Garden colour

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There is a school of gardening that favours subtle, muted colours that belong to the same palette - say light blues and purples - to which white is sometimes added. This can be very effective. It can also become monotonous. My preference is for subtlety occasionally disrupted by an explosion of colour. And, when it comes to floral pyrotechnics, few flowers offer more of a "bang" than the gaillardia.

We've grown this flower for quite a few years and I always look forward to its appearance in the border. The red, orange and yellow blooms could never be described as subtle and the colour combination is not one that has a particular appeal for  me. On a recent tour of the garden with my camera and the macro lens I stopped in front of the gaillardias and tried to work out what it was that I liked about them. I came to the conclusion that it is the mixture of strong contrast and the way the yellow petal tips give the outline of each flower head strong definition.

I've photographed this flower before (see here, here and here for example) and this time I again looked for a different composition. I found it by keeping the camera to my eye and slowly moving around the blooms. This view with the out of focus foliage seemed to further accentuate the definition of the petals that I like.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Gaillardia Flower
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 60mm macro (120mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shallow focus flowers

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I can remember the first photograph that I took where I deliberately sought an out of focus background.  It was of the engraved metal head a processional cross in a church. The camera I was using was the Russian-made Zenit E with its "kit lens" of the day (though that phrase hadn't been invented then), a Helios 58mm f2. Needless to say I took the shot with the lens wide open at maximum aperture from a fairly close distance. I've been reading about the methods that cameras use to overcome shallow depth of field when close to the subject (as in macro photography). Most involve the merging of multiple shots each taken in a different plane of focus. Very clever and very useful if you want everything in focus as some kinds of photography do.

My photography, by and large, involves taking shots where I want a large depth of field but in situations where it isn't difficult to achieve by stopping down; for example when shooting architecture. When it comes to macro photography I rarely want everything to be in focus because this is a discipline in which I like to produce soft, out of focus effects.

Today's photographs are details from a bunch of flowers in a vase in our living room. I could have taken both shots with much greater depth of field, but the dreamy effect of the out of focus areas appealed to me more. The depth of field of the chrysanthemum shot is minimal, with the sharp edges of a couple of petals betraying where the point of focus rested.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1 Title: Lily Stigma and Anthers
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 35mm Macro (70mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Forget-me-not

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I remember being told a story in primary school about how the forget-me-not (Myosotis) got its name. God - or a god, perhaps classical, I don't recall - was naming all the plants when a small one that he had overlooked called out to him, "forget me not", with which that became the name that he bestowed on it. I've also read that in the middle ages women wore the flower as a mark of steadfast love. However, I often think the flower should be called "cannot-forget-me" because the fact is, once you have this flower in your garden, unless you are obsessively tidy, you have the plant for ever after.

The forget-me-not spreads its thousands of tiny seeds by dropping them, and by its pods attaching to clothing, cats, birds, in fact anything that brushes it when passing by. In our garden it is in full bloom in a number of locations, its blueness vying with the bluebells, another flower that spreads easily and quickly. My photograph shows one of the tiny groups of flowers on its stem, the yellow centre contrasting nicely with the blue petals. For all that it is invasive it is reasonably easy to control, and I have yet to find a person who doesn't have a soft spot for this diminutive flower.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Forget-Me-Not Flowers
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Manual
Focal Length: 35mm Macro (70mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

It's rhododendron time

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It's the end of May and the rhododendrons at Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire are beginning to display at their best, their large, opulent, very un-English blooms drawing admiring glances from all who pass by. I admire them too. But, having lived in North West England, and having experienced the rhododendron-choked woods of the Forest of Bowland, I also admire the way that the rhododendrons in this Lincolnshire location are periodically controlled, cut back and cleared from areas.

I was reading recently that the horizontal growth and spread of a single rhododendron ponticum can cover 100 square metres. The Victorian landowners, who planted them as cover for their game-birds and as exotic and beautiful additions to their woods and country house grounds, didn't realise the environmental headache they were bequeathing to future generations. These rapidly growing plants quickly spread, denying native plants their space. They have few natural enemies - insects don't like them and rarely damage them, birds are scarce around them for lack of insects, and mammals don't eat their leathery, poisonous leaves. The few rogue sheep or cattle that do usually become sick and often die. In an area of lowland heath such as Woodhall Spa they are particularly problematic because silver birch, a short-lived tree, is common. Consequently when such a tree dies its space is quickly taken and new trees cannot grow up through the rhododendrons due to the lack of light at low levels. If the shrub didn't have such eye-catching flowers rhododendrons would surely have been cleared from woods years ago.

