Models and the real thing

click photo to enlarge
Looking through some storage boxes a while ago I came across a Fleischmann Model Steam Engine. It's the stationary type that requires fuel to be placed below the water-filled boiler, ignited, and the resulting steam pressure operates a piston and crank. A quick spin of the flywheel is required to get it started, but once under way it chugs merrily along, demonstrating the principle of steam power to good, if somewhat limited, effect. The engine was given to me by a friend when my sons were small. We fired it up a few times, but, in truth, once you've seen it go, tooted its whistle, and wondered about what it could power, well that's about it!

During my own childhood I was familiar with these model steam engines: they were the sort of thing I'd have liked to own, but never did. The ones that particularly appealed to me were those that were based on the old traction engine, because in them steam power drove the vehicle as well as provided a take-off drive for powering other things. A friend's father owned one, and through him I discovered that they appealed not only to small boys, but to the small boy that still resides in many grown men. This particular man went on to indulge his interests to a much deeper level, making a large-scale working model of the "Flying Scotsman" steam engine using a lathe and a blueprint, and finally constructing a full-size Auster aircraft from a kit that the manufacturer sold!

I've recently been going through my photographs and have selected a few from last year that are probably worth posting. This shot was taken at an event where a number of traction engines were gathered. I posted an image of this enthusiast with his pride and joy last year, in which he obligingly held his pose for me. The image above is more of a candid shot, showing a bit of delicate, adjustable-spanner work being undertaken. I liked the concentration on the face of the owner here as he carefully undertakes his adjustment, rather like a surgeon giving a final tweak to his handiwork!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Contrast and simplicity

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Language, thought and understanding revels in opposites. It seems that we better understand and appreciate one quality by familiarity with its opposite. Can one know true happiness without having experienced sorrow? Isn't generosity more recognizable and better appreciated if we have seen greed? Perhaps part of being human is to learn from the bad as well as the good, and to appreciate the good all the more when we know something of the bad.

In photography opposites are useful qualities on which to build images. Our photographs can emphasise darkness or light, compositions can be static or dynamic, colours can be muted or loud, and so on. I was thinking about this in connection with my image above. It shows a part of two shrubs in the garden of a couple that I know. They were deliberately planted together for the contrast between the copper and the lime green leaves. When I saw them I knew that I could use the gardeners' contrast photographically, so I selected a point where the two bushed met and took this image. Contrast and uniformity (which might have been achieved, though with less interest, by photographing one or other of the shrubs) are two more opposites that can form the basis of photographs.

Looking at the shot again I suppose it exemplifies a further quality- simplicity (whose opposite is complexity). Painters, musicians, photographers, in fact all artists, have much to say about the value of simplicity. The English fashion designer, Norman Hartnell (1901-1979) disparaged it saying, "I despise simplicity. It is the negation of all that is beautiful." The French painter, Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) was of a similar mind suggesting that "a taste for simplicity cannot endure for long." However, Leonardo da Vinci said, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." As I've mentioned elsewhere in this blog the German architect, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (1886-1969) famously said "Less is more", to which the American architect, Robert Venturi (1925- ) replied, "Less is a bore". So, as far as my simple shot of contrasting leaves goes - is it "more" or "bore"?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 39mm (78mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A lesson from Victorian photograph albums

click photo to enlarge
The other day I was looking at a couple of Victorian albums that contain photographs of some of my wife's ancestors. As I turned the pages, looking at the sepia and hand-coloured images of men and women posing in photographers' studios, I reflected that a print is still the best way of archiving family snaps. The dress of the people in these photographs - men in suits or military uniform, women in their finery, and children dressed like miniature adults - are of a style that suggests most of the shots are from the second half of the nineteenth century, with some from the early 1900s. And yet these photographs, of which many are well over 100 years old, still look clear, sharp, and for the most part show little evidence of fading.

When I shot 35mm film my final images were either black and white, colour prints, or colour transparencies. I converted to digital photography in 2000. During that first year I made an album, printing photographs of different sizes on a single sheet of paper, and captioning them. I'm ashamed to say that since that time my printed output has declined substantially. Like many photographers my archives remain digital. I keep RAW files ordered by date and location, and processed files by date and caption. I do print images but these are usually larger format for display - from 10x8 inches up to 13x19 inches, and very occasionally a few 6x4 inches snapshots. There are those who argue that digital archives are the easiest and best way of storing photographs, and for keen amateurs and professionals that is certainly so. But for the average person (and the keen amateur and professional), who might well want the images to pass down through future generations as a piece of family history, I can see them being next to useless. No, for that purpose you can't beat durable prints, because they require no special (or maybe obsolete) equipment to view them, and are so easy to access.

