Lunaria annua

click photo to enlarge
I've never posted a photograph of honesty before, though I have posted one of "honestly"! That's rather surprising because dried flowers feature in our interior decor, down the years we've often grown and displayed honesty, and the seed pods of this fairly nondescript plant are unusual and make an interesting photographic subject.

Honesty is commonly seen in gardens and is also a frequently seen escapee in hedgerows, verges and wasteland. The Latin name, Lunaria annua, derives from the moon-like shape and colour of its silvery-white seed pods, particularly when the outer layer has been stripped to show them in their fragile, shiny beauty. Not all countries associate the plant with the moon however. In the United States they are sometimes called "silver dollars" or Chinese money, whilst in France it is "the pope's money" and in Dutch speaking areas "coins of Judas".

I took a straightforward photograph of the seed heads and stems in the blue and white ware vase that my wife had chosen for the arrangement. But, I thought I'd try a determinedly asymmetrical composition showing only part of the vase and seed pods too.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5D Mk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 84mm
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 0.4 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Nature, flowers and colours

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I remember reading, a long time ago, the assertion that colours in nature never clash. I have the feeling that it was a well-known artist who was being quoted. I've searched for the source of those words but, despite seeing the sentiment expressed by others, I've never managed to come up with any sort of attribution.

When I first read the statement I had my doubts about the truth of it. Surely, I thought, pink and yellow always look wrong together. I feel the same about purple and orange. And yet as time has gone by I've recognised that there is some truth in the saying; or, should I say, that it leans more towards being true than being false. The fact is that every now and then I test the statement by looking at unlikely colour flower combinations. What I find is that my preconceptions that colours inevitably clash wherever they occur are confounded more often than they are confirmed. I know that testing the truth of a statement by measuring it against the opinion of a single person who, like everyone else, has idiosyncratic views on colour combinations, isn't a terribly scientific way to come to a proper conclusion, but what's a man to do?

A while ago I took a photograph of poppies next to lavender that inadvertently supported the statement and overturned my dislike of purple next to orange, and in the accompanying post I discussed some of the issues I'm returning to today. The other day my wife asked me to photograph a vase of flowers that she had received as a birthday bouquet. This consisted of yellow sunflowers, pink gerbera and purple gladioli, a colour combination that perhaps spoke of the fact that the bunch was  chosen with the help of my two year old grand-daughter. Do the colours clash? Interestingly I find that they appear to do so in my photograph, but less so in life. Work that one out if you can?

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Black and white flowers?

click photo to enlarge
Of all the photographic subjects that might benefit from conversion to black and white flowers appear to be the least suitable. It's true that photographers find them an attractive subject because of the shapes of their blooms and leaves, their growth habits and locations, the way gardeners and arrangers plant and display them, etc. But it's surely the variety, strength and subtlety of their colours that is the main quality that draws us into pointing our cameras at them. Consequently, most of the photographs of flowers that we see are colour images and very few are monochrome.

And yet some of the secondary qualities beyond colour are reason enough to consider converting the right subject to black and white. In the past I've found the subtle gradations of grey that appear when a rose bloom is converted to black and white to be very appealing.

Today's photograph is of a flower that I wouldn't have thought of converting to black and white until I had processed the colour shot and was sitting in front of my computer reflecting on the finished image. I'd chosen my usual black background for the yellow flowers, green leaves and clear glass vase and that gave it a very strong silhouette. It was the overall compositional shape - a variant of Hogarth's serpentine "line of beauty" - that made me have a look at the shot in black and white. The conversion made the silhouette (reverse silhouette I suppose) stronger, and the yellow blooms retained their impact as greys and white. The final image, with a little judicious dodging of the individual flowers stands as a photograph every bit as strongly as the colour version but offers something different to the viewer. Of course, placing colour  and black and white versions of the same shot side by side tends to make the viewer choose which they prefer. However,the question about colour and black and white need not be one of "either" and "or" but can simply be about "also"!

