WW1 floral tribute

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One of the traditions of the Church of England (and some English churches of other denominations) is the church flower festival. This usually takes place in late spring or high summer when flowers are plentiful. The church is filled with flower displays - on window sills, pulpit, font, bench ends, and many other spaces in the nave, chancel and porch. Often a theme is decided and each display is an interpretation of it. Themes I've seen include, hymn titles, saints, London, months and famous people. Much of the pleasure of the viewer comes from seeing the creativity involved in expressing the idea florally. Churches publicise the event, welcome the wider public, and use the event as a pleasurable fund raiser, often putting on refreshments, sales etc to accompany the flowers. Groups of churches frequently co-ordinate their festivals, those in a geographical location choosing the same week so that visitors can make a day of visiting several churches.

On a cycle ride we recently visited Muston church in Leicestershire and came across what I assume was their flower festival based on the theme of the First World War. I say "assume" because in these years in which the centenary of WW1 is remembered some churches are mounting special events, and perhaps it was one of those. Whatever the inspiration, the displays were very good. There were poppies in profusion, of course, but the ideas went wider than that. The example above features barbed wire, crosses and explosions in the form of coloured alliums.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: WW1 Floral Tribute, Muston Church, Leicestershire
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/30 sec
ISO: 640
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Allotment poppies (correction - Ranunculus)

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The allotment is slowly disappearing from England's cities, towns and villages. These community gardens were originally conceived as pieces of land that could be rented from the local authority, for a nominal fee, on which people could grow food to supplement their income. Over the years, as incomes rose they became places where people grew food crops, flowers, sometimes crops for sale, more by way of a hobby than out of any kind of deep necessity.

With that change came the realisation that the standard sized allotment (c. 250 square metres) was too large for modern needs and so many were reduced in size. A decline in interest in renting an allotment some areas, coupled with a shortage of land for housing and other uses resulted in many allotments being sold off. Today the take-up of allotments varies considerably from place to place with some thriving and others moribund.

The village where I live has allotments and the other evening, as the sun was getting low in the sky, we walked through them. A group of ornamental poppies ranunculus sown by one allotment holder were in full flower and caught our eye illuminated as they were by the strong light. They looked a fine sight among the rows of beans, potatoes and brassicas, a splash of vivid colour among the greenery.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Allotment Poppies (correction, Ranunculus)
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Poppies and contre jour

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Light through petals is a beautiful sight. During the summer months I frequently make use of the low sun of morning and evening as it slants across our gardens, lighting up the petals of the flowers. A those times of day there are also pools of deep shadow and the combination of illuminated flowers and shade makes a striking contrast.

However, there is one problem with photographing contre jour flowers - the best effect is seen from behind the blooms because the flower heads are always turned to face the strongest source of light. Consequently, if you are a purist about such things (and I don't think I am) then every photograph of this kind has an unsatisfactory element to it.

Today's shot illustrates this up to a point. To achieve the striking red points that make this photograph work I had to be in a position where all the flower heads were facing away from me. In fact, it matters less in this example because the flowers are working as points of colour in a larger composition rather than being the sole subject. I took the photograph on an evening walk as we passed a field of oilseed rape.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 36mm (72mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A good year for poppies?

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One of the good things about the internet is that it's quite easy to find someone who thinks like you do. One of the bad things about the internet is that it's quite easy to find someone who thinks like you do. Consequently, creating an organisation or movement for beneficent change and progress is easier than ever before. But, mobilising a group of people who share the same bigotry, hatred and intolerance is not difficult either. In fact, such is the breadth of opinions to be found expressed on websites, blogs, forums, social media etc, it is possible to find written support for just about any proposition you care to make, no matter how extreme, ludicrous or unhinged it may seem to most people. The days of misunderstood youth or paranoid misanthropes languishing in the conviction that no one feels the same as they do must surely be long gone: a quick search will quickly throw up fellow loners who share their misery and delusions.

