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

Establishment graffiti

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The meaning of the word "graffito" has become modified in the past fifty or so years. During the first half of the twentieth century it had two meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary quotes this as the definitions first recorded in 1851:  "A drawing or writing scratched on a wall or other surface; a scribbling on an ancient wall, as those at Pompeii and Rome. Also, a method of decoration in which designs are produced by scratches through a superficial layer of plaster, glazing, etc., revealing a ground of different colour". The latter applied mainly to pottery.

However, the newer meaning, with a citation of use dating back to a Chicago newspaper in 1967 is: "Words or images marked (illegally) in a public place, esp. using aerosol paint." At that time the singular tended to drop out of use and the plural now tended to serve for all references. The key word in the newer definition is "illegal". From that time onwards the illegality of the growing amount of graffiti, particularly when "tagging" arose, became one of its defining features and was what turned most people against it. Graffiti became "underground" and anti-establishment.

But, the establishment has a long record of absorbing anti-establishment movements and making them mainstream. From the Beat poets to punk rock businesses have seen such trends as new ways to make money. It has happened with graffiti too. Works by graffiti artists now appear in galleries. Public spaces, such as the skate-boarders meeting place on London's South Bank, are made available and a blind eye is turned to spray painting. And, as today's photograph shows, advertising has appropriated graffiti-style illustration now that it is no longer solely associated with urban grime and illegality. This example is part of a wall in a passage in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, that leads to a printing business's establishment.

My view on graffiti has changed with the prevailing tide. I still abhor illegally daubed tags and even well-done painting if it is done without the owner's permission. But I can see interest and innovation in some of the graffiti that I come across and I have been motivated to photograph it - see here and here.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5DMk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Melton Ross chalk quarries

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The popularity of Joseph Wright of Derby's paintings or those by Philip James de Loutherbourg of the industrial revolution in Britain stems, in part, from a paradox. On the one hand there is the fascination, excitement and money-making potential of processes, machines and large new, landscape-moulding developments that have never been seen before on such a scale before - forges, furnaces, bridges and tall chimneys, big factories, mines, new workers' housing etc. But there is also a feeling that the new industries, whilst clearly being the future and progress, also mark a change from a gentler, more natural, essentially agrarian Britain to one where the forces of industry and finance are being let rip and their rapid march is stamping all over the traditional, the loved and the familiar. The appeal of paintings such as Loutherbourg's showing the Bedlam Furnaces at Madeley Wood, Coalbrookedale in Shropshire, is in part because of this kind of ambivalence towards large-scale industry and its consequences.

As a photographer I recognise something of that when I photograph wind turbines or electricity pylons that have been dumped, like metal monsters, into rural or offshore locations, places that either haven't changed much, or have changed slowly, and which represent the nearest we get to continuity in a fast changing world. As a subject for the camera both turbines and pylons can offer something striking that even the most ardent protector of rural Britain must recognise. It's a feeling that I felt again when I stood just outside the gateway of Melton Ross chalk quarries in north Lincolnshire and photographed the buildings and machinery associated with the extraction and processing of lime. Ugly? Undoubtedly. Grim? Certainly. But also imposing and visually interesting. I liked the tyre tracks the lorries had left on the wet ground, the bright colours of the safety signs and their reflections against the earth colours of the buildings and conveyor belts, and the dark, threatening clouds flecked by the white smoke from the works' chimneys, that promised more rain.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5D Mk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Marian monogram and more

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The remains of original medieval painting is reasonably common in English churches though often it is in fragmentary form; for example details that have been uncovered during a restoration. However, there are some churches that retain fairly extensive schemes of wall painting, more have traces on roof timbers and quite a few, especially in Norfolk and Suffolk still have their painted rood screens. This kind of painting has sometimes been subject to sensitive restoration but often it appear to be entirely original work.

I recently came across a painted rood screen in Cambridgeshire at Ickleton church. The artwork was not as extensive or detailed as the East Anglian examples - there was no attempt as figure painting for example - but what it did have that caught my eye was a pair of fine monograms that were painted in colours that I really like. They were on the nave side of the rood screen doors. On the right was what is often called a "Marian monogram", one of the ways in which a couple of ornate letters (here Ms) decoratively entwined are used to represent the Virgin Mary. On the left was another monogram with the letters IHS, the semi-Latinized version of the first three letters of Christ's name written in Greek (IHΣOYΣ).