Incidentally, the flower in question is one that I always call Kerria but I looked up the Royal Horticultural Society's "preferred common name" and found it to be Japanese Rose. That doesn't seem to me a particularly descriptive name because, though the plant is biologically part of the Rosaceae family, it has none of the most commonly understood characteristics of the rose. I'd have chosen one of the other charming and traditional English names that have been bestowed on the plant down the years - probably "Bachelor's Buttons"!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 0.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Fading tulips

click photo to enlarge
There is a great temptation in photography to shoot beautiful subjects when they are at their most appealing. Landscapes, women, babies, cars, sunsets, you name the subject and you'll find  numerous photographs showing them at their best. The light, the sky, the pose, the backdrop, every detail will be in place to show the subject off off to dazzling effect.

It's even more so with flowers. In fact, though it's reasonably easy to find, say, good landscapes where the weather is grim and conventional beauty has been discarded in favour of the stern beauty of nature in the raw, just try and find a flower photograph with blooms past their best and I guarantee you'll struggle.

Painters have long known the different kind of beauty that can be seen in fading flowers, a muted attractiveness that is hinted at or remembered rather than displayed openly before your eyes. It was this effect that I sought when I photographed the tulips shown in today's photograph. But, it hasn't quite worked out as I wanted. Why? Well, if you are unfamiliar with what tulips look like at the peak of their perfection you might think that the flowers in this blue glass vase are just rather fine blooms that natural spread their petals in this rather attractive way. The fact the flowers are fading, are past their best, are naturally shedding their petals and are soon to be just stems isn't necessarily obvious, and even if it is, there remains a beauty that isn't particularly tinged with a feeling of imminent demise: there is still plenty of deep colour in the petals and little sense of the faded beauty that I sought to capture. So, I've kept the flowers and I'll try again when their petals develop brown edges and their decline looks a bit more terminal!

Addendum:Here are the same tulips two days later (Fading Tulips 2), the petals rather more wrinkled and curled,the colours more muted, a hint of brownness about them, but still not everything I envisaged. Having reflected further on the matter I've concluded that I chose the wrong colour tulips for this exercise. It would have been much better to use dark red or dark purple. In fact, any colour with less brilliance than yellow would have suited my purposes. A lesson learned. Perhaps next time...

Addendum 2:
A final shot (Fading Tulips 3), three days after the first one, and one day after the second. Still not quite there. It's definitely the basic colours of the tulip that's wrong for the photograph I'm seeking.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/4 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Buried column capitals

click photo to enlarge

What did the medieval builder do when the local population and congregation increased beyond the size that a small nave and chancel church could accommodate? Simple, he added an aisle. This was usually on the north side of the building because fewer burials were made there than on the sunny south side. How do you go about adding an aisle to a stone building? Well, you support the existing roof then punch holes in the external wall. You make these holes into an arcade of arches supported on columns so that the upper part of the old wall is secure. Then you build a new external wall with windows beyond the arcade, top it with a lean-to roof and finish off the interior. In a few short years you've added an aisle and increased the church's accommodation.

But what if the need arises to reduce the size of the church because the population declines due to, for example, the Black Death, rural depopulation, or the high cost of maintaining the old structure? Well, then you get rid of an aisle. You fill the arcade arches with stonework, thicken what now becomes the exterior wall, remove the lean-to roof and knock down the old external wall of the aisle. You can re-use the windows by placing them in the walling that fills the arcades (see small photograph).

Of course, you have to make these walls thick otherwise the old column capitals may still be visible. And even if they're not, a Victorian antiquarian may well reveal them and turn them into a feature demonstrating the longevity and building history of the church. Oh, and you might find that a future parishioner makes use of the crudely carved thirteenth century capital as a charming place to position a small vase of flowers to beautify that part of the nave. An example of this is the subject of today's photograph taken in St Andrew at Donington-on-Bain, Lincolnshire.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 27mm
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wilted tulips and vanitas

click photo to enlarge

In a post the other day I lamented the attitude of some towards flower photography, and suggested that painters had long recognised what many photographers have never grasped: that flowers can be a great vehicle for grappling with the basic elements of composition, representation and symbolism - colour, light and shade, tone, line, mood, etc.

Masters of this approach to flower painting (and to the still-life in general) were the artists of the Dutch and Flemish schools. In the last quarter of the sixteenth century the still-life attained the status of a recognised genre in the Netherlands, and in the subsequent two centuries, through painters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert (1573-1621), Hans Bollongier, and Rachel Ruysch (1664-1750)  its popularity spread throughout this region of Northern Europe.

