Self-portrait with pink chair

click photo to enlarge
Walking along a street in Greenwich, London, recently I came upon a shop with goods spilling out on to the pavement in front of its window. It was the sort of shop that sells a wide range of eye-catching items for the home at relatively low prices.

Two items caught my eye. The first was the eye-wateringly pink (and gold) chair. I tried to imagined the rest of the room in which that might stand but immediately gave up under the influence of the waves of nausea that it provoked. Then I saw the glitzy mirror and immediately knew that the owner was trying to sell a collection of items that would complement each other in the room that my mind's eye briefly conjured up.

As I stared at the mirror, transfixed by the glass pimples that bordered it, I saw myself, headless, and decided it was time - in fact, well past the time - for another obscured, reflected, self-portrait. So, positioning myself to create a composition with depth, confusion and anonymity, I pressed the shutter.

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm (40mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The co-operative public

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It's not often that someone who I want to include in a "street" photograph actually co-operates with me and poses. Usually I get my shots on the run, pressing the shutter at what I hope is the "decisive moment". And, truth be told, what I, and most other photographers who take shots in the street actually want is people to ignore the camera and go about their business. I don't do much in this field of photography but my best images - this one for example - have always come about in this way.

However, recently as I was passing a shop window I noticed someone inside decorating the display area. Moreover, a large, metallic mask was still on show. It occurred to me that the conjunction of the two subjects might make a shot, especially since the decorator couldn't be clearly discerned and the reflection of the street was adding an interesting depth to the composition. But, as he carried on with his work he went behind the mask a little too much and I couldn't get the shot I wanted. This was one that included a person reflected in the glass looking at what I was doing. But then the decorator looked up, and perhaps sensing my predicament, stepped to his right and posed perfectly allowing me to have the two people, superimposed, on the left of the frame and the mask on the right. This image won't be everyone's cup of tea I suppose, it pleases me, the slightly out of focus mask notwithstanding. It reminded me a little of a shot I took in Floral Street, London, a photograph that also includes a "real" person and someone who is reflected, but features a skull rather than a mask! That example is another image that I consider to be one of my better street efforts.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Diamond Jubilee Street Party

click photo to enlarge - warning: unusually large image (1MB+)

On a return journey from Ely we called in on a selection of small Cambridgeshire towns to see if we could find a few more Diamond Jubilee shop window displays to photograph. All the places we visited had made an effort, but the displays in Chatteris stood head and shoulders above the rest. The guiding hand of the local Rotary Club had resulted in virtually all such premises having flags, bunting, pictures or specially staged displays. Moreover, it involved a competition and certificates for the best displays. Today's main photograph and some of the subsidiaries are of the prize winning window at the premises of a shop that sells doll's houses and associated wares. The owner had set up an elaborate, miniature street party that stretched across the front of the main window, an arrangement that was full of interest, detail and humour.

My main photograph shows the centre of the display. If you click it you'll find that it is much larger than usual so that you can enjoy the scene in all its glory. Look out for the two plate cameras on tripods with their bulb shutter releases, the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) tin of "Coronation Biscuits" (and the Huntley Palmer biscuits), the fact that the collar number of every policeman is the same (illegal!), the "Road Closed" sign with sticks in wellies, and the bearded curmudgeon (no relation!) sat in the cafe with his back to the whole affair. A nice touch, shown in one of my smaller photographs, is the old, pipe smoking man and his dog watching the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II on an early, black and white television in a wooden cabinet.

Other photographs from Chatteris show a florist's shop with a cardboard state coach in the window and a charity shop with a representation of a Buckingham Palace balcony featuring photo-masks of prominent members of the royal family. I've also included a picture framing business' window from Ely that includes a further variation on Keep Calm And Carry On.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 55mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Keep Calm And Carry On

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"Keep Calm and Carry On" was the exhortation on a poster produced  by the British government in 1939 at the outbreak of the second world war. Its purpose was to give direction and to strengthen the morale of a public who were fearful of the future and uncertain about what they were required to do in the new and perilous circumstances. The poster existed for many years after the war mainly in government archives. Then in 2000 it was re-discovered and reproduced commercially by a number of companies. It quickly achieved a popularity that grew stronger after the onset of the banking crisis and the subsequent economic recession. Its message seemed, once more, to chime with the oppressive times, though it  can be seen now as condescendingly paternalistic, the sort of phrase that our prime minister might use (then wish he hadn't) during the knockabout weekly question time. In recent years it has become common for the poster to be published with new, often humorous, words but in the same colours, still with a crown and that distinctive sans serif font.

Today's photograph shows an example of this as part of the display in a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee celebration shop window, its text modified to support the ongoing reign of the current monarch. These windows have started to appear in large numbers, accompanying the flags and bunting that are also featuring in our villages, towns and cities, collectively confounding my previously expressed thought that this Jubilee, compared with earlier ones, wasn't going to make much of a mark. On my travels, I've photographed quite a few window displays, and though I'm a republican and not a monarchist, I'll show a few as my oblique contribution to the event and for the historical record.

Today's example is one of the earliest I saw. It was in Ledbury, Herefordshire, and seems to be compiled by the shopkeeper from items that are normally for sale, though some are so kitsch they must surely be purpose-made Jubilee souvenirs. I did a self-portrait in one of the flag mirrors, though it must have been in another shop window because of the price tag and the reflected wall of the timber-framed Feathers Hotel in the background. I include it because it reminds me that I haven't posted a reflected self-portrait for a very long time.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shop windows

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You can tell a lot about a society from its shop windows. Some of what they reveal is very straightforward - the products, fashions, food, events etc that are peculiar to the place. But shop windows are also very good at revealing the desires, attitudes, aspirations and insecurities of a culture. For every window display that simply lays out a set of products with price labels attached there is another that is constructed in such a way as to invite a sought-after group of buyers into the premises, and at the same time say to another group that this isn't the place for them.