I searched long and hard for this specimen for my photograph. I was looking for a flower in the dark recess of a bush with strong contrast between the light, bright bloom and the darker leaves and shadows. I also wanted a flower with a fairly regular, radiating "ruff" (as I call the ring of leaves). A slight, dark vignette has been added to my shot to emphasise the natural contrast.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 96mm (192mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:500
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Eagles, doves and aquilegias

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Sitting in an audience at a lecture about gardening the other evening I heard the speaker describe, aquilegias as "promiscuous". He wasn't, of course, referring to their morals, but to their habit of freely seeding and hybridising, producing offspring of many colours and tints.

I really prefer the name columbines for this plant. However, when talking to other gardeners about it you usually have to add "I mean aquilegias", and so I've come to use the Latin name. This derives from aquila meaning eagle and comes from the shape of the flower petals which were thought to resemble that bird's claw. Columbine comes from the Latin columba, meaning dove. This name is based on the resemblance of the hanging flower head to five doves with their bills touching at the top. It's interesting to note that the two most popular names for this plant relate to the polar opposites of the bird world, the war-like eagle and the peaceful dove. It doesn't end there, of course, because a common, colloquial English name for the plant is "Granny's Bonnet". But that's not something I'm going to delve into.

May is the month for this plant in England and I recently took the opportunity to photograph some of the examples that flower in our garden. When I came to look at my results on the computer I particularly liked the out of focus areas and decided to enhancing these with a blurred, lightened vignette. It's not my usual style but I'm not entirely displeased by the outcome.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 66mm (132mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:800
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Hydrangea arborescens "Annabelle"

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The same flower photographed under different lighting conditions can produce photographs with quite different qualities. The other day I was photographing Hydrangea arborescens "Annabelle", the most popular cultivar of the Smooth Hydrangea of eastern North America, a variety that is quite hardy and valued because of its large white blooms. It grows in semi-shade in our garden near a large willow tree and at this time of year it gets intermittent direct sunlight.

My shots were taken with a 100mm macro lens and the camera was mounted on a tripod. The main photograph was taken when the sun was out but the bloom was in shade. Here the bright but diffuse light was above and the shade from the tree helped to reveal the detail of each petal. The smaller photograph has the camera lower down, shooting upwards, with the light behind the petals. A sheet of white vinyl gives the white background and reflects a bit of light onto the subject. The aperture on that shot is f4 against the f16 of the main photograph and the shallower depth of field adds to the "dreamier" quality that it exhibits, something that I think complements the brightness.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 0.8 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Ornamental yarrow

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The native Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), familiar from roadside verges and meadows in England, has several names. Milfoil means "thousand leaves" as does its Latin specific name. It was also known as Yarroway, Staunch Weed (for its capacity to staunch or stop bleeding), and Poor Man's Pepper (for its bitter and pungent taste). The Anglo-Saxons used it for these purposes but also for divination and as a charm against illness or bad luck.

Yarrow can be easily overlooked by the casual observer, following as it does, the Cow Parsley and Sweet Cicely, and surrounded by other white flowered umbellifers such as Fool's Parsley and Wild Angelica. However, its flat flower heads, once identified, are easy to spot and give it a delicacy that its similar brethren lack. It is usually white, but sometimes plants have a pink or brown tinge.

The other day I photographed a cultivated, ornamental variety of Yarrow that I initially thought was Achillea "Fire King" or "Coral Beauty". But it turned out to be one I'd not seen before, "Achillea "Feuerland". Its colour, not perfectly represented in my photograph, is red/orange. The characteristic that I particularly liked was the clustering of different, subtle shades produced by flower heads of different ages - again, not seen in my image as I saw it with my eye. This variety is one I'll look out for when we are shopping for plants.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5D2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 80mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Viola "Magnifico"

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"There is material enough in a single flower for the ornament of a score of cathedrals."
John Ruskin (1819-1900), art critic, social thinker and writer, from "The Stones of Venice" (1851)

We are used to flowers because they are all around us - in the countryside, in urban wasteland, in our gardens, parks, streets, shops, houses - everywhere. We look at them often. But do we see them? There are those that say there is no distinction between the two words, "looking" and "seeing". I think there is, and five or so years ago I tried to articulate that difference in a blog post called, "Looking and seeing".