However, there is one additional item that is guaranteed to make them last longer, and be valued more highly by your descendants, and that is an expensive, attractive and durable album. Had the prints in today's photograph been stored in shoe boxes I very much doubt whether they would have survived beyond a few decades. But, in leather-bound albums with metal clasps, mounted in frames on gold-leaf edged pages, they became objects of fascination and beauty, repositories of the family's past, and heirlooms to be cherished. The albums shown above have all those qualities and more, and yet they lack one vital finishing touch: they aren't captioned. This is a small tragedy. Some have a few notes about the people shown, written in pencil on the back. But the rest are anonymous except for those that an aged relative was able to identify before she died.

So, my recommendation to photographers is "look to the future now". The images we make that are most significant to our families are those of relatives and friends. Print those shots, bind them well, caption them carefully, and you'll earn the gratitude of generations not yet born. There's only one problem with me dispensing exhortations of this sort: I'll now have to make a start on following my own advice!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/5
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

RGB

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A while ago, through a blog post and its title, I asked the question, "Why RGBY?" In other words, why is the quartet of colours, red, blue green and yellow, so widely used? I could easily have knocked the "Y" off the question, because the trio of colours, red, blue and green are also often used together.

The advent of television and computer displays put RGB firmly into our consciousness. The RGB colour model that they employ mixes light beams of these three "additive" primary colours. The theory underpinning RGB came about in the nineteenth century through the work of Thomas Young and Hermann Helmoltz, with additional ideas from James Clerk Maxwell. The latter's early colour photographs made in 1861 combined three images each of which had been subjected to a different colour filter. Today CMOS and CCD sensors in cameras still make use of the mixing of these three important colours to produce millions of other colours.

When I was photographing these low energy houses on the edge of the village of Bicker, Lincolnshire, it occurred to me that the designer had chosen RGB to differentiate the dwellings. However, here the colours are muted, with the red leaning towards burgundy with something of the hue of dried blood about it, whilst the green and blue are pastel variations. As I looked at them I reflected that he was wise to leave yellow out of the mix! I've photographed these houses before, and admired their departure from the traditional colours of English housing. Here, next to a field of ripening wheat, under a big Lincolnshire sky where grey clouds are moving in from the west to drive out their white, "fair weather" companions, the colours bring a welcome splash of colour to the rural scene.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Spurge and the empty plinth

click photo to enlarge
Does it matter if we can't define art? Many, particularly contemporary artists, are, in the language of today, "very relaxed about the issue." Well, you might say, they would be wouldn't they, because it allows them to pass off any old rubbish as art! I was thinking about this as I read of Antony Gormley's transformation of the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square. For those who've missed the news about his latest work here's the background. This particular plinth has long been empty, and discussions about what piece of sculpture might fill it have taken place over the years. In recent times artists have put forward designs and displayed pieces on it on a temporary basis. However, from 6th July this year Gormley's idea took effect. It involves a person dressed as they wish, doing whatever they like (within the bounds of legality and decency) occupying the plinth for one hour, after which they are replaced by the next person for the next hour, and so on, twenty four hours a day until 14th October. That's it.

There are many who are excited about this "installation", seeing it as a creative, "involving" piece, offering four times Andy Warhol's "15 minutes of fame" to thousands of anonymous individuals. Others see it as an abrogation, the passing of the creative element to others, with Gormley responsible only for the initial "idea". And then there are those who see it as another example of the new-found primacy of conception in art and the accompanying abandonment of skill and technique. It's fashionable to say that anything can be art, or that anything defined as art by an artist can carry the title. I've even heard someone recently quoting the old saying that "art is anything taken out of context", which I think was Duchamp's justification for his signed "ready-mades". For me the problem is this: without the intervention of the artist and their words, we often can't distinguish a piece of art from, say, a joke, an arrangement of domestic objects, a pile of litter, a piece of street theatre, etc, and consequently the "works" are incapable of standing on their own. Nor is much art today judged solely on their merits: it is mediated by the surrounding verbiage of the artist and their acolytes. Moreover, with art of this sort the critical tools that we traditionally use to judge quality are useless, and that means we can't separate the good from the bad, the charlatan from the inspired. If we accept the "anything goes" world of art we get the artists we deserve including the juvenilia of Banksy, the gadfly hollow glitter of Damien Hurst, and the emptiness of Anthony Gormley's offerings.

