Dogs and me

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I've said elsewhere in this blog that I'm not a "doggy person". I have no problem with dogs, they seem to like me, I don't mind them, and I don't have any irrational fear or dislike of them. I grew up with dogs and always had at the back of my mind that one day I'd have one. But I can't see that happening. They would require me to change the way I now live and I'm not prepared to give that up for a pet. I value spontaneity, the ability to drop everything and pursue a fancy of the moment. I don't especially like planning ahead - I did too much of that in my working life - and dogs require planning. They also prevent you from entering too many buildings where dogs are not allowed.

However, the photographer in me is grateful to those who do have dogs, who exercise them, and in so doing regularly provide me with a human element or an indication of scale in my photographic compositions. I've lost count of the landscapes that I've shot where I deliberately include a dog walker. So, though dogs are not for me, I value them nonetheless.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 112mm (168mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:400
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Axes and wood

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I'm not, in general, someone who likes familiar slang, particularly that which applies to a line of work, an interest or a hobby. Hearing someone describe a BMW as a "Beamer" irritates me in much the same way as hearing the likes of Jamie Oliver use the terms "slosh" (for pour) or "chuck" for sprinkle does. I've never liked the way some enthusiast photographers refer to lenses as "glass" (surely they are so much more than that). And as for rock musicians calling an electric guitar an "axe": well, that irks me just as much as the modern habit of calling a university a "uni". All these examples seem, to my mind to conflate a certain laziness with an overly chummy and "insider" familiarity that is often designed, in some small way, to erect fences to outsiders.

It was the term "axe", meaning an electric guitar that came to mind when I came to write this piece about a new guitar that I recently bought. I presume that "axe" derives from the shape of the guitar, or perhaps the sharp sound - who knows or cares? However, since it was the wood of this particular guitar that I was going to describe "axe" seemed to have some sort of connection. Many musical instruments have interesting and beautiful shapes that derive, in the main from the way they work - form really does, usually, follow function. However, many are enhanced during construction by the use of wood, application of paint, inlays and so on, and none more so than electric guitars. Moreover, though the sound is what you most want from such an instrument, appearance is also a factor when you come to buy one.

The example in today's photograph doesn't have the usual paint job, sunburst staining or varnished finish. Instead it has a burred (burled in US-English) poplar top that I find unusual and attractive. This is mounted on mahogany and the instrument is completed with a maple neck and a rosewood fingerboard. With a veritable forest of timber having fallen under the axe to produce it I must make sure I keep it a long time and get the most from it

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5D Mk2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/13 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off.

Thinking about bluebell woods

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I grew up in the Yorkshire Dales, an area where bluebell woods are relatively easy to find. I lived for a while in a part of East Yorkshire where such places were rather more distant. During my time in Lancashire they weren't too difficult to locate. But, when I moved to the Fens I soon discovered that a bluebell wood has to be actively sought out. But no more!

One of our winter activities was to convert an area of gravel garden to meadow and join it up with an area of lawn that would also become part of the same meadow. This more natural grassland with its wild flowers already had an apple tree and a plum tree, and in late winter we planted more fruit trees. The result of all our work is that several trees now stand in an area of long or longish grass that we, rather grandly, call our meadow and orchard. Dog daisies and poppies are growing up through the grass and will flower in June. Other flowers have been sown and we are hoping to see cornflowers and much more as the months pass. However, I'd forgotten about the number of bluebells that grew under the apple tree, and during the past couple of weeks they have made an appearance. I think there are more than last year but that's often the way with these bulbs, especially if they've been disturbed by digging.

It's a little fanciful to describe what we have as a bluebell wood, but it has some of the elements of one. Consequently I mounted my 100mm macro lens on the camera and took a few shots of the flowers, grass and tree trunks in the deepening shade of the early evening sunlight. I almost felt transported back to those scenes of my youth.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 0.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Keisby Wood's dark past

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Keisby Wood near Folkingham, Lincolnshire, is not all it seems. On the face of it this is a typical area of lowland woodland, somewhat neglected but with evidence of recent felling and thinning by the Forestry Commission. However, the visitor who walks the footpaths among the trees cannot help but notice concrete paths, sections of brick wall disappearing beneath the ivy and, every now and then, shattered concrete buildings, slabs resting on each other, broken edges facing skyward and all succumbing to a covering of leaf mould and moss. Today's photograph shows one such structure that is but a few years away from disappearing entirely under vegetation at which point it will have every appearance of a natural outcrop of rock.

