm taking advantage of them. I hope you like yellow! Today's shot is a detail of a few oilseed fields in a gently rolling piece of countryside where they abut hedges and land that is given over to winter wheat. I liked the contribution that the tracks through the crop made to this image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Snowy fields and contre jour

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For the past two days we have had snow. Not an unusual occurrence in winter, but these falls come at the end of a particularly mild and rather wet autumn, are heavier than is usual in this part of the world, and are accompanied by temperatures that are at or below freezing by day and night.

Snow is like manna from heaven for photographers, and so I've been making the most of it. One of its virtues, photographically speaking, is that it so changes the subjects that you've photographed before that you feel motivated to snap them again. Furthermore, contre jour shots take on a special quality when snow is on the ground, so I feel driven to take rather more of these than usual.

Today's shot was taken during a morning walk around fields near our village. The snow was criss-crossed with hare tracks, the sky above with the vapour trails of airliners, and the snow had long shadows thrown by the low sun. I chose this piece of relatively smooth snow for the foreground because you are never quite sure what kind of flare you're going to get when you shoot into the sun - it varies with the camera/lens combination - and a smooth surface allows any lens artefacts to show up properly. On this one I got a a small "rainbow" towards the bottom of the frame. This shot is just what came from the camera, with no filter or post processing, except for a little noise suppression in the sky.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Above us only sky

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From the mid -eighteenth century, through painters like Richard Wilson (1713 - 1782), Thomas Gains- borough (1727 - 1788) and Alexander Cozens (1717 - 1786), English landscape painting found its feet. Yet, their art still shows that century's belief in man's superiority over nature, and the idea that it can and must be "improved". It was the group of artists who followed them - Thomas Girtin (1775-1802), John Crome (1768-1821), John Sell Cotman (1782-1842), J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and, pre-eminently, John Constable (1776-1837), who cast aside this mindset in pursuit of the natural world as they found it, and created "a prodigious flowering of landscape painting in England, unparalleled in any one country on the Continent."

Drawing his inspiration from Titian backgrounds, the work of Rubens and Dutch landscape painters, as well as the English artists of that earlier generation, Constable painted scenes from around his home in Suffolk. Cottages, barns, trees, ruins, waggons and horses - all were worthy subjects in his view. However, his interpretations were mediated by an English sensibility and depend for their power on his rendering of the changing English sky. Constable called the sky "the keynote" of a landscape painting. He gave much of his energy to capturing the fleeting beauty of clouds and light at different times of day and different seasons. The lessons he learned from his cloud studies were transferred into his major paintings. Constable's skies are suffused with the variations that come from weather that originates over the Atlantic, is moderated by passing above our small island, and is further changed by never being far from the influence of the sea. These qualities can be seen in paintings such as Weymouth Bay (1816), Brighton Beach with Colliers (1824), Hadleigh Castle (1829), The Valley Farm (1835), or Norham Castle (1835-40).

Today some people appreciate Constable's work for its depiction of an idyllic, English countryside that has either disappeared or changed, except for in a few corners of our land. But, whilst Constable was not insensitive to the beauty of the English landscape of his time, he simply painted what he saw. In 1820 it was a haywain by a farm and stream: if he had been painting today I'd like to think it would have been a bright red combine harvester passing over a field of ripe, yellow wheat! And, whilst Constable would not have recognised this piece of modern farm machinery, he most certainly would recognise and celebrate the wonderful clouds drifting over these flat, Lincolnshire Fenland fields.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lifting your spirits

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Here are 10 sights to lift your spirits. They are in no particular order.

1. A skein of geese flying in a ragged "V" formation, descending through the evening sunset onto the salt-marshes.
2. An azure blue May sky with a stiff wind blowing streams of fluffy cotton wool clouds from one horizon to the other.
3. The unreal glow of light in the bedroom when you wake on a January morning to find an unexpected fall of snow has descended in the night.
4. The tumbling flight and the "peewit" calls of a pair of lapwings as they perform their aerial display over the fields during the nesting season.
5. A sunset over the sea just as after rain has cleared, leaving the sky a mixture of the purest blue, the darkest grey, tinted whites, and the firiest red.
6. The view after a brisk walk, on a clear, cold morning, from any summit that gives a 360 degree view.
7. The low sun filtered by the red, orange and yellow leaves that won't let go of the trees in autumn.
8. Turning the corner on a woodland path and coming upon banks of purple rhododendrons in full bloom.
9. Hundreds of tiny frogs, each no bigger than your finger nail, as they clamber around the shallows of a pond.
10. A field of wheat, barley or oilseed rape (above) that has been invaded by bright red poppies.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

The wind that shakes the barley

click photo to enlarge

What are the most frequently photographed subjects. Well, if we're considering the average snapper, then it's probably babies and children, closely followed by holiday views. Amateur photographers have a fascination with sunsets, though people are also popular, as are landscapes. Birds and insects have gone from niche genres to mainstream, and some men (it's always men!) seem to photograph nothing but cars or motorcycles. All of these are perfectly reasonable subjects for the camera, and it's possible to take a perfectly good (or great) shot of each.