Which brings me to today's photograph. It shows some leaves of a variety of Euphorbia characias, a perennial that belongs to one of the most diverse genera of the plant kingdom. Its Latin name comes from the ancient Greek physician, Euphorbus, who made use of its purgative properties. The English name, Spurge, derives from the Middle English/Old French espurge meaning "to purge." I liked the arrangement, simplicity and colours of the leaves of this variety of Euphorbia which appealed to me more than its quite complex flowers. And the connection with some of the art of today? Well, you might have guessed that I think it is in sore need of a cleansing dose of Spurge!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Heucheras

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How do you choose the plants that you have in your garden? Like most people I select plants on two main criteria - usefulness and beauty. Let's take usefulness first. That's a quality that applies to everything that goes into the vegetable garden because here the plants are either edible or they provide flavour (herbs). But usefulness extends beyond food plants. A large flowering cherry provides us with welcome shade in summer, offers food to the blackbirds at the same time, and is a good place for a nestbox and bird feeders. It also, of course, offers beauty all year round, but especially when it is in blossom. Other useful plants are the trees and shrubs that screen areas, or mark boundaries, or act as wind-breaks,. or give fruit.

Decorative plants - flowering annuals and perennials, foliage plants, etc are chosen mainly for the beauty that they bring to the garden. Some have an extra quality being suitable for cutting and displaying indoors in vases, but in the main they earn their position by how they look.

However, there is one further criterion that influences the plants I choose for the garden (and to have in the house), namely is it a good subject for photography! Flowers that grow from bulbs are often large, distinctive and photogenic, consequently bluebells, tulips, narcissi, etc proliferate in our borders. Climbing plants and trees that have blossom are also good subjects for the camera, and they too are found in numbers. But plants with distinctive leaves such as New Zealand flax, hostas, begonias, and many perennials also offer something worth photographing.

We're currently doing some work in one area of the garden that is overhung by trees, and it's likely that more heucheras will be planted here. These evergreen plants with leaves of varying colours and upright, delicate flowers are quite tolerant of shade. We currently have a few in a different location that is also under trees, and they are proving their worth, offering something for the eye (and camera) right through the year, so it seems a good idea to use them elsewhere. Today's photograph shows one of them, a dark leaved variety, after rain, the gloss on its leaves adding to the shine of the water droplets.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Recipe for the apocalypse

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Here's my recipe for a photograph of an apocalyptic sky in the style of the English Romantic painter, John Martin (1789-1854).

Ingredients
One grimy bird bath
A stormy sky, ideally featuring both sun and thunder
One tree

Method
Prepare your bird bath by leaving it exposed to the elements for a few years. Fill it with tap water when it dries out, otherwise let the rain do its job. When the bird bath grows a patina of orange lichen try and scrape it off. Please note, you won't succeed in this task, but that doesn't matter since the remaining patches distort the everyday colours reflected in the water in a preternatural way.

On a day when thunder is rumbling around, the broken clouds are of various shades of white and grey, and the sun is making intermittent appearances, crouch down with your camera fitted with a macro lens and try and get a focus lock on the clouds reflected in the bird bath. If the autofocus keeps finding the surface of the water, or the orange patches of lichen just below the surface, either switch to manual focus or wait for the sharp edge of a cloud to appear against the brightness of the sun: the latter usually produces an autofocus lock, and also stirs the colours up nicely, adding pinks, oranges, purples, etc. In order to anchor the image in the real world, as opposed to creating a shot that is entirely from the dream world of a deranged imagination, make sure your position allows you to include part of the reflected tree. Then press the shutter.

Serving
You can either take the shot as it comes, or post-process to taste. I like to increase the contrast very slightly to enhance the image's "end of the world" feel.

There will be some people who'll tell you that a photograph secured in this way looks contrived, unreal, "out of this world.", and must be the product of post-processing tricks. Take such remarks as compliments rather than the slurs that are intended, then show them the original RAW file. The close correspondence between the two will help them to understand that our world holds an infinity of weird and wonderful images that can be captured directly, without any need to resort to Photoshoppery.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Go your own way

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After I'd given a title to today's photograph of tractor tracks wandering drunkenly across a perfectly prepared and planted field on the Lincolnshire Fens I began a Wikipedia peregrination. The words I chose - Go Your Own Way - seemed apposite, but I also knew them to be the title of a song by Fleetwood Mac.

