Grass fields and droves

click photo to enlarge
When you move to a new part of the country you immediately notice accents and dialect words because, despite the long, dominating presence of TV and radio, and the fact that people move from place to place much more than formerly, regional differences are still evident. And we should be glad that they do because they enrich our experience and provide a link with a past that will, in all probability, eventually disappear.

I've got used to Lincolnshire women I've never met before calling me "ducks" and the way in which words containing the letter "u" are pronounced: computer isn't "compyouter" but "compooter" and the DIY chain isn't B&Q (Bee and Queue) but Bee and Coo! I've also reconciled myself to the fact that in south Lincolnshire the pastures are "grass fields" and that many roads are "droves". However, that field description still puzzles me. I know that over the past century sheep and cattle farming has declined in the county and arable has become dominant, but was the term pasture, a word widely used across Britain, never used in Lincolnshire? Drove rather than road is easier to understand. The roads so named usually lead from settlements into the lower surrounding fens, areas that in the past were poorly drained, used less in winter and wetter weather, and which must have seen much organised "droving" of sheep and cattle to and from the drier land as season and precipitation dictated.

Today's photograph was taken on a recent late afternoon. It shows a grass field that was sown a few years ago to provide fodder for cutting and feeding rather than for the pasturing of animals. The second growth of grass had a beautiful texture and a delicate yellow tinge in the afternoon light, a quality that contrasted with the blue tinged clouds and sky as well as the detail of the distant drove road marked by its collection of trees, farm buildings and a few houses.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11.5mm (31mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Out to pasture

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In my working life I had an interesting but demanding job that made ever more claims upon my time as I progressed up the hierarchy. Consequently, when I decided I would retire one of the major attractions of ceasing regular, paid work was that all that time would be returned to me to do with as I pleased. And so it proved. I've never been a person who has been unable to fill their time, I've never complained of being bored, and I've always had things to do. Retirement gave me the opportunity to pursue my interests, things that formerly I'd dipped in and out of or had neglected.

However, to my surprise I found that complete release from the pressures associated with paid work didn't quite suit me. The fact is I like having to deliver within a specified  time-frame and having a full and busy life. Consequently I have expanded what one of my sons calls the "community activism" side of my life because it offers me those pressures that I missed. But, one of the lessons you learn in life is that upsides often have, somewhere or other, downsides. In this instance the downside is the reduction in time available to devote to photography and this blog in particular. In the past circumstance has caused me to cease posting or reduce my frequency, and I've reached that point again. I'm not stopping, but I won't be maintaining my alternate days schedule.

I chose the title of today's post to fit in with what I have to say in the post, not that I particularly feel "out to pasture", but that is one of the ways that retirement is sometimes characterised. I saw these horses as I drove past them. I walked back to get these photographs showing them fringed by light from the lowish sun.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 38mm (57mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Take two

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I'm not averse to taking shots of the same subject at different times to try and get a better image. In fact, it's part of what I think a photographer should do. You learn far more from doing this than by searching for a new subject for every exposure. In this blog I've done it with several churches including Quadring, Bicker, and Sleaford, though I've done it less with landscapes. However, on my recent visit to Settle, North Yorkshire, I tried to take a shot from the same place that I'd stood to take one last October.

The precise location I chose last year was in Watery Lane to the south of the town. It was early in the morning and mist was being burned off by the low sun but still lingered and obscured the nearby hills. I chose as the main focal points of my contre jour composition two gates that presented eye-catching, dark silhouettes. The shot is one of my best landscapes from 2012. Passing those gates at the end of June I tried to compose the same shot but in conditions of quite different weather and lighting. Of course, when you are working from memory you're very unlikely to stand in precisely the same place or to set the focal length of a zoom lens the same as in the first shot. And so it proved here.

I quite like the result of the second photograph. It clearly doesn't have the same impact as the first but what it does illustrate is how important lighting can be in securing an eye-catching photograph. Not only is the contrast and drama enhanced by the sun in the first shot, the mist and the indistinct shapes of the trees establish a particular mood. The photograph above lacks those qualities but is better in terms of reportage about the Yorkshire Dales landscape.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.3mm (33mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Values, land and the future

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What price can be put on a piece of farmland? All land has a market value which equates with as much as someone is prepared to pay. But market value is only one measure of value: agricultural land has values that exceed that narrow measure.