On a lighter note, the internet is also a place where you can take soundings. I tried this the other day in connection with my impression that 2013 has been a particularly good year for poppies in the United Kingdom. Sure enough, I found several pieces written by individuals who expressed the same thought. So I'm right. Or am I? Just because, out of the millions of people who have looked at poppies in the fields, roadsides and gardens of our country, a handful have expressed the same opinion as me doesn't mean we are correct. Perhaps the silent majority who haven't expressed a view publicly feel the number of poppies is no more, or maybe fewer, than usual. As a means of arriving at a reliable judgement simply looking for people with similar views is not a very sound method. Helpful though it undoubtedly can be, the internet has the capacity to very easily reinforce wrong thinking.

Today's photograph was taken in my garden. I posted a shot of "wayward" poppies earlier this month. I see the contre jour image above as one that shows them growing more typically.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 168mm
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

New uses for old parkland

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Recently, after spending several days in the Yorkshire Dales, we stopped off on the way home at Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster. We have visited this English Heritage-owned country house before but never in summer and we thought that a stroll round the formal gardens with its fine statues, and a second look inside the Victorian mansion would be a pleasant break from driving, with good opportunities for photography. How wrong we were.

What had escaped our notice was that the period of our visit coincided with a fortnight during which a film was being shot at the property. Consequently large vans, cars, catering trucks, lighting rigs and the rest littered the exterior of the building. Photographs of the house were next to impossible as were shots of the garden with the house as the backdrop. To make matters worse the cold spring had resulted in much of the colour that we might expect to see in the gardens at this time of year being absent. Green with the odd dash of blue and a few sporadic patches of other hues was the best on offer. It was very disappointing. We are members of English Heritage so we paid no extra entry fee. What surprised me, however, was that there was still a charge (albeit reduced) for entry to the gardens for non-members. It seemed a bit much given the disruption.

But all was not lost. As we left by the main drive we passed a field that had been sown with oilseed rape and that now had a fine flush of poppies too. Looking across the crops it was obvious from the splendid trees dotted about the field that it had originally been the parkland pasture that surrounded the country house. The trees looked odd rising out of the sea of rape and poppies, no trunks visible, like a regatta of yachts on a calm swell. It looked like the best photographic opportunity of the afternoon so I pulled into a passing place and took the shot shown above.

And the film? Apparently it was "The Thirteenth Tale", a dramatisation of a Gothic novel by Diane Setterfield, starring Sophie Turner and Vanessa Redgrave, that will be shown on BBC2 TV as part of its Christmas offering in December 2013.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13.1mm (35mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

War Memorial, Boston

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It's always gratifying to see  the respect that is widely given to war memorials. But it isn't everyone who gives them, or what they represent, the recognition that they deserve. I read recently about the prosecution of some despicable people who had forced the brass plaques recording the dead of two world wars off a memorial and sold them to a scrap metal dealer! Thankfully such low-life are very much the exception and most people know that our remembrance of those who fought on our behalf is important and should be accorded respect.

Today's photograph shows the war memorial and its enclosing garden of remembrance in Wide Bargate, Boston, in Lincolnshire. It is fairly typical of a town war memorial with its stone column, a base recording the dead of the town, and a surrounding area to receive the tributes of subsequent generations. What does make it slightly different, however, are the two rows of small, inclined and engraved marble tablets seen on either side of the path leading to the memorial. Each of these shows the name and insignia of an arm of the military, a regiment or an associated organisation. It is a place for representatives of these bodies to place a wreath on Remembrance Day. The wreaths of civic bodies and others are at the base of the memorial. I took my photograph in late December of last year, five or six weeks after the poppy wreaths had been laid, and they were still where they had been placed, undisturbed by weather or any person. One other thing that distinguishes the Boston war memorial site is the steel entrance arch. This graceful construction that terminates with Art Nouveau-like flourishes is sometimes a little lost against the background trees, leaves and buildings. However, on this frosty morning with a thin layer of snow covering everything, it stood out, clear and elegant, a perfect frame for my shot.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.8mm (60mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO:80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A profusion of poppies