The quotation at the top of this post has always interested me. What was Ruskin trying to get at with these words? I've always thought that he had two main points in mind. Firstly, perhaps, there's a veiled criticism of the fecundity of building ornament of his time: too many sources of inspiration where one or few would serve better. That architects should extract more from less when searching for ornamental design. Then, more importantly, is the suggestion that people should train themselves to look more closely - to see better - so that the richness of objects and the possibilities within them become more apparent.

Looking at today's photographs of the flower, Viola "Magnifico", I was reminded of Ruskin's words. It's true that you can see a multitude of points of interest in a single bloom. Here I like the colour combinations and the way each bleeds into its neighbour. The symmetry of the petal arrangement, their deckle edges and the striking markings of the centre of each bloom are also eye-catching. Then I like the way the flowers look like they have been designed by someone with wet water-colour paper and a heavily laden brush. And finally there is how the distant blooms and the leaves merge in the blur to enhance that suggestion that this is a painting and not a photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5DMk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm Macro
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0
Image Stabilisation: On

Changing tastes and flowering currants

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It's interesting how, as you journey through life, your tastes change. Not all of them, of course, but enough for you to notice that what was once loathed is now loved, and vice versa - what couldn't be countenanced now can. I became aware of a couple of examples of my changing tastes recently. The first was when I was talking to my two year old grand-daughter. She was eating her evening meal, a dish that included cucumber. As she chomped away I told her something that, with hindsight, was probably best left unsaid. I mentioned that I didn't like cucumber; that when I was younger I did like it, but now it was something I avoided. Given that she is trying many foods for the first time and putting her off particular types is inadvisable it would have been better if I'd said nothing. Fortunately, however, she was having none of it and told me in no uncertain terms, and repeatedly, that "cucumber is nice". Apparently she later quizzed her mother with great incredulity about my dislike of this lovely food. Clearly her grandfather was mad. But, the fact is, as I've aged I've gone off cucumber.

The opposite is true of flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum). Like many people I wasn't keen on the strong and distinctive smell of this early flowering shrub. Nor did I appreciate the colour combination of pink petals and green leaves. But, in recent years I've grown to appreciate the plant. I enjoy the contribution that it makes to the garden in early spring, both visually and in terms of its scent. In fact, the other day one of our bushes looked so magnificent that I took a couple of photographs of it in all its splendour. The example I post is the shot I liked best.

The interesting question is why tastes change in this way. I have no clear answer, except I do wonder if those initial likes and dislikes were ever firmly founded. Whether my liking of cucumber and dislike of flowering currant was nothing more than youthful postures adopted for the flimsiest of reasons - because I'd heard someone else express a liking or dislike.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5DMk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm Macro
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0
Image Stabilisation: On

The accommodating Comma

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The Big Butterfly Count is currently underway in  the UK. This year it is running from 20th July to 11th August. An annual event organised by Butterfly Conservation, it enlists volunteers to count the species and number of butterflies on a bright or sunny day, in any location, over a period of 15 minutes. Results are collected and collated and help to give a picture of the relative health of the country's butterfly populations.

I recently consulted last year's results to find out the status of the Comma that I'd been photographing, at my wife's request, in our garden. Last year's wet summer produced somewhat atypical results with the Meadow Brown the runaway winner in terms of numbers. The commonest butterflies in my garden this year are (with last year's placings in brackets) Small White (4), Large White (5), Peacock (16), Red Admiral (11) and Small Tortoiseshell (10). However, we see several more including the Brimstone, Wall, Painted Lady and others. The Comma also turns up now and again. Last year it was the 12th commonest species nationwide.

The Comma is named after the small white comma-like mark on the underside of its wings. It's an attractive butterfly with its orange and black markings and ragged edged wings. A characteristic that endears it to me as a photographer is the fact that it scares much less easily than, say, Peacocks and Red Admirals, when the camera lens approaches it. I took today's shot with a 100mm macro lens that had a hood mounted on the end of it. The butterfly tolerated the edge of the hood a matter of 10 centimetres or less from it, and that when the camera was mounted on a bright silver tripod. A very accommodating butterfly in that respect.