The two main colours the designer had chosen were fire-brick red and bottle green, reversing the colours on each door and using gold for the main lettering and for highlights in the cusp flowers and the surrounding leaf-like decoration. It is simple, effective and the colours are very well chosen. It is something of a minor tragedy that the puritanical outlook of the Reformation largely banished colour from English churches. Wall paintings were white-washed over, roof timbers were often painted too, or the colour was allowed to fade.  Pulpits, rood screens, reredos and other wood was similarly stripped of colour. It was not until the 1840s and the influence of the The Oxford Movement; of architects such as A.W.N. Pugin and writers and critics of the standing of John Ruskin, that colour on a medieval scale began to be seen again in English churches. It was principally the new buildings that were so adorned, and even then not all welcomed it. Many saw it as "Roman" and continued to prefer the more austere browns, blacks, greys and whites that had prevailed for a couple of centuries. It takes examples such as the woodwork in today's photographs to remind us that our churches during the medieval period were much more colourful places than they often are today.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 30.1mm (81mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 2500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Living in the past?

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Getting older gives you perspective and with perspective comes humility. At least that's what happens for many people. As teenagers people are often self-absorbed, the centre of their own little universe about which everything revolves. Then, as we age, start a family and shoulder the attendant responsibilities of partner, children and work, the inward focus continues. It is less marked than in our younger years because the compass of our lives extends, but it is there nonetheless. Often it's not until our offspring have departed the nest that people experience sufficient time to pause and reflect in a more considered way about the three big questions in life - "Who are we, whence come we, whither go we" (as Gauguin put it). And with retirement the viewpoint and perspective that age brings throws these questions into sharper relief.

It's natural at that point to reflect on yourself as a person. One thing that many older people conclude (I am one of them) is that the extent to which we are like other people is much greater than the extent to which we are different from them. This is something that teenagers find hard to accept and which might account for the sometimes extraordinary lengths they go to in order to dress and behave like their friends. It's also natural, with greater age, to look back at your life, to consider how it was different from today and to make value judgements about whether it was better or not. This, as I've said elsewhere in the blog, is a path fraught with dangers and delusions. And then there's the rather less problematic fondness that can grow for the objects and habits of our past - the artefacts, vehicles, ways of living etc that we experienced as our younger selves.

I was thinking about this the other morning as I watched a railway artist paint a picture of the locomotive, "Mallard". This was the LNER Class A4 steam engine designed by Sir Nigel Gresley that in 1938 achieved the world speed record of 125.88 mph (202.58 km/h) for a steam-powered locomotives, a record that still stands today. The artist was plying his trade at an exhibition of transport models - trains, boats etc - and must have been painting this particular subject with an eye to the 75th anniversary of that record-breaking run - it falls on 3rd July of this year - and the sort of person who was a potential customer. On looking round it was clear that the great majority of exhibitors and most of the visitors were aged sixty or older, that it wasn't only the fact that they had the time to indulge in their hobby that caused them to pick this one, it was also their age. It seemed to me that a sort of second childhood was upon them - and they were thoroughly enjoying it!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed:1/30
ISO: 1000
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

The west's debt to the east

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Today's blog title might look like I'm going to reflect on the role of the "tiger economies", China in particular, and their role in keeping the shaky western economies ticking over. In fact I've been thinking about some earlier indebtedness that is owed to that part of the world.

The debt that the Renaissance owes to ancient Greece and Rome is widely known. What fewer people are aware of is the extent to which this European movement drew upon technologies from India and China. These were transmitted in one of two ways. Either the invention and process were taken and copied (and often improved), or the idea was reported in the west and that was enough for it to be developed there. Gunpowder and paper are generally known to have come to Europe to the east. However, the range of borrowed technologies is much more extensive and includes the horse breast strap, silk, the stirrup, segmental arch bridge, canal lock gates, mariners' compass, printing and business techniques including book-keeping. The rapid growth and change that Europe undertook in the Renaissance would have been significantly slowed without these and many other contributions from the other side of the world.