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That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
John Berger (1926- ), English art critic, novelist, painter, poet

A saying in our family can sometimes be heard when we pass a house that is surrounded by nothing but lawns, with perhaps just the odd conifer to break the monotony. "All grass and no flowers" we say, re-working the title of Mike Harding's humorous, satirical play of 1980, "Fur Coat and No Knickers". We are not alone, I think, in seeing a flowerless garden as a missed opportunity, an aberration that makes one think about the state of mind of the owner. Does the person who lives there actively dislike flowers, I sometimes wonder, or do they think that grass gives them the least amount of gardening work? If it's the latter then they are wrong because there are plenty of shrubbery plantings that can be devised requiring less maintenance than the equivalent area of grass. If it's the former, then perhaps all that is implied in John Berger's thought, quoted above, comes into play. For it's surely the case that flowers are one of the finest natural beauties of the world. En masse or individually, cultivated or wild, they charm our eye, lift our spirits and inspire us. Painters have long known this, and some photographers too.

I came across Berger's words in a gardening book I was reading recently, and I thought of it again as I watched our poppies taking turns to come into flower. The assortment that we now have, a mix that has arisen accidentally rather than by design, ensures that bold points of colour are a key feature of June in our garden. From the big and blousy red and mauve oriental poppies to the delicate, yellow Welsh poppies or the bold orange and yellow California variety, poppies are a flower that make their presence felt. Subtlety and reserve are not the qualities that we associate with them. Even when the individual blooms last for only a day as do the paper-thin orange variety I posted a while ago, like a fanatical army hurled against the foe the poppies send wave after wave of replacements to take the place of the fallen.

Our California poppies self-seed in a border at the edge of an area of trees and shrubs. The leaf canopy above makes them incline towards the light, and I caught them as they were all turned in the same direction. I photographed the big orange oriental poppy, not because it's my favourite, though many prefer it over others. Rather, it was the contrast of the rather malign looking black/purple centre next to the bright petals: a pairing I have always found attractive at a distance but slightly disconcerting when up close. We have Welsh poppies a-plenty at the moment, but this group were growing in the shade in my neighbour's garden, and I quite liked them next to the mauve of the perennial wallflowers.

photograph and text © T. Boughen

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

The pleasure of imperfection

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The fields of Lincolnshire are looking their cultivated, perfect best. Rows of cereals and vegetables are mathematically straight, weeds have been cowed into submission by tractors with spray booms, and leaves are of the deepest green following scientifically accurate applications of fertiliser. It all bodes well for a good harvest. But thankfully, in a corner here, a field there, things are not going quite as intended. The yellow and white heads of corn chamomile break up the uniformity in a few areas, and the sunshine flowers of last year's oilseed rape, guerilla plants that evaded the farmers herbicides, can be seen dotted about rising above the ears of wheat. Around field boundaries and headlands poppies have appeared, their seed having lain dormant for who knows how long. In one field that I came across an army of these redcoats was peering out over the wheat, asserting itself as June's traditional dash of scarlet.

There was a time when poppies glowed in many, if not most, cereals. But the advance of science in farming has all but ended that wonderful sight in many parts of England. Today there is no place for the uplifting spectacle that is a wheat field invaded by these scarlet battalions. So, when I saw the flowers in today's photograph, clustered and spread through about half of a crop of wheat I smiled and thought, "Isn't imperfection beautiful!", then scrambled down and up a deep ditch (getting stung by nettles in the process), stepped over a low fence, crouched low and grabbed my image.