Less accommodating in its choice of flowers however. A bright orange Comma butterfly on a pink and orange Coneflower (Echinacea) with green leaves in the background makes for an eye-watering colour combination. They would become my number one butterfly in all respects if they'd feed on one of our dusky blue flowers so I could compose photographs with colours more to my liking!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Gaillardia and cornflower

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One of the trees at the front of our house is a large, fairly old, crab apple. When we bought the house we looked at this tree and despaired at the treatment  (and lack of treatment) that it had received. As a youngster it appears to have been badly pruned causing a tangled knot of branches to erupt from the top of a relatively short trunk. It looks like neglect was the next course of treatment it suffered resulting in each of these branches shooting up and outwards like an exploding firework. But, the somewhat ugly-duckling appearance notwithstanding, the tree has promise. It is much used by birds, looks magnificent when it is in blossom, and produces a fine crop of crab apples in autumn that are much appreciated by the same birds. Consequently we instigated a programme of pruning to bring it to a better shape. We've raised the canopy a little each year, cut out some of the interlocking branches and restricted its spread. It is slowly improving.

However, it sits in the centre of a smallish flower bed which, from May onwards, the crab apple's spreading leaves make quite dark. Early flowers such as daffodils, tulips and even bluebells manage fine but perennials and annuals find the location more of a problem. Our recent solution is to treat it as a bed for left-overs, foundlings and self-seeded flowers. The resulting mix is a riot of leggy colour that a neighbour says brings a smile to her face every time she passes through our gate. I've photographed these flowers recently and found that my best shots come when I wait until the blooms are illuminated by the low, evening sun that gets below the tree's branches. This strong light produces bright colours, deep shadows and edging halos.

Today's main photographs show a small part of the planting and the main image showcases the complementary colours of the gaillardia and the cornflower. The observant will also notice some lemon yellow snapdragons and deep red poppies in there too. The smaller photograph is a contre jour shot of a section of the flowers showing the jumbled mixture of varieties and colours.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wondering about words

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In a newspaper article I was reading the other day the journalist used the word "phoney" meaning false. Not unusual you might think, but it was a British journalist and I always understood phoney to be a U.S. word. That in itself isn't so unusual because English words travel both ways across the Atlantic to take up permanent residence each of the two main variants of English. However, it did prompt me to look up the word "phoney" in my Oxford English Dictionary (OED). It reported, unhelpfully, "Of uncertain origin", though it did note the word's origins in the United States. It was then, as sometimes happens, that a dim light came on in the recesses of my brain and I recalled the word "fawney". This word, I remembered, was British eighteenth century slang for "fake". A gilt ring being passed off as real gold was often described as fawney. Undoubtedly, I thought, there is a connection. And sure enough the web produced several references to the origins of U.S. phoney in British fawney. Can the OED, I wonder, verify this? For all I know it has already done so; after all my edition, like me, is getting on a bit.

The derivations of words popped into my head again as I was processing this photograph of dried Physalis franchetii that had been cleverly and effectively placed in the fireplace of a room in an old museum. The colloquial name for this plant is Chinese Lanterns after the similarity between the dried flowers and the Asiatic paper lanterns. It then occurred to me that there was a further interesting word that could be applied to the flowers when arranged in a fireplace - "flamboyant". Today this word usually means showy, colourful or florid, and wouldn't necessarily be thought especially applicable to this photograph. However, it derives from the French word for "flame" and originally meant flame-like in either shape or colour. Architectural historians use the word in this way, describing the flame-like tracery of Gothic windows as being in the Flamboyant Style. In the nineteenth century, both in Britain and the United States, the word was applied to things that had the colour of flames too. Consequently, it seemed to me unusual, but not unreasonable, to describe today's photograph with the words I chose.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rhododendrons, the beautiful invaders

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The rhododendron (Rhododendron ponticum) was introduced to the British Isles some time around the year 1763. It was valued as an attractive, evergreen shrub that in May and June produced multiple, large and showy flowers. Its popularity grew and in the nineteenth century it became a staple of large gardens, parks and hunting estates (where it provided shelter for game species) on the wetter, western side of Britain where the soils were acidic. As well as this particular species being widely planted it was also used as a rootstock for hardy, cultivated varieties. With this high level of interest the rhododendron quickly became established and started to spread. By the twentieth century it became recognised for what it was; a rapidly invasive coloniser, filling woodland floors beneath the tree canopy, spreading into moorland and heathland, a plant that suppressed and replaced native species and made forestry much more difficult and expensive. Today the Forestry Commission has programmes of control designed to subdue the rhododendron and remove it from areas where it is not wanted.