The contribution of China and Japan to the arts is also not widely known. However, as trade expanded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the decorative arts of the east became available and admired in Europe and even prompted fashionable trends. The "chinoiserie" of these centuries influenced painting, English landscape gardening, porcelain design, architecture, and interior decoration. In the nineteenth century artists such as James Abbot McNeill Whistler, the American-born, British-based painter, were heavily influenced by Japanese and Chinese prints and fabrics. Whistler amassed a large collection of such things and artists as disparate as Degas, Van Gogh and Aubrey Beardsley  show the influence of the traditional ukiyo-e style and its major Japanese exponents such as Hiroshige and Hokusai.

It's hard to imagine that Western paintings lacking perspective and shadow, that featured flat areas of colour, had strongly asymmetrical compositions and made a strong feature of empty space, would have arisen in the way that they did without the influence of eastern art. And where painters lead photographers follow, even humble amateurs such as yours truly. My photograph of the grass stems and leaves poking up through the snow wouldn't have been one that I would have thought worthy of making without the august precedents described above.

Addendum:

The photograph I had thought to use today was this one showing a Valentine's Day display at a flower shop in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire. The fine Regency bow window links with my recent posts on that period's architecture, and the subject is topical. However, my newspaper, the radio, the internet, and for all I know the T.V., are awash with ever more tenuous pieces on Valentine's Day and the associated razzamatazz - much more it seemms than in previous years - and I felt the last thing needed was yet another. So, here's the photograph and not another word on the subject.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 90mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  +0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A light, stairs and abstraction

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Abstraction in painting involves either taking things from the real world and depicting them in an unreal but recognisable way, or using two dimensional elements such as colour, shape, line, etc non-representationally. If you go to any gallery that includes a reasonably large and wide-ranging selection of post-1900 paintings you are likely to see examples of both these approaches.

In photography it is easy to create images that follow the first method. One can see why, since most photography involves depicting the world around us in one way or another. However, it is (in the main*) not possible to make photographic images the second way because, for the camera, the elements of two dimensional representation, such as pure colour, do not exist independently of objects. They can be introduced using image editing software, but then we have moved into that grey area where digital painting meets photography. As I've said before in this blog, for me the term semi-abstract best describes what photographers do in this sphere.

Today's photograph is my most recent work in the semi-abstract genre. It shows a wall light that illuminates a stairway in a large building. I composed my shot by tilting the camera until I'd got what I considered to be a dynamic but balanced composition of three basic elements - grey wall, black steel support and stairs, and blue sky through glass. My adjustment placed the orange light towards the bottom in the grey wall, and also included its reflection in the black, giving some necessary interest in that region of the photograph. Why do I call this semi-abstract? Because the arrangement of shapes, lines, colours, tones, etc is the primary motivation for the image, and the light, stairs, metal, glass and sky are necessary incidentals.

* deliberate camera flare, and a few other methods can be seen as image making using elements that are not based in the real world

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.2
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographing vases of flowers

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The subject matter of photography and painting overlap to a very great extent, which isn't surprising given they are both visual arts. (I'll leave for the moment the discussion about whether photography is an art or a craft). The earliest photographers, such as Fox Talbot and Daguerre, drew heavily on the precedents of painting, but as the new medium grew, it did find ways of looking at and recording the world that were its own. But, if you consider most genres of photography, such as portraiture, landscape, travel, sport, wildlife, abstract, semi-abstract, it's true that these are now traditional forms that are shared with painting.

Still life, too, is found in both media. The other day, however, after I'd been browsing the work of photographers ancient and modern, amateur and professional, it struck me that still life pictures of flowers in vases is a mainstay of painting, but is very rare in photography. Why is this, I wonder? It's certainly true that painters use the vase of flowers, bowl of fruit, etc as a technical exercise in light, colour, form, line and the rest. So why don't photographers? Moreover, a vase of flowers is both controllable in terms of composition and lighting, and is an infinitely variable subject too. Perhaps it's that a vase of flowers, as a subject, has become so associated with painting that photographers are reticent about using it. Do they see it as a dull, staid subject, not worthy of a click or two? Or do they not see the possibilities inherent in this simple idea? Whatever the reason, today's post is, if nothing else, a plea to photographers to consider the humble vase of flowers.

