Hydrangea arborescens "Annabelle"

click photo to enlarge
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

Hydrangeas and high key

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My wife spotted one of the detached, dead flower heads of our giant hydrangea as we walked through the pergola the other day and, as she pointed it out to me, I made a mental note to examine it as a potential photographic subject. By the time I got round to retrieving it for that purpose the wind had blown it, tumbleweed-style, across the garden and it had suffered quite a bit of damage. Nonetheless I took it indoors and and placed it on a white background under a bright light, hoping to base an image around the cluster of lace-like petals. But, as is often the case, what I saw in my mind's eye didn't appear quite the way I imagined it when I came to look through the viewfinder. The multiplicity of groups of four petals was simply too much: a simpler composition was required.

I tried a shot of part of the flower head with the edge offering a ragged outline against a plain black or white background. However, whilst better it still didn't satisfy me. So I took to pulling off a few individual petal groups and examining them. The attraction, it seemed to me, lay in the delicate veins of each individual petal and the way they were grouped  in fours like the blades of a propeller. So I built this simple composition with three stems and set them on a white background with the light source behind and to the side to accentuate the key features.

My natural inclination is to aim for a "perfect" exposure or to under-expose. I have something of an aversion to over-exposure for reasons that I find hard to articulate. And yet, when I see a good "high key" shot with the main subject appearing out of a blazing white background I often like it. I have it in mind to try more of this kind of shot myself, and have done so very occasionally, as I did with this shell. Consequently I thought I'd try it again here. I haven't gone quite as far as with the shell - all the details are still showing - but it is much lighter and brighter than it would have been had I followed both my inclination and the light meter.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 0.3 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  +1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Lacecap hydrangeas and garden fashions

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Conifer beds in suburban gardens are, it seems, out of fashion. How do I know? Because a writer in a gardening magazine told me so.They are "very 1970s" he opined. Other plants not to be countenanced are laurel (so Victorian), pampas grass (it shouts 1960s and 70s), and monkey puzzle trees (very 1930s but also a touch Victorian). I'm sure there are other plants that must be discounted as out of fashion, but I'm too unfashionable to know them (or to care).

And yet, there is some truth in what the writer says. Flowers, shrubs and trees do experience periods when they are popular, and widely planted. And people do tire of seeing them and they subsequently go out of favour. The Victorians loved ferns and planted them in every dark corner of the garden: today they are eschewed by the masses and remain only as the preserve of the enthusiast. In the 1960s flowering cherries seemed to be lined along the grass verges on each street of every newly created housing estate. Today they are still popular, but I detect that they are becoming less so. In the 1980s and 1990s architects seem to have noticed the architectural qualities of the New Zealand flax and placed them in front of offices and in courtyards, their spiky, angled leaves contrasting with the verticals and horizontals of the buildings. They are still used for this purpose: I recently saw some at the front of a newly completed retirement block.

A few days ago, in Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire, I walked past a garden positively brimming with different kinds of lacecap hydrangea. This variety of flowering shrub, more especially in its "mop cap" variation, is to my mind, a plant that was more popular in the past than it is today. I see it most in the gardens of houses built in the first half of the twentieth century, and I'm I'm not aware that it is newly planted very much today (though I could be wrong). And yet it is a useful shrub, offering big blooms and bold colours in the border from mid-summer through into autumn. We have a few pink mop caps that are currently flowering, and a couple of climbing varieties as well. The sight of the blue lacecaps made my wife and I think that we might have to find a place for one of those too - even if they aren't terribly fashionable.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Faded flowers and Charles Rennie Mackintosh

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The reputation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) has never been higher than in recent years. It's difficult to go into a bookshop, a "craft" store, or a jewellers without coming across his name. Books, brooches, posters, mugs, picture frames - it seems that his Art Nouveau designs can adorn just about anything. And yet, this decorative work, as exemplified by the stencil patterns he used in the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow, is only a small part of his ouvre.

Mackintosh studied at the Glasgow School of Art, and in the 1890s he painted, did graphic work and metalwork that showed Art Nouveau influences he'd probably picked up from reading The Studio, a publication which began in 1893. However, his name really came to prominence when he won the competition to design a new building for the Glasgow School of Art. His was a thoroughly modern conception that was influenced by Voysey and Scottish baronial architecture. It mixed the sharply rectilinear with the fluid lines of Art Nouveau, and deeply influenced continental, particularly Austrian, architects. Mackintosh went on to design other fine buildings and furniture. However, he was a man who alienated customers and fellow architects alike, and in 1913 he left his Glasgow practice and moved to Walberswick in Suffolk, where he concentrated on his paintings. During his time as an architect he had painted flowers, and in Suffolk he threw himself into this work, producing wonderful images of, principally, wild flowers in a combination of pencil and watercolour. He later went to live in Mediterranean France, and in the final years of his life painted landscapes and cut flowers in vases.

This latter work came to mind a few days ago when I was in a Leicestershire church. On the octagonal font cover, lit by strong light from a nearby window, was a vase of hydrangea flowers. The person who had placed them there had carefully selected a variety of coloured blooms - pink, blue, purple and white. But, the colours were fading fast as the flowers died. Their slow decline from bright, cheeriness to a pale memory of what had been, reminded me of the poignant beauty I once saw in a Mackintosh watercolour of 1905 that depicted faded roses. With that inspiration in mind, I took this photograph.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 6.3mm (30mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.2
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On