What are these old buildings? The utilitarian nature of the shapes and materials together with the large areas of concrete covering the neighbouring fields did rather give the game away, but only after a little research when we got home was all revealed. They are relics of the second world war and later, all that remains of the airfield known as RAF Folkingham. This base became operational in 1940 and was used by the RAF and, later, by the United States Army Air Forces. Paratroops and manned gliders towed by transport aircraft flew from the base during the invasion of Europe and for later supporting actions.

After the war flying ceased and in 1947 the base was closed. BRM motors used the extensive runways for racing car testing. However, the Cold War saw a further military use for the site. In 1959 three Thor mobile Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) were located there with an RAF unit. These nuclear missiles, each capable of destroying a large city and all its inhabitants, were ready for firing with 15 minutes notice and remained in position until 1963. The base closed when the IRBMs were replaced by the deployment of  Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) on the United States mainland and, in the UK, the RAF's V-Bomber force of Valiant, Victor and Vulcan aircraft equipped with the Blue Steel stand-off nuclear missile. Today the airfield is used for the storage of old agricultural vehicles, lorries etc.

As we walked through the woodland great tits and chaffinches flew on ahead of us. All was calm, quiet and peaceful. We were oblivious of the aircraft that flew from here seventy years ago and the missiles that sat on their launch vehicles, thankfully never needing to be fired. On our next visit we'll look a little more closely and view the sylvan scene in a rather different light.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f8
 Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO: 500
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Moribund buildings

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During my many years working in education I was involved with a few building extensions. The process of design generally involved educational managers of one kind or another (including me) discussing the brief with the architect. Subsequently proposals would be presented for discussion and amendment, and after these had been batted back and forth a few times, the final form of the building would be agreed. In the fullness of time the extension would be built, but during construction further changes would be agreed or imposed, often for cost reasons. This was a fairly reasonable and rational way of extending an existing educational building. The aim was to provide something that would effectively and efficiently meet the current needs of the users, and, very importantly, be sufficiently flexible to accommodate future requirements.

However, much building in the past, and still sometimes today, didn't and doesn't involve consultations of this sort. Buildings as disparate as schools, town halls, railway stations, factories, houses, churches and art galleries were built based solely on the advice of an architect, the orders of the provider of the funds, or the whim of an influential individual. Such an approach sometimes resulted in a wonderful building that received the approbation of contemporaries and future generations because individual vision or genius was given free rein, and the sometimes stultifying hand of "design by committee" was avoided. But, more often I think, it resulted buildings that met the specific needs of a specific time, that didn't lend themselves to adaptation to meet future needs. Such buildings are commonplace, often neglected, frequently in terminal decline as they are passed from one temporary use to another.

This derelict farm building at Haceby, Lincolnshire, prompted these thoughts. What was its original purpose? It's small but not cheaply built, with stone walls and a good tile roof. It was obviously wanted and valued by whoever commissioned it, perhaps a hundred or more years ago. But today, despite being in a small wood next to a road, it is of no use, except as a slightly melancholic subject for this passing photographer. Saplings, ivy and moss are colonising it. The doors seem to be long gone. It is a dying building, but one that could perhaps be resuscitated. Whether it will or not depends on it finding a contemporary purpose that the builders probably never foresaw.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 30mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25 sec
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Autumn at Woodhall Spa

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On a recent overcast day, we took a six or seven mile stroll through some woods and lanes in Lincolnshire, a county that is, in the popular consciousness, a treeless place. Our starting point was the village of Woodhall Spa, a place whose very name suggests that it may be a wooded spot. Located between the chalk and the limestone, Woodhall Spa features heather and bracken, many tree types including silver birch, beech and oak, and has soil that can support the widespread rhododendrons that the Victorians and Edwardians planted. Mature woodland adjoins and penetrates the large village and mature trees can be seen in many gardens. For anyone who doesn't know Woodhall Spa the late John Betjeman called it "that half-timbered Bournemouth-like settlement", a description that sums up the look and feel of the place quite well.