One particular branch of Dutch and Flemish flower painting were the works known as vanitas pictures. Their purpose was to remind the viewer of the meaninglessness and impermanence of earthly life, and the certainty of decay and death. A vanitas painting might include a variety of flowers that were past their best, decaying, curling and dropping petals, perhaps some bitter fruit such as lemons, a few transitory butterflies, and to make the point more forcibly, a human or animal skull. It has been suggested that these works served as a coded substitute for Protestants who rejected the paintings and iconography inspired by the Roman Catholic church. Regardless of their true purpose they are works that invite the viewer's eye to linger on them, to search out the details, and to think about the artist's intention in assembling the disparate parts.

My photograph of a vase of tulips that are past their best, green leaves and stems yellowing, blooms opening, distorted and dropping petals, is a poor substitue for one of the paintings discussed above. But perhaps it does show what painters have long known - that flowers offer interest and character not only in the fullness of their beauty, but also as they deteriorate, discolour and decay.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 3.2 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

A composition and bad manners

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This morning I went to answer the phone, and as I did I looked at the LCD display to see the caller's number. There wasn't one. Instead it showed the word WITHELD. I don't know about you, but I am seriously tempted to ignore any phone call where the caller does not allow their number to be shown. Why? Well, I consider it to be downright rude. With any phone call we take it on trust that the person who speaks is who they say they are, and that they are being honest. I am MUCH more likely to believe this to be so if they are not hiding their number from me. The fact is, I don't conceal my number when I phone someone, so I don't expect others to conceal their number from me. That sort of openness, give and take, call it what you will, is just good manners. There will be reasons why companies do this sort of thing, all of them in the interests of themselves rather than the customer. But there will also be those who do it because they want a dialogue only on their terms, with no opportunity for the customer, once they have collected their thoughts, to get back to them. As I say, witholding your phone number is bad manners.

In my experience this has spread from telephone advertising into more reputable companies, and is being extended into departments of government. This is unfortunate because, were I to follow my inclination and refuse to speak to anyone phoning me from a "withheld" number, I'd be cutting off my nose to spite my face. Yet, how else am I to get the message across that this practice is unacceptable.

I mention this in the accompanying text to a photograph of a vase of flowers in a sunlit room with deep shadows because I was processing this image around the time I took the call. It's one of my wife's quick and effective arrangements in our living room. As we were talking on the sofa we both saw the possibility of a photograph in the composition. I had thought to convert it to black and white, but then I tended to lose the yellow of the flowers, and it is this, alongside the very sepia-like colours elsewhere in the shot, that make it for me.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 55mm (110mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Chrysanthemums

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Intermittent rain stopped play today - if wielding a sledge hammer and a crow bar to break up a sheet of concrete can be characterised as such. However, it wasn't sufficiently wet that I couldn't finish the final piece, and move on to marking out the replacement hard area and the adjoining beds for shrubs and flowers. Six mornings of hard labour combined with carting away the debris has broken the back of the work. Fortunately my back hasn't quite broken and I survive intact and ready for the next steps in our landscaping project.

Anyway, by way of a change I decided to have a go at photographing some chrysanthemums that are sitting in a vase on a table in our living room. I usually move flowers around to photograph them, often placing them on a different surface, in strongly directional natural light, and putting a "photographic" background behind them - in my case it's usually a large sheet of card or vinyl. However, this time I thought I'd leave them in situ since the colours seemed to be working well together.

The composition is my usual one - the vase of flowers just off centre with a couple of blooms on the surface nearby, an old painters' trick that adds a little asymmetry and visual interest. One day I mean to really work at a composition involving a vase of flowers, and add a collection of interesting objects to the shot in the manner of the seventeenth century Dutch painters. But, for now, my work is focused elsewhere, so domestic shots and fairly basic still-life images are likely to dominate the blog for the next week or two.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

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

Faded flowers and Charles Rennie Mackintosh

click photo to enlarge
The reputation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) has never been higher than in recent years. It's difficult to go into a bookshop, a "craft" store, or a jewellers without coming across his name. Books, brooches, posters, mugs, picture frames - it seems that his Art Nouveau designs can adorn just about anything. And yet, this decorative work, as exemplified by the stencil patterns he used in the Willow Tea Rooms, Glasgow, is only a small part of his ouvre.