A quick search of Wikipedia using the title revealed that it was a song about the break up of the relationship between the band's two U.S. members. A quick look at Songfacts confirmed that and added a few other details. From there I went to the Wikipedia page about the album on which the song is featured, Rumours. Here I noticed that this particular Fleetwood Mac album is the 10th best-selling album of all time, so I went to the page that showed the full list of the best-selling albums of all time. It was then that I started to get a little depressed and somewhat concerned. Now there's no good reason why I should worry about the type of music that is bought in the largest numbers: I'm happy with the music I like, and I should be happy that others have found the music that they enjoy. But when that music is by the likes of AC/DC, Meatloaf, Celine Dion, Whitney Houston, the Bee Gees, Abba, Mariah Carey, Cher, Bon Jovi, The Spice Girls, Tina Turner..., I could go on, then I'm not only depressed but concerned. I'm depressed if people who bought this stuff have listened to the best that recorded music has to offer, rejected it, and then made these choices. I'm concerned if they haven't heard any of the finest music made by mankind, but feel they've acquired it through these albums. I won't list the music that I think surpasses most of what's listed on this Wikipedia page, but I will say that it includes classics of the rock and pop canon, but also features blues, jazz, folk and classical, and it isn't confined to the output of the last fifty years.

What's obvious when you look at this list is that it reflects the artists who were most popular at the time when recordings on vinyl and CD were at their sales peak. That said, it wouldn't change dramatically, I think, if downloads were added to the mix. Increasing population and increasing sales to a predominantly younger audience who buy, in the main, recent recordings of recently written music is responsible for this ranking. But it doesn't have to be so. As my oldest son once said, "Recorded music has been around for a century yet most people buy it on the assumption that the most recent music is the best. Why on earth should it be?" I think, as far as music goes I'll continue to ignore the top selling albums and "go my own way!"

Incidentally, I don't know how or why these wiggly tracks appeared on this blemish-free patch of agricultural land, but in the early evening light they stood out like the proverbial sore thumb, and invited a photograph that gives me cause to wonder at the event(s) that might have led to them.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/160 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rooks

click photo to enlarge
I recall that on at least one occasion during my childhood the gun club in the market town where I lived took their weapons at the beginning of April and blasted the nests in a nearby rookery. Twigs, adults and young birds were destroyed by the co-ordinated fire of multiple shot guns. Quite what was achieved by this I don't know, but it seemed to satisfy the blood-lust of those involved.

Like most large, black birds the rook (Corvus frugilegus) has something of a bad name. Yes, it can eat newly planted seed, grazes on young plants, and sometimes joins the carrion crow (Corvus corone) in feeding on dead wild and farm animals. But, it also makes great inroads into invertebrates that are destructive to plant life, and deals very effectively with plagues of caterpillars. So it is by no means clear that it has an entirely negative effect on arable farms here in Lincolnshire or elsewhere. Nonetheless, the irregular persecution of rooks continues, sometimes by illegal means.

Perhaps if people knew more of the habits of the rook they might view it in a different light. The species is highly gregarious (just like people), and is thought to be mainly monogamous, often having the same mate for life (also like us!) In the UK it tends to be a home bird, rarely moving more than 60 miles or so from the place it was born, though rooks from Northern Europe do migrate south and west for the winter, swelling the populations of the countries where the weather is milder. It is a colonial breeder, favouring the very tops of tall trees that are located in clumps. My village, very typically for England, has a rookery in the tallest trees of the churchyard. People have long ascribed to the rook intelligence greater than that found in most birds, and have often described an apparently organised meeting of them on the ground as a "parliament." Recent research has proved that it's no bird-brain, showing that in some circumstances it is capable of finding and using tools to secure its food, something that is not observed in other species.

On a recent evening walk we came upon a couple of hundred rooks strung out along some wires. I took a photograph of the birds sitting there in serried ranks. However, as we rounded a line of trees they decided we were too close for comfort and in their fright took flight. The cropped image above shows a small group of the much larger total as they swirled and tumbled off the wires and caught the wind that carried them to a safe distance from us.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 110mm (220mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Why do we take photographs?

click photo to enlarge
I'm currently reading Photography: A Middle-brow Art, by Pierre Bordieu and others, a book first published in 1965, that was reprinted in the 1990s. Despite its age, and the changes and growth in photography since the genesis of the study, it remains a thought-provoking work that encourages us to look at photography from a different perspective.