You know the sort of establishments I mean: designer clothes shops with minimalist displays of contorted models that do everything but show off the clothes for sale, ladies' hairdressers with photographs of women that look like they've been cropped with garden shears and had their hair smeared with a tub of lard, or restaurants with very spare looking interiors featuring lots of leather and wood, the signs and menus with acres of space and small sans serif headings usually featuring no capital letters. Then there are the places that almost disguise the nature of the service that they offer, presumably working on the premise that their prospective customers know what they sell without it being advertised to the world, and those who don't are not the customers they want.

I was thinking about this recently when I was in London. I passed a few "indeterminate" shop fronts, and plenty that made a virtue of being explicit. "MARKS & SPENCER SIMPLY FOOD" (in the reflection above) is unambiguous and I find it unobjectionable. Which is more than I can say for the nearby shop that is called EAT.. That's no typo, by the way: the shop really does have a full stop after its single word name. In a city with a multitude of eateries at all price points that name and its silly full stop would be enough to make this potential customer choose elsewhere to buy his food.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.1mm (57mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/15
ISO:800
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Outfitters to the gentry

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When I was a teenager I had an early evening job delivering boxes of groceries on a shop-bicycle just like the one in today's photograph. For a couple of years I pedalled my way around the hilly Yorkshire Dales market town where I lived, earning 12/6d a week, a wage that had risen to 15/- by the time I finished.

On a recent visit to Burnham Market, Norfolk, I kept falling over these bikes chained to shop fronts. They weren't there for use as the means of delivering goods to the locals, but for the qualities that they conferred on the business by association - they were there to say "traditional", "quality", "old-fashioned", "up-market", "exclusive". With my experience of such a bicycle used for its proper purpose they said "aching back", "problems with balance", and "rain trickling down my neck!" The display of these bikes as markers of a bygone age also made me feel a touch old!

Burnham Market is an interesting town with a selection of fine buildings and an attractive streetscape. Unfortunately, it appears that the middle classes are busily turning it into an enclave of the sort I call "a village in aspic." By that I mean a lot of the buildings have a veneer or additions that transforms them into the owners' picture of an overly pretty past that never existed - paint colours from the "Heritage" range, new-olde ironwork, rusticated pointing, unlikely porticos, render removed to reveal bricks and stone that were never meant to be seen, etc. I got the impression that, as with most of these places, it was full of shops selling expensive nick-nacks, pricey preserves, costly clobber, and the like, stuff designed to appeal to the well-heeled among both residents and visitors, though I'm sure there must have been "real" shops too. The slogan on the centre of the shop window above particularly caught my eye - "Outfitters To The Gentry". Was that original I wondered, a left-over from the days of deference? I guessed not, though if it was original why hasn't it been removed? Can there really be anyone left in England who is impressed by such a recommendation? Sadly, in all likelihood, there will be! The old enamel advertisement (it looks like it's just half of one) for distemper (!) that has been fixed below the window sits rather awkwardly with the pitch that the window slogan is attempting to make. Many English people would be able to deconstruct what the whole facade and the window display is trying to say, and could name the demographic group to whom it aims to appeal. You may wish me to do so, but I wouldn't waste my time on such a thing!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (40mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Surveying Easter

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Did you know that 42.379% of statistics are made up on the spot? Really! Including this one! And, although this old joke is a good one, I often wonder if it contains more than a little truth.

A couple of weeks ago I read the results of a survey that said, "only 22 per cent of people we quizzed in Liverpool were able to identify Easter as the day on which Christians celebrate the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ following death on the cross." The report went on to lament that many thought Easter was an opportunity to indulge in chocolate, and quoted representatives of Christian churches bemoaning the lack of focus on the teaching of Christianity in schools: "Teachers and curriculum supervisors should take serious note of these findings" one respondent fulminated.

Now, whilst I can appreciate that Easter bunnies, fluffy yellow chicks, chocolate eggs and bonnets do figure in many children's and adults' idea of Easter, I cannot believe that only just over one fifth of people know that the Christian belief in the resurrection of Christ is the reason for this celebration. Especially in Liverpool, for heaven's sake, a city noted for its religious character. The trouble is that today surveys are carried out for reasons other than finding out information. Promoting a brand, creating a headline, instigating a debate, attracting attention, are all reasons that seem to figure larger than finding anything approaching a truth. Surveys are used to confer a spurious authenticity and to mask the real intention. It's very easy to devise a survey that gives you a contentious result, or indeed, the finding that you want. In fact, I wouldn't find it very difficult to produce a survey demonstrating that most people do know the real reason for Easter - all I would need is the power to set the questions.

Today's photograph isn't an example of the barrel distortion of the Zuiko 11-22mm lens, which is very well controlled. It shows an Easter display in the fine bow window of a flower shop at Market Deeping, Lincolnshire. The window itself is probably late C18 or early C19, and lends itself to this sort of thing very well. This establishment always puts on a good display for Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween and Easter, and passing by the other day I took this snap of the bunnies, chicks, eggs and sunlit reflected buildings and sky on the other side of the street.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On