A Dales lane

click photo to enlarge
Lanes, like footpaths, B roads, A roads and motorways etc fulfil a simple purpose - they connect places. However, a distinguishing feature of lanes is that they rarely do so in the most efficient manner. This is because they are often of great age, and some of the places that the lane originally linked no longer exist. Or, the farming carried out in the area through which the lane passes is no longer the same.

The lane in today's photograph is a small affair that links two bigger lanes. This lane rises across a hillside where pasture gives way to scattered trees, rock outcrops, rough grazing and woods. It passes close by an isolated cottage that must once have been the home of a gamekeeper. And perhaps therein lies one of the main reasons for its existence. I'm sure that once it was well marked and maintained. Today it is part footpath, part lane, in some places without an edge, elsewhere with millstone grit drystone walls and trees marking its course. The photograph shows a section with a wall on the right and the remains of a hawthorn hedge on the left. A large beech tree is also a feature, and the lane appears to be wide enough to accommodate a horse-drawn cart.

I took the photograph to record the line of hawthorn, but also for the yellow of the early morning light. The beech had lost some of its leaves, but the hawthorn were still clinging on to theirs, the unseasonally warm weather perhaps making them think that summer was still here.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 29mm (58mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3
Image Stabilisation: On

Yorkshire Dales mist

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A few days in the Yorkshire Dales market town of Settle, the place where I was raised, held the prospect of not only seeing members of my family but also walking the hills and doing some photography. With that in mind I hoped for some calm weather with sun and cloud. However, I knew from long experience that Settle in October (or any other month!) frequently delivers rain. Being on the west side of England's main mountain range, receiving the full force of the moisture-laden prevailing south-westerlies how could it do otherwise? And, true to form, it rained. Often it was heavy and sustained; at other times heavy shower followed heavy shower with the briefest of interludes between. But, on one day it relented and a day of mainly sun and clouds was interrupted by only a single downpour. So we got a longish walk on "the tops" as the hills are known locally and I got some photographs.

In fact, the day we spent walking started with thick mist in the valley - a temperature inversion mist - and the summits above bathed in sunshine from a clear sky. The dramatic mist proved to be perfect for photography and produced some of my best shots, including today's. In fact, as we walked and snapped and talked and hauled ourselves up out of the Ribble valley onto the limestone and millstone grit heights it occurred to me that, as far as photography goes, the weather you get is often better than the weather you wish for. Perhaps that phrase will join my list of self-penned photographic aphorisms. It has so often been true for me that my best shots have been taken in weather that is "extreme" in one way or another, or is quite different from what is usually thought of as good photographic weather. I reflected further on this when we passed a bookshop in Settle. In the window were a few different volumes of photographs of the Yorkshire Dales. All had a cover that showed a well-known location photographed in sunshine with blue sky and white clouds. I took a few shots of that kind myself during our time in Settle, but the ones taken in the unanticipated and unwanted mist please me more.

The photograph above was taken near the start of our walk at a point when it looked like the mist would rapidly lift. In those circumstances an eye for any available images and rapid composition is needed. Here the two gates  in the drystone walls, the short lane, and the trees offered the best possibilities.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A swan, a wire, a death

click photo to enlarge

In my early teens I was a keen birdwatcher and the fascination with birds has stayed with me since that time. In fact, I consider it to have been a life-enriching activity. It's fair to say that my interest was never as deep in later life as it was in those early years, but I have always been alert to the bird life around me, and I remain so today. As well as recording the number and species of the birds I saw, I plotted nest sites, photographed birds and collected a few artefacts - feathers, the odd wing and skull (including those of a curlew and a heron). The latter activity may sound a touch macabre, but I never considered it so. I used to periodically come across dead birds and they provided the materials for my small collection. Skulls were sometimes clean and bleached white by exposure to the sun: others could be made so by leaving them near an ants' nest! I'd probably been inspired to collect these things by the displays of stuffed birds that seemed to feature in every museum I visited, and by the stories in the Victorian and early twentieth century bird books that I posessed.

On a recent cycle ride I came upon a sight that brought back those early days. The farm track upon which I was travelling was littered with wings, bunches of tail feathers and smaller, downy feathers. All were white, though the wings had a hint of brown too. The death of the bird must have been quite recent because the remaining bone and tissue where the wings had been parted from the body were still quite red with blood. I immediately knew that the bird was a young mute swan (Cygnus olor) and that it had died or been seriously injured when it flew into the wires above the track. This happen all too frequently to swans, and I've come across them before in similar circumstances. What I couldn't deduce from the evidence before me was what had eaten the rest of the bird. Perhaps it was a fox, maybe a stoat, possibly rats or a domestic cat, certainly carrion crows or magpies: probably, however, a few or all of these had a meal or two off it.

Not being one to pass up a photographic opportunity, even one that's a touch grisly, I took out my compact camera, set the aspect ratio to 16:9 and took this "scene of crime" shot.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On