The book is quite densely written, in the way that is typical of French sociologists. During my reading of it I've frequently stopped, re-read a section and then pondered what was said: always, I think, a sign that a book challenges one's thinking. On the question of why amateurs take photographs Bordieu identifies "motivations" and "restraints", and has this to say:

"...the fact of taking photographs, keeping them or looking at them, may bring satisfactions in any of five areas, 'protection against time, communication with others and the expression of feelings, self-realization, social prestige, distraction or escape'. More precisely it could be argued that photography has the function of helping one to overcome the sorrow of the passing of time, either by providing a magical substitute for what time has destroyed, or by making up for the failures of memory, acting as a mooring for the evocation of associated memories, in short, by providing a sense of the conquest of time as a destructive power; secondly, it encourages communication with others by enabling people to relive past moments together, or to show others the interest or affection that one has for them; thirdly, it gives photographers the means of 'realizing themselves', either by making them feel their own 'power' by magical appropriation or by the recreation, either glorified or caricatured, of the object represented, giving them the opportunity to 'feel their emotions more intensely' or allowing them to express an artistic intention or demonstrate their technical mastery; fourthly, it provides the satisfaction of prestige, in the form of technical prowess or evidence of personal achievement (a journey, an event) or of ostentatious expenditure; finally, it provides a means of escape or a simple distraction, like a game. On the other hand, 'financial restrictions, the fear of failure or ridicule and the desire to avoid complications' constitute the main obstacles to the practice."

Once you've cut through the academic language what we have here is pretty much every conceivable reason for engaging in the hobby. I think most people would recognise in their own pursuit of photography, some, if not all, of the motivations that Bourdieu lists.

Photography: A Middle-brow Art has probably received less attention than it deserves, partly I suspect, because of its title. The potential audience for this book among photographers probably take exception to the phrase "middle-brow", seeing their activity as one that is capable of high art. Back in the early 1970s, during part of my higher education, I was sitting in the countryside learning to paint. The lecturer looked over my shoulder at the landscape I was working on and said, "Mmm, a photographer's composition." There was no audible sneer or condescension in his voice, and he didn't speak of his view about the place of photography relative to fine art painting, but I heard it nonetheless. And in fact, he was right about my composition. It was one that had been popularised by photographers, though they had taken it from painters in the first instance! So, is photography low-brow, middle-brow, high-brow, or an endearing mixture of some or all of these things? Is it capable of of high art or not? I have a view on this, but for once, you may be pleased to hear, I'm keeping it to myself!

Today's photograph uses a composition, popular amongst photographers, of a tree acting as a frame for a view. This device is also one that is found in paintings that pre-date the arrival of the upstart medium. It shows my wife sitting on a bench at Easton Walled Gardens, Lincolnshire. The country house of which the gardens were part was demolished in 1951, and the remaining buildings are the very grand Victorian stable block that have been converted into living accommodation. As the umbrella held by my wife suggests, the shot was taken on an overcast morning when rain seemed likely.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Playing in the great outdoors

click photo to enlarge
According to a recent survey by the National Trust 38% of Britain's children spend less than one hour outside each day, and about a quarter spend more than 14 hours a week in front of a television or a computer screen. In the same survey the favourite memory for the vast majority of parents involved playing outside.

My favourite memory of childhood would also be of playing outside, in my case on the limestone uplands of the Yorkshire Dales: exploring caves, streams and rivers and woods, catching fish, watching wildlife, taking home leaves and flowers to identify. When I was young most children were allowed to roam the area in and around the market town where I lived. It wasn't unusual for a group of us to come across another band of children playing in the fields or on the hills, perhaps making dens out of the scree at the bottom of a cliff. During my walks in that same area today I never see children, either accompanied or unaccompanied. In fact, I don't often see people below the age of forty taking their leisure in the countryside, so perhaps this particular rot set it many years ago!

One of the pleasures of growing up is discovering the beauty that is all around us; the plant and animal life, and the history, that is freely available to us all, almost regardless of where we live. We are so much the poorer if our main experience of the world is mediated through television or computers. Direct experience, looking closely at our surroundings, finding out things for ourselves, experiencing the freedom to wander, is crucial to the rounded development of children, and provides them with enjoyment and healthy activity at very little cost. The safety concerns of parents and society, that lead to children being restricted, are greatly overstated and need to be toned down otherwise today's children, when they are adults, will be citing their favourite memory of childhood as reaching Level X of Computer Game Y!

As I was photographing this track that cuts through a wheatfield on the gently rolling hills near the village of Folkingham, Lincolnshire, I wondered where it went to, and what was at the end of it. As a child I'd have followed it to find out. I'd like to think there are still some village children who are doing that sort of thing today. What appealed to me about this shot was the mutiple lines of the track, the way its arc was almost followed by the line of the clouds, and how the area of blue above nicely echoed the area of dark grass below.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Men and sheds

click photo to enlarge
For a certain type of Englishman the garden shed is the centre of his universe, the place where the chaos of the world is brought under control. In the space circumscribed by its four walls he is the master of all he surveys: nothing enters or happens without his say-so. It used to be said that "an Englishman's home is his castle". That was never true because it was usually heavily influenced by a female hand. However, for the kind of man I'm talking about the shed really is his castle, a place of retreat and solitude, with a Chubb lock and a stout tongue and groove door in place of the drawbridge and portcullis.