I've photographed this subject for a number of years, and quite a few of my efforts have featured in this blog. Today's shot is my, by now seasonal image of carnations, or rather, in this instance a single carnation. My aim with this image was to find a different take on the vase of flowers that owed something to the fact that it is made with a camera. This heavily foreshortened shot from above with the shallow depth of field of my macro lens seemed to fulfill that objective.

For anyone who is wondering what I've done previously with this subject here are six examples.

Chinese lanterns, red tulips, daisies, dead hydrangeas, heliopsis, carnations and verbena.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/15
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: +1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Art and water lily leaves

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Yesterday I speculated whether reading about the influence of oriental art on western art, design and photography had influenced how I conceived my image. In fact, whether it is acknowledged or not, fine art painting is always a major influence on photography. In the early days of Fox Talbot, Daguerre and the other pioneers of the upstart medium, photographic portraits, landscapes and still-lifes, in particular, drew strongly on the precedents in paint. I suppose, in a way, it was like the designs of the first railway carriages: they looked like stagecoaches because it was difficult, initially, to see beyond what was the tried and tested vehicle. But as the railways (and photography) developed, so too did the forms that they used, and the influence passed back and forth between the two forms of representation. In his fascinating book, "Art and Photography", Aaron Scharf shows how painters as disparate as Ingres, Etty, Manet, Delacroix and Courbet used photographs as sources for their finished paintings. He then goes on to describe how painters and sculptors such as Duchamp and Boccioni developed their images and forms with reference to multiple photographs or photographs with blur.

When I compose a semi-abstract image I don't do it with conscious reference to any painting that I've seen. However, I am aware that the aesthetic choices that are made during that process must, in some way, be influenced by what I've seen and read: we are after all, the sum of our life experiences. Today's image doesn't, for me, have any oriental overtones. However, if it was a canvas I'd say it has something of the 1930s about it. Not the 1930s of the International Style, Moderne and the illustrations of Tom Purvis that seemed to be at work in my photograph here, but rather the colours, shapes and lines that Kandinsky brought to painting in that decade.

I make no claims that this photograph is art, of course. It is simply a composition that pleases me for the colours and shapes of the water lily leaves combined with the lines of the iris stems that have fallen into the water. And, whilst it is a straightforward representation of this section of the pond I don't see it as a description of the plants at this time of year, so much as a semi-abstract composition that makes use of them.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Painting Heckington windmill

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I posted a blog piece about Heckington's famous 8-sail windmill about a year ago, and in that entry discussed a little of English windmills in general and the history of this one in particular. What I didn't touch on, however, is the fact that Heckington is one of the mills that are painted black. These are not uncommon in Eastern England. Skidby Windmill, in East Yorkshire, is another black windmill that I blogged about a few years ago. This dark finish is most often applied to brick-built post-mills, though some timber structures are similarly treated. There are those who don't like to see windmills finished in this way, regarding them as sombre looking, and seeing the paint as hiding the warmth of the underlying brick. Such people prefer to see the bricks as they are on Thaxted mill. However, there's no denying that when it is paired with white sails and fantail, as well as white painted wooden detailing (windows, doors, rails, and an ogee cap) the black paint looks very striking. What I don't know is if any windmills were painted in this way immediately after they were built, or whether the bitumen-based covering was always applied at a later date in response to the penetration of damp.

When I passed Heckington windmill the other day I saw a blue "cherry-picker" and a couple of workmen busy repainting the tower. They'd masked the windows with plastic and were applying the sticky liquid with long handled brushes, the old paint looking dull next to that which they were laying on. The substance they were using certainly had the look of bituminuous paint, but I suppose it could have been one of the newer acrylic products. It was an interesting scene, so I took a few shots of them at their work, and post both the best of my selection and a general view above.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 67mm (134mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Plates of meat

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The extremities of the human body, as Leonardo da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man" clearly shows, are the head, hands and feet. When an artist wants to show something of the character of a person it is usually the face that he or she chooses to portray. Leonardo's "Self-Portrait"or his "Study of Five Characters" are good examples of this kind of image. Through their expression, and by the lines that time etches on a person's face we can see (or imagine we can see) something of the underlying singularity of the individual.