One can understand the enthusiasm with which Victorian gardeners adopted the plant. It is like no other evergreen shrub when it is in flower. Not only are the individual blooms very big, they are numerous and quite beautiful. When seen en masse on a large group of bushes the sight is quite overpowering. As a child I enjoyed seeing the purple flowers on the millstone grit rock outcrops and in the woods near Settle in the Yorkshire Dales. In later life I sought out the varieties that Victorian landowners had planted around Bleasdale and Abbeystead in Lancashire's Forest of Bowland: various shades of purple, red, yellow, orange and white could be found. Today I make a point of visiting Woodhall Spa to see the annual show of multicoloured exuberance. Were I a forester, of course, any pleasure I got from the beauty of the flowers would be seriously tempered by the cost and work involved in controlling their spread.

Today's main photograph was taken in the Yorkshire Dales. The shot shows something of the glow that each flower exhibits when seen against the dark green, shiny leaves. The smaller photograph was taken the other day in the grounds of the Petwood Hotel in Woodhall Spa. These rhododendrons, a pink cultivar probably closely related to the ponticum variety, were planted in the early 1900s - about a century ago - and today, in places, form veritable "cliffs" of blooms 25 to 30 feet high.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 250mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Black and white flowers?

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Of all the photographic subjects that might benefit from conversion to black and white flowers appear to be the least suitable. It's true that photographers find them an attractive subject because of the shapes of their blooms and leaves, their growth habits and locations, the way gardeners and arrangers plant and display them, etc. But it's surely the variety, strength and subtlety of their colours that is the main quality that draws us into pointing our cameras at them. Consequently, most of the photographs of flowers that we see are colour images and very few are monochrome.

And yet some of the secondary qualities beyond colour are reason enough to consider converting the right subject to black and white. In the past I've found the subtle gradations of grey that appear when a rose bloom is converted to black and white to be very appealing.

Today's photograph is of a flower that I wouldn't have thought of converting to black and white until I had processed the colour shot and was sitting in front of my computer reflecting on the finished image. I'd chosen my usual black background for the yellow flowers, green leaves and clear glass vase and that gave it a very strong silhouette. It was the overall compositional shape - a variant of Hogarth's serpentine "line of beauty" - that made me have a look at the shot in black and white. The conversion made the silhouette (reverse silhouette I suppose) stronger, and the yellow blooms retained their impact as greys and white. The final image, with a little judicious dodging of the individual flowers stands as a photograph every bit as strongly as the colour version but offers something different to the viewer. Of course, placing colour  and black and white versions of the same shot side by side tends to make the viewer choose which they prefer. However,the question about colour and black and white need not be one of "either" and "or" but can simply be about "also"!

Incidentally, the flower in question is one that I always call Kerria but I looked up the Royal Horticultural Society's "preferred common name" and found it to be Japanese Rose. That doesn't seem to me a particularly descriptive name because, though the plant is biologically part of the Rosaceae family, it has none of the most commonly understood characteristics of the rose. I'd have chosen one of the other charming and traditional English names that have been bestowed on the plant down the years - probably "Bachelor's Buttons"!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 0.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Front gardens, parking and poppies

click photo to enlarge

In 2008 legislation was introduced in England requiring any homeowner who wants to lay hardstanding of more than five square metres in their front garden to apply for planning permission if they propose to use a material that is not permeable. The proliferation of cars has resulted in quite a few front gardens being converted into parking spaces. The impermeable surfaces used for this purpose have increased the amount of urban run-off from rain and is a contributory factor to increased flooding. The legislation seeks to ameliorate this effect by encouraging the use of porous surfaces such as gravel, block paving, etc, rather than concrete.

I'm all in favour of this: flooding in built-up areas is something to be avoided. However, I'm also against turning front gardens into parking deserts. I recognise that quite a few houses have little or no off-street parking and that such a facility is desirable for a vehicle owner. But, the greenery that a front garden offers to the householder and the rest of the neighbourhood is desirable too, not only for the beauty that it can bestow, but for the habitat that it offers to our wildlife. It saddens me to see front gardens lost to parking, but it makes me annoyed when I see gravel, paving, tarmac and concrete put down because the owner doesn't want the "effort" and "inconvenience" of looking after a front garden. There are just as many eyesore gardens created for this reason as there are for parking, and with less justification.

