Yellow, red and blue doors

click photo to enlarge
I think of the three colours, red, yellow and blue as the long-recognised primary colours associated with, not only painting and design, but also children's toys. Sometimes, however, they can be the perfect threesome to enliven a narrow, shadow-filled road in a big city. I photographed these three colourful doors on an interesting modern terrace, during a walk near the River Thames in Greenwich, London.

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (60mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bright sparks and electric fences

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Is it just me that thinks its more than a little strange to protect people from the dangers of electricity by threatening to electrocute them? That's what National Grid does by erecting electric fences round their sub-stations to prevent people entering them and subjecting themselves to the danger of electric shock. I wonder which bright spark thought up that one!?

I was pondering this incongruity recently as I stood outside a Fenland sub-station with its enclosing spear-tipped palisade fence and inner electric fence, searching for a few semi-abstract photographs. I've gleaned a couple from this place before and I've learnt, over the years, that a location doesn't give up all its potential images at the first, second or even third visit. Locations change with the weather, time of day and season. People change too, with mood, recent experience, camera and focal length availability, and many other factors. These can combine and lead to a realisation that a photograph exists where before there appeared to be none. The semi-abstract nature of today's composition appealed to me. The lines of wire, circular tighteners, upright steel support and the yellow plastic (is it a warning to those inside?) against the flawless blue sky made a composition that I hadn't noticed on previous visits. The simple, subtle  and delicate arrangement must have previously been lost to my sight among all the pylons, transformers, insulators and the like.

The observant among you may have noticed that this photograph was taken with a camera that hasn't featured in this blog before. More about that soon.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 75mm (112mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Perennial rudbeckia

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After the last two posts I feel the need for colour, and what can be more colourful than the bright yellow petals of perennial rudbeckia against the deep blue of an early autumn sky? In our garden we have a few clumps of these striking and long-lasting flowers. They are a variety of coneflower, one of four genera (including Echinacea) of the Asteraceae family, and are especially useful in bringing strong, bright colour to the garden after the flowers of high summer have faded.

My usual view of these blooms is against the leafy backdrop of the borders in which they reside. So, their yellow sits alongside green. However, for this photograph I made the conscious decision to get down low with the camera - in fact I held it at arms length inside the clump - and photograph upwards to place their colour and the shape of the flower heads against the plain blue of the sky. In the RGB colour model wheel blue and yellow are opposite each other. This makes them complementary colours. A feature of such pairs is that when they are placed next to one another the effect is to increase each colour's visual intensity. As the evenings begin to draw in and the first misty mornings remind us that summer is waning, photographing vibrant colours of this sort is my way of hanging on to something of the departing warmth and sun.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blue and yellow

click photo to enlarge
Many years ago, when I was studying the history of art, I came across the technique known as sgraffito. When used in wall decoration this involves applying two contrasting layers of plaster to the surface and then scratching through the top to reveal the lower. The word derives from the Italian for "scratch" which in turn is linked to the Greek for "write". It is, of course, also connected with the word "graffito" (singular) and the more commonly used (and seen!) plural, "graffiti".

As I've said elsewhere in this blog, in general I'm against graffiti because it is most usually found in the form of "tags" on surfaces where it has no right to be, degrading the appearance of the locality. Even when it has some artistic merit, if it is on someone's property against their wishes or without their permission, I'm against it. However, there's little to object to when graffiti is on a surfaces specifically provided to receive it, or where permission has been granted.

I came upon the graffiti in today's photograph recently and decided that it too was unobjectionable. The marks had been made by fingers in the patina of dust and dirt on the metal surface of a water-borne crane. The state of the boat on which the crane was mounted was more objectionable than the graffiti, which isn't permanent and of little merit, being merely the names and scrawl of passing youths. What made me think the subject worthy of a photograph was the yellow steps and hand rail (with their shadows) against the blue paint and smudges of writing. Blue and yellow are near complementaries - the yellow would have to tip more towards orange for them to be truly complementary. This is a colour pairing that sometimes appeals to me very strongly, and at other times I find quite garish. On this crane the yellow must be for visibility reasons and I quite like it. The irregular graffiti adds an undisciplined counterpoint to the colours and regularity of the metal, and it's probably this that caused me to take my shot.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yellow - again

click photo to enlarge
The other day I wrote about my liking for the sight of oilseed rape fields in the spring, and noted that many didn't share my view. I ascribed this to the transformation they have brought about in our very green landscape. On reflection, however, it occurs to me that another factor may be at work, namely the relative unpopularity of the colour yellow.