Mackintosh studied at the Glasgow School of Art, and in the 1890s he painted, did graphic work and metalwork that showed Art Nouveau influences he'd probably picked up from reading The Studio, a publication which began in 1893. However, his name really came to prominence when he won the competition to design a new building for the Glasgow School of Art. His was a thoroughly modern conception that was influenced by Voysey and Scottish baronial architecture. It mixed the sharply rectilinear with the fluid lines of Art Nouveau, and deeply influenced continental, particularly Austrian, architects. Mackintosh went on to design other fine buildings and furniture. However, he was a man who alienated customers and fellow architects alike, and in 1913 he left his Glasgow practice and moved to Walberswick in Suffolk, where he concentrated on his paintings. During his time as an architect he had painted flowers, and in Suffolk he threw himself into this work, producing wonderful images of, principally, wild flowers in a combination of pencil and watercolour. He later went to live in Mediterranean France, and in the final years of his life painted landscapes and cut flowers in vases.

This latter work came to mind a few days ago when I was in a Leicestershire church. On the octagonal font cover, lit by strong light from a nearby window, was a vase of hydrangea flowers. The person who had placed them there had carefully selected a variety of coloured blooms - pink, blue, purple and white. But, the colours were fading fast as the flowers died. Their slow decline from bright, cheeriness to a pale memory of what had been, reminded me of the poignant beauty I once saw in a Mackintosh watercolour of 1905 that depicted faded roses. With that inspiration in mind, I took this photograph.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 6.3mm (30mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.2
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blue with yellow

click photo to enlarge
I've been thinking for a while of extending my series of still life flower photographs by using a couple of our "blue and white ware" vases. These aren't, I hasten to say, the classical Chinese pottery, but nineteenth or twentieth century copies, unmarked, probably made in Britain, but possibly imported from a Far Eastern manufactory.

When you decide to use a basically blue vase, the question arises of what colour flowers to place in it. The complementary of blue is orange, but that pairing always seems a touch lurid to me, unless the shades are carefully selected. I do like to see dark blue with a rich cream, though if it veers towards the white it tends to look a bit nautical. Dusky pink can look well with dark blue, and some greens please me when paired with it too, though I recognise that's not a combination that appeals to everyone. In the end I went for yellow, mainly because the Heliopsis in the garden are producing blooms in abundance, but also because it makes a good pairing with blue.

On this occasion I decided go for an all white background, but try as I might, I couldn't produce anything that I liked. The arrangement seemed washed out, with no "bite". I added a red/pink carnation or two thinking to give it a lift, but it just looked gaudy. So, I went back to my tried and tested black background and it all came together immediately. The outlines of the vases were just as clear as with a white background, but, more imporantly, the patterns in the white of the vases stood out: against the white background they had been outshone. The yellow of the flowers was also richer against black, and the green looked lighter. So here it is. I've lost count of how many of these I've done now, but, if you like this sort of thing, I can say I think I've got a couple more of them in me. If you're not keen on them - ah, well!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/5
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Lilies and Euphorbia

click photo to enlarge
"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:
they toil not, neither do they spin.
Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
Matthew 6: 28-69

There are plenty of people who would agree with this verse from Matthew's Gospel, and place the lilies among the most beautiful of flowers, but I'm not one of them. There are legions of flowers that I would place before the lily - the dog daisy, the cranesbill, honeysuckle and the poppy to name but four. Mind you, I can't see what all the fuss is over orchids either, so perhaps my taste in flowers isn't particularly mainstream and I'm very much out of step in this area.

One of the pleasures of a garden is the cut flowers that it can provide for much of the year. Spring, summer and autumn are the times of plenty, but even winter can offer a few flowers, berries and interesting leaves. And, if you are so minded, you can dry flowers, such as michaelmas daisies and honesty, for winter display.

