Breakfast for one

click photo to enlarge
Some weeks ago, when my wife was away for a few days on family business, I catered for myself (with the aid of kind invitations from friends to eat with them). One consequence of this was that I breakfasted alone, something that hasn't often happened during my married life. One morning, after I'd started to prepare my bowl of porridge and cup of tea, I went across to the kitchen window to subdue the glare of the low morning sun by angling down the Venetian blinds. In so doing I created the scene featuring the kitchen table seen in today's photograph. On subsequent days I tried to improve on the effect, but to no avail, thus proving something I've discovered with my photography over the years. Namely, the first shot I take of a scene is almost always the best, perhaps because it is seen intuitively, and "overthinking" in trying to improve the composition rarely produces anything better.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Breakfast for One
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reflecting on photographic manipulation

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A recent prestigious photographic competition received much wider coverage than such events usually do because the winner was disqualified for claiming that one of his photographs was taken in a particular town when, in fact, it was taken somewhere else. What was less widely reported was that 20% of the photographs that made it through to the final round of judging were disqualified for excessive post-shot manipulation. Comparison with the RAW files was made at this stage and the judges were able to see where objects had been removed, added or moved, and where other adjustments had been made that resulted in photographs that were considerably different from the reality that the cameras initially captured.

I've said elsewhere in this blog that cameras do not faithfully reproduce what the eye sees and if that is the aim for a particular image then post-shot manipulation is frequently necessary. It's also true that the history of photography abounds with images that have been manipulated. The consensus today, is that heavy manipulation is fine as long as it is stated by the photographer, and that "traditional" manipulation - dodging, burning, global increase and decrease of contrast, vignetting etc - are acceptable. The competitors mentioned above did not follow these conventions and also ignored the competition rules forbidding the removal, moving and addition of objects.

I began my photography in the days of film and chemical processing and I find myself in agreement with the consensus. So, in this blog you won't find much "heavy" manipulation, and where it is done it will be stated. But, quite a few of my shots have the contrast selectively and globally adjusted, or vignetting applied, or saturation adjusted (more often down that up, contrary to modern tastes!) Moreover I frequently apply the digital equivalent of black and white filters and sometimes use actual polarising and neutral density filters of one kind or another. I sometimes, but not always, mention when I've made a "traditional" adjustment. Today is an occasion when I will. The photograph above has a global adjustment of contrast and a little blur applied because I liked the painterly look that it confers on the image. But then you could probably have worked that one out for yourself!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 38mm (57mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.2
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:1100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Kitchens old and new

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I don't keep abreast of fashion in interior design: it changes too often for the flimsiest of reasons for my liking. However, interior design - in fact design of all kinds - and the way it has changed down the centuries and decades is something that does interest me. I have the feeling, from my admittedly limited experience, that the aesthetic inspiration for many of today's cutting edge kitchens is the mortuary or perhaps the operating theatre. All those easy-clean surfaces of black and white tiles and stainless steel put one in mind of places where flesh is opened and saw meets bone. There was a time in the Victorian period when a similar approach was taken to kitchen design. In large country houses they were often laid out with ergonomics, industrial scale food preparation and easy maintenance in mind. Rows of Belfast sinks, scrubbable hardwood surfaces, serried ranks of utensils, heavily tiled floors and walls and enormous cooking ranges all suggest a similar kind of utilitarian rationale underlying their construction.

I was in one such kitchen recently. It is at Audley End, a large country house of the Elizabethan period and later, near Saffron Walden in Essex. The building is owned by English Heritage, is open to the public, and often offers activities in the Victorian-period service wing. This group of rooms features a kitchen, pastry larder, cook's room, servants' hall (now the restaurant), meat safe, game larder, coal shed, scullery, dry larder, wet laundry, dry laundry, dairy maid's sitting room, dairy and dairy scullery. In the house's heyday these would be filled with servants of many ranks and job descriptions producing all the food, washing and other services that were needed to keep the owners of the house, their family and their guests in the comfort and style that they felt they deserved. Today English Heritage stages reconstructions of some of these activities with, for example, staff in period costume making bread or other food using the implements available in the kitchen.

Today's smaller photograph shows one of these re-enactments. In the main photograph you can see all the shelves that can be glimpsed on the left of the smaller image. The rows of gleaming copper pans, shiny silver serving dish covers and the  contrast of the white of the pottery on the plain wooden shelves made an interesting composition for a photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11.8mm (32mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The sanitized past

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Much of the past that is presented to us in film and television, print and the web is a heavily sanitized version of reality, a past that is made more acceptable for modern consumption by being scrubbed clean and tidied. This is especially so with regard to heritage sites. There are a number of factors that give rise to this. Much of what remains was the property of the rich, is durable, designed to be visually attractive, and consequently over-represents their part in history. The remaining artefacts and homes of the poor are much fewer, less substantial, and are invested with less ornament. Unlike the rich, the remains of the past's poor frequently lacks a written narrative or primary sources that allow a detailed story to be woven around it. History is written by the victors, and the victors were invariably the rich.

England's National Trust has often been criticised for their lack of representation of the poor in the properties that it owns and chooses to receive or buy. It has responded to this by attempting to show the lives of servants in country houses as well as those of the owners, and by giving greater emphasis to the everyday activities - cooking, cleaning, gardening etc - alongside the usual interpretation of the building, art, sculpture and furniture. To further counter this criticism the Trust has also acquired a wider range of properties, including, for example, Southwell workhouse. For some critics, however, the final product looks like tokenism. Stephen Bayley has called it, "Disneyfication" and "intellectual slumming".

Today's photograph shows the inside of a large kitchen at Audley End, a Jacobean country house in Essex. This building, like most of its kind, was modified by successive owners. The kitchen presented here dates from the Victorian era. It looks quite a sight with its large, blacked range, white tiles,  glowing copper pans and rustic basket. What's missing of course is the army of servants engaged in hours of drudgery, using the range and pans to prepare meals and burnishing it between times. In fairness to English Heritage, who are now the custodians of this building, staff in period costume do make an attempt to show something of this. It does, however, like most re-enactments, come across as all rather jolly fun rather than a daily grind of long hours and hard work.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/15
ISO: 3200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On