When people are asked to describe this colour they invariably choose words that have positive connotations: happy, warm, bright, etc. Yet, yellow is a colour whose popularity declines with age, to the extent that it usually has only black, brown, grey, and orange placed below it. There are deep-seated, often cultural reasons why this is so, and these may be factors that weigh more heavily with those who dislike both the colour and the increasing acreage of yellow oil-seed rape. On the other hand such people may all be hay-fever and asthma sufferers who resent the discomfort that the pollen brings each spring!

Today's photograph of the crop was taken into the sun - contre jour, as it is sometimes called. The effect that this kind of light has on clouds can be quite attractive, and I like it here. Of course, the almost-complementary of the blue sky also enhances the yellow of the flowers. I tried to make something of a composition with this shot and moved my position so that the line of the track through the yellow entered the frame near the right corner and led the eye across the scene, first to the lone, leafless tree, then on to the horizon.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yellow

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It struck me as somewhat odd that the Conservative Party's slogan in the recent election campaign was "Vote for Change!" Isn't conservatism about resisting change, about lamenting the disappearance of the "good old days" when the Great in Great Britain was an adjective as well as a noun, the streets were a safe place to park your Bentley, and the poor tugged their forelocks and raised their flat caps to their Tory-voting betters?

That imagined past, of course, was a time when oilseed rape wasn't the feature of the English landscape that it is today. There are many - mainly conservatives with a small "c" - who deplore the yellowing of England's "green and pleasant land" and see the crop as an alien intruder. However, anyone who thinks that Britain's landscape always looked as it did fifty or even a hundred years ago - the usual time frame when gazing fondly backwards - doesn't appreciate that our farmland is constantly evolving. In the past two hundred years Lincolnshire has increased its arable acreage and reduced its pasture: animals are much less in evidence than formerly. Fields have, on the whole, increased in size, and thousands of miles of hedges have disappeared, with those that remain being much more manicured than previously. Farms have increased in size too, so fewer farmsteads are to be seen. Some crops - hemp, woad, flax for example - have either disappeared or feature in greatly reduced acreages. On the Fens the growing of flowers commercially is a relatively recent phenomenon, as is the use of plastic on vegetables to hastening growth in spring. A farmer of seventy five years ago, surveying Lincolnshire's landscape today would notice enormous changes. But, if he were sent back seventy five years before his time he would see similarly great differences.

I like to see the yellow fields that are currently in full bloom. I find them uplifting in the same way that I do a field of poppies. Moreover, as a photographer I find their bright glow extends the palette that I have to work with. In a couple of weeks the oilseed rape will have faded to green, but while the fields are here in their day-glo brightness I'm taking advantage of them. I hope you like yellow! Today's shot is a detail of a few oilseed fields in a gently rolling piece of countryside where they abut hedges and land that is given over to winter wheat. I liked the contribution that the tracks through the crop made to this image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Here comes the sun

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The Beatles' Abbey Road album is a particular favourite of mine. Just about every song is a masterpiece, from the driving blues/rock of I Want You (She's So Heavy), to the chug of Come Together and the 1950s-inspired swoop of Oh Darling. For me the inventive brilliance and contrasts wrapped into the 16 minute medley of You Never Give Me Your Money, Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, Golden Slumbers, Carry That Weight and The End are the highlight of the album. However, I also like it for George Harrison's two contributions -the peerless Something and the only slightly less well known Here Comes The Sun.

I read somewhere that Harrison wrote Here Comes The Sun when he was staying with Eric Clapton, and it certainly has some similarities to Badge, the song they co-wrote for Cream. Incidentally, the chiming guitar part on the latter song is Harrison not Clapton, and the Abbey Road song features a guitar figure with a similar feel. For an English-born listener the title and words of this song perfectly summarise the feeling you have when, on a bright, March day you feel the warmth of the sun on your back, you take your jumper off, and you know that spring has finally arrived, banishing the unremitting cold of winter.