Today's photograph is another in my series of still life photographs involving a vase of flowers. Regular readers will remember the previous one, with its link to earlier examples. Once again this is a collection put together by my wife and purloined by me. It's a variation on my usual theme, but with a slightly different background colour.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/4
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Still life with aphorisms

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If I wasn't interested in quotations it is unlikely that I'd have come across Malcolm de Chazal (1902-1981), but I did just that the other day, and I haven't yet decided whether he was a charlatan or an interesting oddity. A Frenchman who spent most of his life working in Mauritius as an agronomist and civil servant, he is best known for his several volumes of numbered thoughts and ideas, in particular Pensees and Sens-Plastique, which he began publishing in 1940. At George Braques' prompting he took up painting in the 1950s.

The quotation that brought de Chazal to my notice has a bearing on today's photograph: "The flower in the vase smiles, but no longer laughs." It reminds me of a cod-Confucian saying that might have been slipped into a bad* 1970s Kung-Fu movie. In fact, a lot of his "aphorisms" have that quality: try these - "accidents happen only when roads change their minds", "the rock needs no burial when it dies", "our expression and our words never coincide, which is why the animals don't understand us." But then he comes up with a few that, while still having that pseudo-mystical feel, also have a quality that by-passes our conscious mind and seems to stir something deeper: for example - "art is nature speeded up and God slowed down", or how about, "monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey." But perhaps I'm trying too hard to find something in the writer's words that just isn't there! Look him up, read what he has to say, and make up your own mind.

Today's image is one of an ongoing series of still life photographs that borrow their subject and composition from painting. This one is an arrangement that my wife assembled from our garden and put on a chest in the hall. The combination of colours, particularly the red/pinks of the flowers with the greens of the leaves and vase, appealed to me, so I grabbed it and photographed it against a very dark background in strongly directional natural light to show off the blooms. The final image has had the contrast increased to emphasise the flowers further.

Here are links to other photographs in this series - 1, 2, 3, 4

* Afterthought: isn't the phrase "a good Kung Fu movie" an oxymoron?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/2
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Harvest festival flowers

click photo to enlarge

The Harvest Festival is a tradition that continues in most English primary (age 5-11) schools. It is essentially a church service redrawn for the school setting. In a typical Harvest Festival children present songs, poems, drama, readings and prayers on the theme of giving thanks for the harvest, and also on the associated season of autumn. Many schools ask parents to donate packaged and fresh food that is arranged as a display during the service. This food is then either collected by charities for distribution to those in need, given to elderly people living in the vicinity of the school, or distributed in some other way. It is a moment in the year when pupils, staff and parents pause to give thanks for all that they have, and share some of it with others.

In some ways this is quite anachronistic because the harvest, except for those in rural schools, is now quite a remote experience for most children. Churches carry on the tradition, and every year at this time decorate the nave, chancel, aisles, font and pulpit with flowers, wheat, berries, and collections of food for distribution. It is seen as an essential part of the church's annual cycle of worship and thanksgiving. In these days of failing banks and faltering economies brought on by "I want more" and "I want it now" attitudes, the theme of gratitude for what we have that pervades the Harvest Festival is a refreshing corrective to this modern mindset.

I noticed this vase of flowers and scattered rose hips on a stone bench in the porch of St Peter & St Paul, Osbournby, Lincolnshire, as I entered the church. The October sun was piercing the interior through the doorway and side windows, the shafts of light illuminating a dark corner, that the golden sunflowers and blue vase made even brighter. Someone had created this colourful arrangement as their contribution to the harvest decoration of the church, and it made a fine opening statement for the display that was inside.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Another vase of flowers

click photo to enlarge

Yes, another vase of flowers! Why? Well, this simple subject allows you to play with the essential elements of photography in the comfort of your own home! Composition, colour, tone, light, line, texture - it's all there in a vase of flowers. Moreover it combines the natural with the man-made, and allows the photographer to be part of a centuries-old artistic tradition.

When I think of the still-life painters of vases of flowers that I've admired over the years: people like Chardin, Odilon Redon, Mackintosh, Dutch-School masters like Van Husum, Kalf, Van Beyeren and de Heem, and greats of the order of Cezanne, I realise that I'm still at the rudimentary stage of still life creation. In recent months I've tried subtly elegant, minimalist where it's all about the colour, and traditional (including fruit). Today I'm trying "straggly with deep shadows!" And a restricted, somewhat subdued colour palette!

If you aren't keen on this type of photography then I have bad news for you. I'll be doing more of it in the coming months!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f16
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off