Creating a front garden that more or less looks after itself is relatively easy. An area closely planted with shrubs, small trees, perennials and self-seeding annuals (such as the California poppies above) requires only a few hours maintenance per year and rewards the gardener with all-year-round beauty as well as the approving glances of the neighbourhood. The amount of work required is, in fact, less than if the garden is a lawn, the surface that is often chosen by ignoramuses who want a "labour-saving" garden. Of course, if you set your mind against more interesting gardening and are happy to remain blissfully ignorant then this knowledge will have escaped you. But, with a little effort anyone can learn enough to plant, maintain and - yes - enjoy, an attractive and environmentally beneficial front garden. Even if it has a car parked alongside it.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

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

Honeysuckle

click photo to enlarge

The charmingly named honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum) was also long known by the equally delightful name, woodbine, after its habit of twining tightly around the trees and shrubs on which it grows. However, in Britain this appellation was sullied by being applied to a brand of cigarettes, a move that effectively robbed the plant of its old name and transferred it to the cigarette. Today most people call the plant only by the common name. The plant has a particularly attractive flower that often (though not always) has a lovely scent. Greek architecture made use of the shape of the unopened buds of the honeysuckle in the ornamental motif known as anthemion. It was often used in friezes, alternating with palmettes.

I first came across this plant as a wild flower when I was a child growing up in the Yorkshire Dales, and knew it as one that particularly attracted moths and bees. Only later in life did I recognise it as a garden climbing plant, available in a number of varieties. We have two honeysuckles that climb up hedges and pergolas in our garden. One is the early flowering Lonicera x tellmanniana with yellow blooms, and the other is the later flowering variety shown above. The "Serotina" part of its name means "late blooming".

I've always thought that there is something insect-like about the flower of the honeysuckle. It's probably due to the long, curved filaments that remind me of a proboscis or antennae. This photograph accentuates that characteristic, making the plant look like it is reaching out.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 250
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

D.O.F. and O.O.F.

click photo to enlarge

There seems to be some confusion surrounding the word "acronym". It is widely believed to be the use of consecutive initials. I've seen BBC and RSA so described. However, these are initialisms, "a group of initial letters used as an abbreviation for a name or expression, each letter or part being pronounced separately" (OED). An acronym is, "a word formed from the initial letters of other words" (OED). So, CIA isn't one because those three letters don't make a proper and pronounceable word, but AIDS certainly is (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Confusion arises when we come to words such as radar (radio detection and ranging).  Isn't "radar", we might legitimately ask, almost but not quite an acronym, because it's an instance where the OED rule doesn't fully work? The fact is, that in the attempt to clearly define categories of words we've gone part way down the road to complete clarity by introducing ever more esoteric groupings, but have lost the value of a basic rule, not quite covered every eventuality, and sown more than a small degree of confusion. As this article shows.

Photography, like many other areas of special interest, is plagued by initialisms, acronyms and other kinds of abbreviations, to the extent that when I'm reading an article I sometimes feel the need for a glossary alongside me. It gets worse if you frequent photography forums because there you come up against all of this, but overlaid with examples of text-speak. One that has arisen in recent years is dof, DOF or D.O.F., meaning depth of field. (Whether we should continue to use full stops to indicate abbreviations or dispense with them, in the modern manner, is another subject for another day!) I think this has come about as people who have known only digital photography have moved from the once ubiquitous small sensor digicams to cameras with Four Thirds, APS-C and 35mm sensors. The depth of field of a small sensor is very big so oof (or OOF or O.O.F.), that is to say out of focus areas (also now called bokeh), are more difficult to achieve. With such cameras, if you want lens blur, you tend to have to either get very close to the subject or use a long telephoto. Larger sensors can achieve it in these ways too, but also by increasing the aperture. A consequence of all this is that shallow DOF shots have become very popular, so have large aperture lenses, and the value of a deep DOF - one of the challenges we sometimes struggled to achieve in the days of 35mm and larger film cameras - is currently less valued.

I was reflecting on this as I used my macro lens to take this very shallow depth of field shot of our oriental lilies. I photographed our white ones last year. This year we have red/brown and pink blooms as well as white. Out of the few shots I took this one intrigued me because the OOF areas resemble a liquid - perhaps pea soup - out of which the stigma and anthers are barely projecting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  +0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Aural and visual restoratives

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Music is a well-known pick-me-up. In fact, it's so good at lifting the spirits and setting you up for the day it's a wonder that doctors don't hand out mp3s or CDs rather than drugs for mild depressive symptoms. These could be sequences of music designed to shift the listener's mood from despair to elation in easy stages. A course of treatment might start with, for example, the melancholy music of George Butterworth's "Banks of Green Willow", followed by the more uplifting "English Folk Song Suite" by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and conclude with "Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" from Gustav Holst's, "The Planets" suite. If it didn't alleviate the malaise at least it might widen the range of music the patient was exposed to and complement any further treatment! Or not.