There is, however, a subject that attracts the casual snapper and the amateur in equal measure, and which is quite difficult to photograph well. I refer to running water! Many are seduced by the twinkle of light on a moving stream and try to capture it in a still image. They never do. Some place a neutral density filter over the lens and blur the water, making it look like fog flowing along. It creates an odd effect that some like. But the fact is, that what people see and like about flowing water just can't be captured on still photographs. To do the subject justice requires video.

A field of barley is another subject that also needs moving images to show the shimmering beauty of eddies of wind as they move across its silky green surface. However, that didn't stop me trying to get something of that flickering quality recorded on my camera sensor! In the absence of neutral density filters, on a dull day I selected a small aperture and low ISO, and photographed the barley as the strong wind whipped the seed heads back and forth. It took several shots to get something I liked. Does it capture that ethereal quality? Of course not. But it suggests it, and I'll make do with that!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f22
Shutter Speed: 1/5
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +1 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

John Barleycorn

click photo to enlarge

"There were three men came out of the west their fortunes for to try,
And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn must die,
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in, threw clods upon his head,
And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn was dead."
Old English folk song (Verse One)

The first version of this folk song that I ever heard was by the English rock group, Traffic. I'd been interested in folk song in the raw and in its use by classical music for a few years, but this particular melody didn't cross my path until the release of their album "John Barleycorn Must Die". In the era of folk rock by bands like Fairport Convention and Pentangle it didn't strike me as odd that they chose a traditional song to set amongst their jazz and soul inflected music, but, with the benefit of hindsight I can see it was a bit odd.

The song exists in a number of versions, the oldest being in George Bannatyne's Scottish manuscript of 1568, which collected verse of various kinds. There are many seventeenth century broadside ballad versions, and Robert Burns published a re-worked interpretation in 1782. Common to all renditions of the song is the personification of barley as "John Barleycorn" or "Sir John", and a succession of "attacks" upon him that represent the cultivation and harvesting of the crop, and its eventual destiny in beer and whisky. There have been attempts to link John Barleycorn's death and resurrection in the song with Christian ideas but I've always thought that to be a metaphor too far. However, it is a wonderfully wrought story with a strong melody. Its survival to the present day is testament to the power and beauty invested in it by its unknown authors.

Ever since I became familiar with John Barleycorn I can't see the hairy ears of barley without the line, "And little Sir John's grown a long, long beard, and so become a man", popping into my head. It did so again when I stopped to photograph this field on the Lincolnshire Wolds near Hameringham. The lone tree, the tractor tracks and the soft clouds against the blue May sky suggested another minimalist landscape composition of the sort I tried at the end of April, so I isolated them with a longish focal length for this image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 46mm (92mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Fields and food

click photo to enlarge

It's surprising that food has taken so long to reach the political agenda in the UK. But, when the prime minister recently listed his priorities for the next couple of years food, or rather food prices, loomed large. Maybe I haven't been taking as much notice as I should, but I don't recall it figuring much in political debate during my adult life. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that politicians only think about food when the availability and price make the voters squeal, but I do wish it wasn't so.

I'd have loved to have seen food policy a political priority when the move to intensive agriculture was driving down the numbers and diversity of our flora and fauna. I'd have liked to see it being the subject of more intelligent debate when genetically modified crops were being contemplated. So, I'd like to see the discussion of food policy today extend beyond rising prices. I recognise that it's difficult to balance food production, fair farm incomes, biodiversity, landscape and tourism, but I really get the impression that, as a country, we just don't make much of an effort. And the worldwide rise in food prices won't make it any easier or more likely. So, if you're a skylark, lapwing, wild animal or plant, clinging on to the odd patch of ground that isn't ploughed, sprayed, harvested, cropped or otherwise intensively cultivated, the future looks bleaker because mankind's insatiable appetite for cheap food and fuel means - we need your homes!

Today's photograph shows some intensively farmed land on Lincolnshire's rolling hills. During the afternoon that I took this shot I saw some old stubble fields providing food for foraging birds and mammals. However most of the ground was given over to cereal crops, legumes, potatoes and oilseed rape. The odd bit of pasture with sheep and dairy cattle still remains, but most of it is in small pockets around villages supporting the hobbyists of "horsiculture". Can it be long before this is turned over to food production too?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off