Only in England, I think, could a book called Men and Sheds find a publisher and an enthusiastic readership. And only in England could it spawn sequels and imitators with the titles Shed Men, The Shed Book, and 101 Things To Do In A Shed! Woodworking, metalwork, model railways, DIY, astronomy, sports, TV watching, music making, collections of various sorts: it seems that men can use a shed for anything that takes their fancy. And, lest you think that sheds are solely the province of those of lesser means, you should know that writers such as George Bernard Shaw, Dylan Thomas and Roald Dahl found their inspiration working in these humble structures; though in some instances they might have had the grander (but no more accurate) name of "summer house". A few days ago my newspaper carried an article about the "shed of the year". It had been nominated for the title by the website readersheds.co.uk (yes, such a site really exists!) and has a bed, a compost toilet, telescope, dart board and satellite TV: a veritable mansion in the world of sheds!

My photograph above prompted these thoughts, not because it is the archetypal man's shed, but because it looks like it's probably a member of that rare species, a woman's shed. Potting sheds, like the gardening that they support, are the province of both sexes, and this one has a clue that suggests it may be the domain of a woman. It's not the group of planted pots by the door that makes me think this, or even the vase of flowers next to them, so much as the words "Potting Shed". Each letter has been individually painted in bright colours with a few flowers dotted about for good measure, and the whole is on a white board that is fixed to the door. To my mind that is a female touch: a man's sign would have been either more utilitarian or more elaborate, and definitely not as pretty!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Another template change

Another day, another template change. The issue with text wrapping (or not wrapping) around the images prompts me to try this "stretch" template that adjusts to the size of the browser window. Now, if I can find a way of posting the full size image in place of the smaller vesion that Blogger posts, so that I can do away with people having to click to see the larger photograph, then I'll have achieved something. There is, apparently, a way of doing it by modifying the html of the post template, but life's too short for that sort of under-the-bonnet tinkering! I'll continue my search for an easier method.

Addendum:
I've found a way of uploading large images, but with a width of 800 pixels (the size I use) the text wrapping problem is re-introduced!!! I'll need to think a bit more about this.

Bull bars and inquisitive cows

click photo to enlarge
The main subtext of motor vehicle manufacturers' advertisements is that buying their vehicle will say something about you to the world. They're pretty much right, but what is said isn't always what they imagine. Take off-road vehicles. When I see a 2.5 ton Land Rover Discovery barrelling along the highway, transporting a mother and child on the school run, I think, "That driver must be a half-wit." If it is fitted with bull-bars I think, "That driver must be a complete and utter half-wit with the cognitive powers of a dead ant." What causes me to have these thoughts? Simply the redundancy implicit in using a vehicle of this sort for domestic travel, the selfishness involved in cocooning yourself in a place of safety at the expense of other road users, and the environmental impact of such transport. As for the bull bars, well, the chances of hitting a bull on Britain's roads is marginally less than running over a member of the royal family, so what's the point? Now I know that my thoughts about the drivers of 4X4 vehicles cannot be right: many must be perfectly pleasant, intelligent people, and those that I know certainly are! The trouble is, a large number of them, through their driving, seem intent on making me think otherwise.

Yesterday, as I was photographing the motte and bailey of the former Norman castle at Castle Bytham, Lincolnshire, it occurred to me that the "petal" lens hood on my Zuiko 11-22mm lens is a pretty useful bull-bar, or rather cow-bar. I was in a field taking my photographs when I was approached by a small herd of young cattle. I took a couple of shots of them as foreground interest for my image of the castle mounds, then turned and climbed over the stile out of the field. The animals followed me right up to the fence and crowded around, seemingly wanting their photograph taken again. As I obliged the boldest of the bunch pushed her wet nose so close that I felt it bump up against the lens hood which, very conveniently, saved the filter on the end of the lens from getting snotty.

Taking a couple more shots I reflected that these were the friendliest cows I've encountered for quite a while. However, when I came to process this shot I revised my opinion. I think what I'd taken for friendliness was pushiness; a lack of the social graces due to being badly brought up. What makes me think that? Well look at the cow in the background cleaning its nose out with its tongue. Ugh! Gross! Didn't its mother teach it anything?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Energy, turbines and magic

click photo to enlarge
It's nothing short of remarkable how, in the past couple of hundred years, mankind's use of energy has grown from a barely measurable amount to 500 Exajoules (2005).