Today's photograph shows a field of pasture on the Lincolnshire Fens. When I took my photograph it was looking a bit the worse for wear after a wet winter and a cold spring. But the sheep and their lambs were finding sustenance in the grass. Farther out in the field lapwings were feeding and occasionally flinging themselves through the air in their courtship flight. A buzzard was surveying the scene from one of the hedgerow trees, and through the bushes were flitting a family group of long-tailed tits. Barn owls frequently fly along the drainage ditches that border the field hoping to surprise an unsuspecting mouse or shrew, and the distinctive song of the yellowhammer can often be heard competing with that of its near relative, the reed bunting. Pasture fields are not common in the Fens where vegetable production prevails, so the value to wildlife of this piece of land is locally immense.

As it happens this land (and three nearby sites) have been shortlisted for a 49 acre substation that is to service the giant Triton Knoll wind farm that is being planned for the North Sea off the east coast. If you thought offshore turbines preferable because they didn't spoil the countryside then think again. The company that needs the substation concludes that this site and the three others it has short-listed can be built with the least environmental and socio-economic cost. The land here is categorised as Grade 2. The other sites are either Grade 1 or Grade 2. In 2011the Government published the Natural Environment White Paper "The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature" which, amongst many other things, sought to halt the decline in natural habitats, promote natural diversity and "protect our best and most versatile agricultural land" (a phrase used to describe land classified as Grade 1, Grade 2 or Grade 3a. Clearly concreting over fields such as this is completely contrary to those stated aims.

Our world of markets, money, profit and growth needs to factor into its calculations the idea of "natural capital": the land that as well as providing food, a commodity that is going to be ever more costly and in shorter supply in the future, also provides habitats for the wildlife without which our world is a dull, impoverished and arid place. The value of natural capital is enormous, eclipsing many of the more routine costs and values that are involved in everyday calculations. A proper valuation of the area of land in this photograph would result in a rethink about its suitability as a place build on.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19.3mm (52mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On  

Yorkshire Dales barns

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A recent few days in the Yorkshire Dales re-acquainted me with some stone barns that I've known all my life. Some continue in use much as they always have, others have fallen further into a state of dilapidation, and some are in the process of being converted to new uses.

Todays's photograph shows a modest barn near Settle called Far Thornber Barn. Most Dales barns  that are out in the fields have names. Often these relate to the first owner, to the location or have a name whose origins are lost in the mists of time. Sometimes the last part of the name is "Laithe" rather than "Barn", a word that derives from the Old Norse (ON) word "hlatha" meaning barn. This reflects the influx from predominantly Ireland and Norway of Norse settlers in the years after 800 AD. In this area, a mile or so south of Settle, there is a cluster of barns that I know well. The oldest is Brigholme Barn near Giggleswick, by the River Ribble, which apparently dates from the seventeenth century. The last part of its name comes from the ON "holmr" meaning a dry, raised place in wet land - a suitable location for a barn -  and the first may derive from either the Old English "brycg" or the ON "bryggja", both meaning bridge. In my childhood it was piled high with bales of hay. It's now surrounded by newer structures that serve modern farming better, but is still used, cared for and maintained with traditional methods (lime mortar etc) as befits a listed building.

A few hundred yards from the barn in the photograph is the oddly named Fish Copy Barn. A more "architectural" structure than many it has a "porch", carved stone decoration and a late nineteenth century date stone with the owner's initials. For many years it was roofed, and the upper part of the porch was notable for a pile of song thrush nests about six feet high, the work of successive generations of birds each building on the nest below. Now it stands forlorn, unwanted and roofless amid a patch of waste land. By the A65 road the cluster of Cleatop Barns (named after the nearby house and wood) are in the process of being transformed into offices, retail space and a restaurant: a sad end for these distinctive buildings.

I visited Settle in a period of unseasonally hot weather with clear blue skies - not ideal for walking on the limestone and millstone grit uplands or for photography. This shot, however, was taken on the first morning of my stay when some low cloud pierced by patches of sunlight made photography much easier.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 60mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On