Many painters and photographers choose to include hands in their portraits, believing that they too reveal something that lies below the surface of the person. A painting such as Egon Schiels' "Self-Portrait with Hands on Chest" clearly includes the hands in order to say something more about the person that is depicted. The famous photographic portrait of the English painter, Aubrey Beardsley, is as much about his hands and their very long fingers, as it is about the profile of his face. Of course, in all these kinds of paintings and photographs we as viewers don't necessarily see that which the artist intended. However, we do see something, and the hands definitely add to that something.

So what about the third of our bodily extremities - our feet? There are far fewer paintings and photographs of feet than there are of heads and hands, or heads with hands. It's not difficult to see why the latter pairing is rarely to be found: it requires the suppleness of a contortionist to get them in close proximity. But how about feet themselves: why are there so few images of them? Possibly because they aren't very attractive. But that of itself isn't a compelling reason. Maybe it's because they are more often hidden away under socks and shoes. And yet feet are full of character and vary enormously between individuals. Today's photograph is my small contribution to increasing the number of photographs of feet! I noticed my battered pair as I was standing in the kitchen on a warm evening. The under-pelmet lighting was throwing interesting shadows around them so I pointed my camera down and took this shot of my "plates of meat" (Cockney rhyming slang for feet).

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (40mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cockerel feathers and painting

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Whether we know it or not, and whether we like it or not, fine art painting exerts an enormous influence on photography. For someone like me, with a lifelong interest in painting, and education in the history of art, the influence is quite overt. But it exists for most photographers, even if it's at a subliminal level, in terms of their choice of subject, the way they compose images, the colours they choose to use, the effects that they incorporate and apply, and in many other ways. In fact, these influences have become so firmly embedded in photographic practice that their origins are often no longer acknowledged.

I've recently been reviewing my photographic output of the past few years and one of the things that struck me was how clearly some of my shots seem to draw upon what I've observed in, and know of, the art of painting. Take this image of Lancaster seen from the Lune Aqueduct. It clearly draws its inspiration from the Romantic C18 and C19 English landscapes of painters such as John Sell Cotman, as does this evening view near Gosberton, Lincolnshire. Victorian painters who observed contemporary life through town views - artists such as James Tissot and William Powell Frith - seem to have influenced my image of Greenwich Park, London. My liking for the architectural drawings of Hugh Ferris comes through in this shot of Canary Wharf, London, whilst the influence of C17 Dutch landscapes are evident in this view of the River Welland. As a final example, Pop Art looks to be the inspiration for this shot of corrugated metal with the stencilled word "ACE" still visible.

I was thinking further about the influence of painting on photography whilst I was processing my image of cockerel feathers. It's the second shot of this subject that I've taken in the past few weeks, though this time it's a different bird (called Henry!). As I looked at the group of curved, orange feathers they reminded me of the freely-applied brush strokes of Jasper Johns and Jack Tworkov. The subject and composition is in the tradition of semi-abstract painting, a style that developed after the invention of photography, and which drew some of its characteristics from the more recent medium, reminding me that the traffic of influences is now in both directions.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200 seconds
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Tulips and painters

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I've always liked tulips. As a child I found their distinctive, pointed buds that opened into big, bright, goblet-shaped flowers holding large stamens and anthers, fascinating, and quite different from most of the other flowers that I saw.