Before, say, 1700 most energy came from man and animal power, from burning wood and some coal, and from wind and water. And, in most cases it was consumed at the place where it was generated. Today, in the form of coal, gas and oil, energy is often transported across the world before consumption, just like many other traded commodities. And even when it is generated in the country in which it is used, electrical energy is transmitted to centres of population and industries by a grid of wires. In the past the windmill's power was used where the windmill stood - either for grinding corn that was brought to it, pumping water that was immediately adjacent, or sawing wood from nearby trees, and most were in or near settlements. In contrast the windmills of today, the 100m high wind turbines that generate electricity, are often sited where there are few people - on hills, offshore, or as with those in today's photograph, in a sparsely populated agricultural area - in this case the Fenland of Lincolnshire.

One could wish that energy generation was less intrusive upon the landscape: nuclear and coal fired plants are big eyesores, and many find wind turbines just as objectionable. However, just as there are people who are capable of appreciating the looming bulk and man-made clouds of cooling towers, so too are there those who see beauty in the wind turbines. To walk around these otherworldy creatures under a blue sky flecked with cloud, the swish of the blades and the flicker of their giant shadows the only disturbance to a beautiful summer afternoon is not an unpleasant experience. In many ways a wind farm becomes more appealing the closer you get to it, and what can appear to be a blot on the horizon transforms into something with a hint of magic about it when you stand among them.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 15mm (30mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Brick, stone and quoins

click photo to enlarge
Many people believe that a stone building will always outlast one made of brick. Well, to quote George and Ira Gershwin's great song from Porgy and Bess, "It ain't necessarily so." Well-made brickwork that is properly maintained will often last longer than poor building stone, especially in a dry climate. In fact clay, in general, is a very long-lasting building material as is shown by the Sumerian work that still stands today. In Britain it is not uncommon to find Roman tiles and bricks, re-used in the walls of Saxon and Gothic churches, still performing their structural duty almost 2,000 years later. Furthermore, a popular and inexpensive way of repairing the crumbling stones in those very same old English churches is to replace them with bands of clay tiles interleaved with courses of mortar.

However, it is true that stone will often endure longer than brick, and it is usually the case that stone is the more expensive material too. In the past, and still today, architects often combined stone and brick, taking advantage of the durability of the former and the cheapness and convenience of the latter. In such buildings large areas of flat walling are constructed of brick, with the decorative details, string courses, cornice, plinth, window and door surrounds fashioned out of stone. Architecture of this sort often has an additional and important part made of stone, namely the quoins. These structural and decorative features are the alternating long and short pieces of stone that anchor and protect the corners of buildings. The name derives from the French word, "coin", meaning corner.

A couple of days ago, when shopping in the Lincolnshire town of Boston, I stood outside a bank waiting for my wife. The building is Victorian, built in 1864, made of brick with dressed stone detailing, and includes vermiculated rusticated quoins. I've photographed this rustication before emphasising the three dimensional qualities of the blocks. Looking at them anew, with the sunlight raking across the heavily cut surfaces, I decided to try for a shot that gave more weight to their graphic features. Once again I tilted the camera to give a more dynamic feel to the shot, and this time I converted the colour image to straightforward black and white to emphasise the qualities I was seeking.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20mm (40mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Defaced and refaced

click photo to enlarge
It is all too easy to imagine the zealots of the English Reformation rampaging through our churches, smashing the "idolatrous" medieval stained glass windows, flinging the statues of saints from their niches, scraping and scoring the wall paintings and knocking lumps off the effigies that decorated the tombs of the well-to-do. The fervour that gripped many following the split with Rome, and particularly during the Puritan period of the seventeenth century Civil War, led to many such crimes against art, history, culture, and yes, religion.

Visit a few English churches and you can't help but notice tomb effigies with missing noses, with hands broken off at the wrists, snapped swords and headless mourning angels. The parts that projected from the tombs were the easiest to destroy, and the evidence of the depredations of these early Protestants remains today. Interestingly it wasn't all tombs, or all areas that suffered in this way: many medieval masterpieces remain largely untouched by either religious fanaticism, casual vandalism or the accidents of time. In some churches subsequent generations took it upon themselves to restore damaged tombs, with varying degrees of success. In the church at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, I recall seeing alabaster effigies with noses replaced by stone that is a fair match in terms of colour, but which is much more translucent than the original material. Consequently the noses of the deceased glow when the sun shines upon them from a certain angle, and their pious countenances become comic.