I manage to get a photograph of wheat and poppies most years, though as with this one, it's invariably when I come upon them by chance, rather than by design. Previous examples, shot in more of a landscape mode, can be seen here and here. Incidentally, the title of today's piece was going to be "The beauty of imperfection", but that rang a small bell in my head, so I looked back through my posts and found that I'd used it in November 2008, when I blogged on the same theme, though from a different perspective.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5 Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wild flower gardens

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Q.When is wild flower a weed?
A.When it's growing in your garden, or among the farm crops.

All of the flowers that we grow in our gardens have been developed from wild flowers. Some, for example pelargoniums, roses, tulips and fuchsias, have been bred to the point where there are varieties that are very different from the original stock. Others, such as the primrose and bluebell are often barely distinguishable from their wild forebears. And, whilst it is true to say that some cultivars are more handsome than the plants they are descended from, more often, in my view, the wild original has a more delicate, subtle beauty.

When plant breeders develop their strains they are often looking for bigger, more numerous and showier blooms, in colours that are unusual, and that last longer. They have been very successful in their endeavours, achieving all those goals, and offering the gardener "more bang for their buck" in flowering plants. But, in so doing they have frequently lost some of the qualities that first drew people to those plants in the first place. Delicate colours, simple flower heads, translucent petals, an unaffected innocence, are too frequently replaced by opulent, urbane sophistication. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why, in recent years, people have created wild flower gardens: they are seeking to recapture some of those qualities that have been lost.

In the Lincolnshire village where I live a neighbour has recently established a wild flower garden on a wide area of grass verge. The plot lies by the side of the road with a stream on one side and a medieval church on the other. In four short months, with only a little help, she has turned a piece of grass that had a few common wild plants growing in it, into a lovely, colour-flecked area that offers a visual delight to all who pass by. The other day, after I'd been to the post office with a letter, I doubled back to photograph the poppies, cornflowers, yarrow and all the other wild flowers that now grow there. Here's one of the images that I took.

Addendum: Internet Explorer is a real pain. I have three browsers on my computer and IE8 is the odd one out when it comes to text wrapping round the images. Today, to stop it filling the right side of the picture with words split into one or two letters per line (the other browsers fit words into the space), I've had to centre the image. Not a big problem you might think. No, but one that shouldn't exist. It seems Microsoft is still going its own way and refusing to confirm to WWW standards.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 64mm (128mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Remembrance

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On the Sunday nearest to Remembrance Day (11th November), an act of commemoration is observed at cenotaphs and churches throughout the United Kingdom. Wreaths are laid, words are spoken, trumpets sound, and a silence is observed as those who paid the ultimate sacrifice are remembered.

Today's photograph shows just a few of the personal tributes to friends and relations at the cenotaph in Ely, Cambridgeshire. The image was taken last year and in its entirety shows part of the war memorial, the wreaths placed by organisations, and individual poppies with names. I cropped this section from the larger image, because the personal details it carries seemed to convey the message of the day so much more effectively.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lifting your spirits

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Here are 10 sights to lift your spirits. They are in no particular order.

1. A skein of geese flying in a ragged "V" formation, descending through the evening sunset onto the salt-marshes.
2. An azure blue May sky with a stiff wind blowing streams of fluffy cotton wool clouds from one horizon to the other.
3. The unreal glow of light in the bedroom when you wake on a January morning to find an unexpected fall of snow has descended in the night.
4. The tumbling flight and the "peewit" calls of a pair of lapwings as they perform their aerial display over the fields during the nesting season.
5. A sunset over the sea just as after rain has cleared, leaving the sky a mixture of the purest blue, the darkest grey, tinted whites, and the firiest red.
6. The view after a brisk walk, on a clear, cold morning, from any summit that gives a 360 degree view.
7. The low sun filtered by the red, orange and yellow leaves that won't let go of the trees in autumn.
8. Turning the corner on a woodland path and coming upon banks of purple rhododendrons in full bloom.
9. Hundreds of tiny frogs, each no bigger than your finger nail, as they clamber around the shallows of a pond.
10. A field of wheat, barley or oilseed rape (above) that has been invaded by bright red poppies.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off