Of course, not everyone is moved by music in this way. Some people respond to visual stimuli rather than the aural. Others, such as me, aren't fussy - sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, can all have the required effect. One of the visual uplifters that brightens my day - and in my mind marks the onset of summer - is the sight of a group of Leucanthemum vulgare swaying in the sun. These beautiful wild flowers go under many names. I call them dog daisies but others know them as oxeye daisies, marguerite, moon daisy or some other appellation. I've no idea why these very common flowers should have this effect on me. The combination of white and yellow isn't one that particularly appeals and the shape of the flowers couldn't be described as unique or even unusual. Perhaps the reason lies buried in my childhood because it's one of the earliest wild flowers that I came to know by name.

I came across the group shown above below a hedge by a roadside. I liked the way the sunlight gave shade and a lit area in the background against which I could position the bright, flawless blooms.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 175mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -2.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Periwinkle and the quality of reserve

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"One of the attractive things about flowers is their beautiful reserve."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), U.S. author, poet, philosopher etc.

When I first came across this quotation I immediately thought of the many flowers that are all showy flamboyance, blooms that exhibit absolutely no reserve - such as the the candy striped pinks in our garden. However, what I thought most interesting was not the accuracy or otherwise of the observation but the fact that Thoreau, an American, chose to call "reserve" beautiful. Reserve isn't a characteristic that the rest of the world associates with people from the United States; from Britain, definitely, but not America. And yet there will be people in both countries that not only display these qualities but also admire them. One might think that in the one hundred and fifty or so years since Thoreau wrote those words that both cultures have changed in significant ways. Ask anyone in Britain if the reserve shown by the lead characters of a film such as "Brief Encounter" (1945) are still prevalent today and the likely response is "No". However, personal privacy and control of emotions, two key characteristics of reserve, are still quite strong national traits that are passed down the generations, despite older people viewing the young as  more open, emotional, vociferous and gregarious than they were fifty years ago. Is reserve a quality that was formerly more common and admired in the United States than it is today? I don't know, but I'd be interested to find out.

Growing in the shade of a maple tree in our garden is some purple/blue periwinkle (Vinca major). This plant makes good ground cover in such a location, requires little attention, and at this time of year puts out beautiful sapphire coloured flowers that positively glow against its dark green leaves. When I saw it the other day the words of Thoreau came to mind. This isn't a showy plant glowing with reds, yellows and oranges like the pelargonium, nasturtium, gaillardia or rose. To my mind it is one of those beautiful unassuming, "reserved" plants that Thoreau perhaps had in mind when he made his observation. This particular bloom caught my eye because it seemed to have placed itself in a frame of its own leaves as it waited for a passing photographer.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

And now for something completely different

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The phrase that I've used for the title of this post is inextricably linked with Monty Python's Flying Circus. However, it originated with the continuity announcers and announcements that linked television programmes in the 1960s. Such things are rarely seen or heard these days, the time between programmes being filled with interminable advertisements for products and services (commercial TV) or equally interminable advertisements for forthcoming programmes (public broadcast TV). In fact, such is the frenetic pace of TV today compared with earlier times that it sometimes leaves me feeling breathless. On those occasions I think to myself, thank heavens for hard disc TV recorders. Most of my TV viewing - I watch films in the main - is recorded because it allows us to watch at our own pace, when we want, and to fast forward the advertising "fillers" between and in the programmes.

Sometimes I feel that my photography can get a little frenetic too, especially when I'm unleashed in a photographer-friendly (or unfriendly!) environment such as London. Consequently, it's good to put a macro lens on the camera, point it at some flowers, and take my time over image making. The other day my wife asked me to photograph some oriental lilies that she'd grown. Usually I'd do this at my leisure and aim to get the very best shot that I could. This time, however, I did things a little quicker and fitted the photography in with the other tasks that were occupying me. So, she held a sheet of black vinyl behind the subject in a well-lit room as I grabbed a few images by natural light. Given my lack of preparation and poor technique I was surprised how well the photographs turned out. This is the one I like best for the feel that it has of a Victorian, painted, botanical illustration.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On