Today's photograph shows an early fourteenth century alabaster tomb effigy of a lady flanked by mourning angels. It is in the church of St Mary at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The identity of the person is unknown. However, at some point in the past - probably the nineteenth century - the church took the decision to restore the tomb. They did quite a good job in terms of making it convincingly whole, though to what extent it draws upon the original I can't be sure. If you look carefully you can see the edges of the joins where the replacement pieces were inserted. I took my photograph in "challenging" lighting, but managed to hand-hold this shot, the best of the series that I captured. Some post-processing has been done to minimise the distracting background and also to emphasise the main areas of interest of the effigy.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20 seconds
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Bay leaves and homonyms

click photo to enlarge
Our store of dried bay leaves is getting low, so the other day I picked some more from the tree that grows in our garden. We are fortunate to have this particular specimen because eighteen months ago a high wind brought down a massive limb from a nearby willow that flattened it. Remarkably, after the fallen branch was removed, the 12 feet tall bay sprang back to almost vertical, and, after a few months of being tied upright to a stake, resumed its normal and vigorous growth.

I collected about a hundred leaves making no impression on the tree, and laid them out on wire trays in a cool, north-facing room to dry. Being a meticulous sort of person (well, sometimes anyway!) I arranged them in rows to maximise the number that the tray would hold. The following day, casting around for subjects for a photograph or two, I noticed the drying bay leaves and took several shots of them. The example above, with its contrast increased using a blue filter, then sepia-toned, is the best of the bunch.

Whilst I was taking my shots it occurred to me that the word "bay" is a homonym with quite a few meanings. Being a pedantic sort of person (well, sometimes anyway!) I decided to see how many such meanings I could find. My researches uncovered about 14 distinct definitions. "Bay" can mean: a type of tree, a small ball (obscure), an indentation of the sea into the land, an indentation of the land into the sea or into a range of hills (both obscure!), an opening in a wall (especially the space between two columns), a recess in a building, prolonged barking or shouting, the stance of a hunted animal, an embankment, a particular branch of an antler, the old word for baize, a reddish brown colour (especially of horses), to seek with open mouth (obscure). Being an inquisitive sort of person (always!) I wonder if anyone feels their life is a little more complete knowing trivia of this sort?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm macro, (70mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wild flower gardens

click photo to enlarge

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

Montgomery Burns on the BBC

click photo to enlarge
The Reith Lectures is an annual series of radio lectures on the BBC given by a person of national or international standing. This year Montgomery Burns, the owner of Springfield nuclear power plant on the TV cartoon show, The Simpsons, was invited to address the nation on the subject of "A New Citizenship". If you find it hard to believe that a figment of Matt Groening's imagination is capable of fulfilling a role previously given to the likes of Bertrand Russell, Robert Oppenheimer, Nikolaus Pevsner, John K. Galbraith, A.H. Halsey and Richard Rogers, then perhaps I should explain that the speaker that Burns' character is allegedly based on was the man who recently delivered the four, 45 minute lectures.

Michael Sandel is an American academic, the Harvard Professor of Government, who teaches political philosophy. He is particularly adept at making his subject relevant to the issues of the day, and at writing in a way that engages the layman as well as a more specialist audience. Apparently he was chosen as the model for Mongomery Burns because he teaches a renowned course on Justice, and the joke is that the nuclear power magnate is the least just character in The Simpsons.

The 2009 Reith Lectures were delivered under four headings: Markets and Morals, Morality in Politics, Genetics and Morality, and A New Politics of the Common Good. All were interesting, but the first lecture appealed to me most because it spoke of a theme that I've touched on in this blog. In his talk he is sceptical of the drive to make public services emulate competitive market models, and critical of the intellectual arrogance of the pro-market lobby, pointing out the many theoretical and actual failings of the system they promote. At the centre of his critique is his exposure of the way neo-liberals try to shore up their arguments by appropriating ethical arguments that have no place in their theories. He is particularly penetrating in his analysis of how the exposure of a variety of public goods to market forces can change them and society for the worse. From my perspective it's interesting that such arguments come from someone who works in the country that, for many, embodies the views that he debunks. The lectures are available on the BBC website either as audio downloads or transcripts.

I could weave a connection between Montgomery Burns and today's photograph of a view from the bottom of a wind turbine looking upwards, but I'll spare you that conceit, and simply say that a lovely sky took me to an area where thirteen turbines stand, and I determined to find a new way to portray one of these interesting and imposing structures.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/320 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On