But, it's only February, and we have yet to experience that feeling. I'm not usually one who yearns, in the way that some do, for the arrival of spring: in fact I find lots of pleasures in an English winter. However, after this year's extra helping of frost, snow and rain, I too am ready for spring. In the absence of the real sun I thought I'd engineer it through a photograph of a single bloom from the vase of yellow chrysanthemums that curently decorates our hall. To give the flower a spring-like glow I lit it from behind and from the side, and put the LX3 on a tripod so that I could use a slow shutter speed and therefore a low ISO. When I compose a shot like this that has a very obvious compositional centre (the flower's middle) I really have a struggle to put it anywhere but the bottom left corner because that location seems so "right." However, on this shot I forced myself to overcome my predilection and put it towards the top right.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/4
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Primary and secondary colours

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A tradition of English schooling is that, from the age of 11 children are taught in ability groups, but are also placed in "Houses". Typically, on entry to their particular form of secondary education, they are assigned to one of (usually) four houses in which they remain until the end of compulsory education. The houses are not selective, the aim being to have an approximate balance of boys and girls and abilities. These cohorts come into their own during sports day and other competitive events, form periods, and occasions when there is a requirement to subdivide pupils into mixed groups. It's interesting that a tradition that arose in public (i.e. private) schools where pupils did (and do) live in actual houses, should have been so warmly embraced by state schools.

I was first placed in a "house" in the junior years (age 7-11, Years 3-6 in modern parlance) of my primary education. It was called Penyghent House, and accompanied the three other houses of Ingleborough, Whernside, and Pendle - the "Three Peaks" of Yorkshire, and the nearby Lancashire summit, all of which were visible from where my Yorkshire school was located. For better recognition each house was linked to a colour - red, green, yellow and, in the case of Penyghent, blue. When I moved to secondary school, as luck would have it, I remained a blue, but was assigned to West House. You can guess the other houses and colours! It may be my school experience of these four colours as a group that leads me to use them still in that combination. Or perhaps wider society uses them whe there is a requirement for four colours. Whatever the reason, it wasn't until I'd rotated and tinted this photograph of a couple of pine cones four times that I realised I'd chosen those four colours once again. Though I hadn't placed them in the sequence that I always recall them i.e. red, blue, green and yellow!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1.6 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Tiptoe through the ...

click photo to enlarge

Many years ago I accompanied about seventy five children on a day out in the countryside. They were nine years old and lived in a large city. At 9.30 a.m. our double-decker bus got underway and headed out through the suburbs. As it did so one of the teachers leaned across to me and said, "I wonder what time the first one will ask if they can eat their packed lunch?" I realised why she asked when a voice piped up with that request only thirty minutes later!

We were heading for an area near the mouth of a large estuary, and as we rumbled along I heard a cheer from the children upstairs on the bus. I assumed they were playing a game, but then I heard another, and soon after the children downstairs cheered too. I looked around to find out why, and it dawned on me that they were cheering at the sight of fields of oilseed rape. The children upstairs, being higher, spotted them first, and had cheered sooner. For most of them it was their first sight of these improbably bright yellow fields, and the joy of seeing them caused a cheer to ring through the bus as each one came into view for each deck of children. That trip was in June. This year the crop is flowering in early May: last year it was the middle of April. It's probably the development of early plant varieties that accounts for this, but maybe global warming is adding its touch too. There are those in Britain who dislike these yellow fields of spring, feeling that they add an alien character to our traditional green countryside. I don't mind them, probably because each time I see one the sheer yellowness of it impresses me the way it did those children, and it raises my spirits.

Who could resist walking the path across this field near Ropsley, Lincolnshire? It's like entering a fairytale land where everything is hyper-real. The farmer who owns it has, commendably, left the public right of way perfectly clear, helping not only the walkers who want to experience being surrounded by glowing yellow, but also himself, because they then keep to the path and don't trample a broad swath through his valuable crops.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 68mm macro (136mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On