As I got older I began to notice that many painters were enchanted by the flower too, some depicting it in its bold, strong upright form, and others in its more languid, drooping, "past its best" condition. The English painter, David Hockney (1937- ), frequently includes the flowers in interiors and portraits. A particular favourite of mine is his portrait of his parents that has a vase of tulips on a green cabinet. In a different style is his lithograph, "Pretty Tulips", where the flowers are drooping down towards the surface of a glass table. The Scottish architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), turned to painting in later life, and did some very individual watercolours of flowers, including tulips. His "Yellow Tulips" (c.1922-24) shows the curve of the flowers against an angular, modern-looking backdrop, with their leaves characteristically flopping over the edge of the blue vase that holds them. Seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish painters frequently included tulips in their "bouquet paintings", often giving them prominent positions, especially if they had petals marked attractively by a tulip virus. "Flowers in a Glass Vase" by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) exemplifies this style of painting.

Last year I took a few photographs of my tulips, both in situ, and in a vase. The other day, as the blooms started to show in the garden I thought I'd try for a shot that showed off the thrusting vitality of these flowers as they each seek their share of the space and light above them. A "letterbox crop" seemed to concentrate on and show off these characteristics better than the full-frame shot, so that is how I present the image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The water's edge

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When the Pre-Raphaelite painters turned their attention to nature they produced work that rejoiced in the minutiae of leaves, flowers, branches, rocks and water. They saw this verdant world like a child does, and examined it closely, marvelling at the nooks and crannies, insects and dark places. Paint was richly worked to show the detail of their subjects. Works such as "A Study, in March" (1855) by John William Inchbold (1830-1888), or the better-known "Ophelia" (1852 ) by John Everett Millais(1829-1896) exemplify these characteristics.

Critics of the Pre-Raphaelites - and there are many - see a lack of focus in this approach. They complain that the compositions do not direct the eye to a main subject (if one even exists). Camille Paglia talks about the "Keatsian ardor" with which the painting of nature was pursued, and compares it unfavourably with "High Romance energy" and "dynamic process", suggesting that it is only one step removed from the Symbolist decadence of Gustave Moreau. But, like many critics, she lets her preferences get in the way of seeing this aspect of Pre-Raphaelite work for what it is - a different and straightforward way of looking at nature, a reaction to "Sir Sloshua Reynolds" and what had gone before in English painting. And, whilst she is right to say that "part triumphs over whole", there is pleasure to be had in the simple revelation of nature and the decorative effect that this can produce. This is largely art for the eye and the emotional response: it isn't as completely cerebral as some painting. Critics of this aspect of the Pre-Raphaelites' work are like those who decry the unaccompanied folk song but praise the conservatoire setting of the tune, denying themselves the different enjoyment that each offers.

I was reflecting on this as I processed my image. Did it suffer from a lack of focus? It was taken on a walk that I regularly undertake from my house, part of which follows a stream that is reed-lined in summer. The other day only a few reeds were left standing, and the water was reflecting the nearby trees and the blue sky. I took a shot of the water's edge, to capture both the sharp foliage, and the softer reflections that were being distorted by the ripples and eddies. Does the image lack a main subject? Yes, but I think it offers distinct and the indistinct interest for the searching eye.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 98mm (196mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Above us only sky

click photo to enlarge

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

Blurred reality

click photo to enlarge

The critic John Berger writes that the invention of the camera "showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual". In his view the invention and use of perspective in painting "proposed to the spectator that he was the unique centre of the world", but the camera demonstrated that there was no centre, and that "what you saw was relative to your position in time and space". He goes on to note that the invention of the camera changed the way men saw, and " the visible no longer presented itself to man in order to be seen", rather it being "in continual flux, became fugitive." Much late nineteenth century and twentieth century art is built on this idea.

I was reflecting on this during the processing of the photograph above. The outing on which it was taken included a visit to a gallery where I saw paintings of such depressing banality that you wondered whether the artist was familiar with any of the notable practitioners of the past two centuries. If he had been he surely couldn't have displayed his own work. My image shows the reflection of a railway bridge that crosses the River Witham near the Grand Sluice in Boston, Lincolnshire. The bold shapes and the clouded sky attracted my eye, and I decided to shoot it with a slow shutter speed to blur the water. The resulting image reminded me a little of the Abstract Expressionist paintings of Franz Kline that feature strong, dynamic and spontaneous shapes against lighter backgrounds. Whatever the association it's a strong contrast to the style (and inspiration) of my preceding two blog images!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 31mm (62mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f9.0
Shutter Speed: 1/10
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off