The English National Golf Centre and its courses are found here. Apparently - and I'm no golfer so I can't attest to this - the Hotchkin Course is a classic British heathland course and was voted "25th best course in the world" by Golf World Magazine. What I do know is that a public footpath winds through the courses and adjacent woodlands and the semi-wild landscape makes quite a nice start to a ramble from the village centre. On our walk the colours of the autumn leaves were just starting to decline in intensity but were still very attractive, and I managed a few shots as we followed a track through a tunnel of trees. In the one above my photographic assistant - aka my wife - was persuaded to be the focal point in the "tunnel".

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 183mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 1250
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Beech woods

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Beech is a woodland tree. It is less frequently found as a single specimen in a hedgerow or growing alone somewhere. However, in some places it can be seen as a landmark tree signalling a crossroads or a boundary. On the Lincolnshire Wolds it was used to line some of the old drove roads, and in Yorkshire it is often planted around hill farms. When beech grows in a close-canopy wood it is tall, up to 140 feet, with trunks that are relatively free from branches. Where single specimen trees do grow, however, they are shorter with very large crowns - the so-called "deer park beech."

The examples in today's photograph near Stackhouse, North Yorkshire, are part of a small wooded area on steeply sloping pasture with outcropping limestone. The trees' canopy has kept the ground damp allowing moss to grow over the grey stone, something that doesn't happen higher up the slope where the only shade comes from bracken and the occasional rowan. This woodland must have been planted here to make use of an otherwise quite unproductive area. Beech can manage quite well on thin, rocky soil, as this photograph that I took in Lancashire shows. The hamlet of Stackhouse would find these trees a good source of fuel, but also useful for furniture, tool handles and other strong wooden articles. In medieval times oak and beech were the main trees involved in the system known as pannage. This was the right to pasture mainly pigs in woodland so that they could eat the acorns and beech mast. In a thinly wooded area such as this there would be slim pickings for any foraging swine, but in the bigger, denser woods of, say, the Weald, it would be very worthwhile.

I have a fondness for beech trees, and as well as the Lancashire example noted above I've photographed this clump and this beech wood edge in autumn.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 250
Exposure Compensation:  -1.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The "Leafing Through History" sculpture

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I'm a fan of public sculpture. In fact, I am so in favour of it that I'd rather see mediocre public sculpture than none at all. At its best a good piece interests, challenges, excites and intrigues. It adds something positive to its location. At its worst it is an eyesore, a feature that degrades the place where it stands. This much I've said elsewhere in the blog. I've also added that street furniture - seating, railings, etc - that try to combine utility and the aesthetic qualities of sculpture rarely work. What I haven't articulated previously, however, is my general dislike of modern, public wood sculpture. This is often "environmentally" themed, featuring wild animals, birds, and plants, and frequently has a "rustic" finish. I've seen an example that combines the above with the function of a path-side seat; one that was uncomfortable at the best of times, and unusable when damp (i.e. for much of the year).

Consequently, when I come across a good example of the genre I often take a photograph of it. That happened during my recent visit to Pershore in Worcestershire. Today's photographs show the two sides of a sculpture of part of the trunk of a beech tree next to Pershore Abbey (enlarge the smaller of these two recent images to see the context). It is called, "Leafing Through History", and was carved in 2007 by Tom Harvey. This much I know from the accompanying plaque. It appears to represent the act of reading about the past, or is about the past itself, and has wildlife - a fox, butterflies, flowers - a tree, and the sun and moon as a backdrop to the figures. The piece is unusual, in my experience, by being carved from the upper part of a tree trunk that is still anchored in the ground. More than that though, the under-cutting is much deeper than is usually the case these days, and that gives much deeper shadows and better formed subjects. And the composition is more inventive: too often the sculpture retains the "lumpiness" of the original piece of wood and is more in the nature of a relief than a sculpture. That is certainly not the case here. Of the two faces I admire the complex composition, but prefer the single hooded figure. Is it meant to represent one of the monks of the adjacent abbey? Is it Robin Hood having a literary break from robbing the rich and giving to the poor? I don't know. But, I do like the way the figure seems to grow, organically, out of the tree, and that was what I aimed to capture in my photograph.

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 33mm (66mm/35mm equiv.) (25mm (50mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/00 (1/250)
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 (-0.3) EV
Image Stabilisation: On