Complementary colours

Gardeners who eschew subtlety, who desire impact, and want colours that look their strongest, plant with complementary colours in mind. Today's photograph is an example of this with the proximity of the yellow sunflowers and the purple verbena rigida seeming to deepen the colour of each and powerfully catching the eye.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Garden table and chairs

In our back garden we have three benches, a table and four chairs. When I summarise the seating in this way it seems somewhat excessive. However, it's good to be able to choose whether to sit in sun or shade as well as have the opportunity to change your viewpoint of the garden. The oldest of the three benches must be around twenty five years old and the newest was bought last year. The table and chairs in the photograph are two years old and often throw interesting shadows on the paving. I had thought to convert this image to black and white but on balance I prefer the subdued colour.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Peacock butterfly on buddleia

The peacock butterfly is not only one of the most commonly seen butterflies in my part of the world, it is also one of the most striking. It is both colourful and, because of the "eyes" that are reminiscent of those found on the tail feathers of a male peacock, very distinctive. The latter feature ensures that it is one of the few butterflies to which the layman can give a name. The man in the street is also quite likely to recognise the buddleia, the flowering shrub that seems to attract more butterflies than any other.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Stained glass subjects

The subjects that are depicted in the stained glass of Britain's churches usually embrace familiar themes. Christ and his family, the apostles, saints, stories from the Bible, the Holy Ghost, instruments of the passion, decorative designs based on architecture and nature, coats of arms, donor's details etc will all be familiar to most regular visitors. Sometimes, however, a subject surprises the viewer. I've seen the coronation of Queen Victoria, graphic WW1 scenes, tributes to local inventors, and much else. But, the window in the medieval church of St Mary, Monmouth, showing, George Edward Street, one of the premier Victorian architects, the man responsible for one of its restorations, is most unusual. All the more so because when Street was asked to report on the building prior to working on it he called it "extremely unattractive and uninteresting." The glass shows him holding the plan he came up with that would have swept away the Georgian work and replaced it with his own cruciform design.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Victorian putti

In ancient classical civilizations putti - naked or winged cherubs - were associated with Eros and Cupid. When they re-appeared in the Renaissance their form was similar to the earlier manifestation but they were ascribed a very different character, becoming more akin to angels. In English church architecture they appear particularly in wood carving, stained glass, on funerary monuments and gravestones. The four depicted above are in the quatrefoil at the top of a Victorian stained glass window in the church of St Lawrence, Weston under Penyard, in Herefordshire.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Necklaces and bracelets

On a wet day I cast around looking for something in the house to photograph when my eye fell upon my wife's jewellery box. It contains very few jewels in the sense of precious stones since they don't really appeal to her. What it does have is a varied collection of mainly necklaces and ear-rings, with a few bracelets, the sum of several decades' purchases and gifts. The ear-rings are in pairs, out of shot, perhaps the subject for another day. However, the jumble of necklaces and bracelets made a for a colourful macro lens subject with its assortment of materials, shapes, colours and textures.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

A hollow way or sunken lane?

This narrow road leading up from Weston under Penyard to the woodland of Penyard Park has every appearance of being a hollow way or a sunken lane (both names mean the same thing). Such a feature is a lane or footpath that looks like a wide trench, often with hedges on each side. It is worn down below the level of the surrounding land by the passage, over centuries, of people on foot, animals, carts and the action of heavy rain and frost. Many such lanes are thousands of years old and their existence over time can be confirmed by archaeological finds and references in early documents. At this point the old yew tree on the left has blocked the light sufficiently to prevent any growth beneath it. Consequently rainfall has cleared soil from around its roots.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Reflected twigs

One of the themes throughout much of my photography is reflections. I like the way that they play tricks with reality, sometimes in ways that we don't expect. Today's example shows some twigs that have fallen into a shallow pond, with their reflections (and those of some couds), a composition that has a minimalist aesthetic.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Sunny Ross on Wye

Midday landscape photography in June, July and August is often unsuccessful. The height of the sun, the depth of the shadows, the reflections from grass and leaves and the general glare all conspire to make such photogrpaphs less interesting: early mornings and evenings are usually better. But sometimes you have to be out around midday, and sometimes things work out better than you expect. I wouldn't have taken his photograph without the clouds that rolled across my view. Nor would I have done so without a long focal length lens on the camera or the absence of the two walkers ahead of us.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

St Edward the Confessor, Kempley

The village of Kempley in Gloucestershire is fortunate and unusual in having not one, but two of the most interesting churches in England. St Mary, of Norman origin, with the oldest roof and the best medieval wall paintings, was declared redundant in 1976, and stands away from the present village centre. It is now managed by English Heritage. The currently used church, dedicated to St Edward the Confessor, was completed in 1903 by the architect A. Randall Wells when he was 25 years of age, and is a key building of the Arts and Crafts movement. It was constructed using local labour and materials and is a modern interpretation of medieval styles and forms. The finest features, to my mind, are the bell tower with its saddle-back roof, and the massive, reticulated west window.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

High St and Market House, Ross on Wye

Most UK towns have a "High Street". It is the name that is usually applied to the settlemen's first and principal shopping street. Consequently, as in Ross on Wye, today it may be a relatively smaller street that in later years was replaced or augmented by adjacent streets that could accommodate the increasing number of shops. In Ross on Wye two contiguous, larger streets were developed with shops but the presence of the old Market House (late C17, poss. 1660-1674), an adjacent market space (out of shot to the right), and the continued use of the space under the Market House by market stalls, ensured that the High Street remained one of the focal points of the town. The normally bustling scene is deserted because the shot was taken during the coronavirus "lockdown".

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Trees and shadow

One of the advantages of living in an area with a relatively large amount of tree cover is that having a walk on very hot days can be much more pleasant. In a recent spell of clear skies and high temperatures we were able to plan walks that followed sheltered tracks and woodland. The shade kept the direct sun off us and the trees themselves reduced the overall temperature by a few degrees. The dappled light also threw interesting patterns on the ground. This photograph is of my shadow (wearing a hat - you can't be too careful)!

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Herefordshire cherries

We are currently in the season when Herefordshire cherries are on sale. It seems to be a little earlier this year, perhaps because of the warm, sunny spring and early summer. We are currently eating our way through our second purchase from a nearby orchard and I put a few in a willow pattern dish for this photograph.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Backney Common, Herefordshire

To the north of Ross on Wye is a large meander of the River Wye that embraces Foy and Sellack. This loop of the river has a couple of "sub-loops", meanders that, in the fullness of time, and with the absence of the efforts of man to stop it, may become small, detached "ox-bow" lakes. At the moment the usual deposition of a pebble shoal is taking place on the inside of the meander whilst opposite (from where I took this photograph) the river is cutting into the bank. The thirteen or so acres of land is a common with a number of people able to exercise common rights there such as grazing animals, fishing, extracting stone from the river etc. The common is also designated "open access" land over which the general public have the "right to roam". On the day we visited red Hereford cattle were dotted across the common.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Woodland bramble

Brambles (also known as blackberries in parts of the UK) are one of the few, widely collected, wild fruits. Pies and crumbles benefit from their taste and colour, as do wines and jams. Anyone who has engaged in this autumn pastime will have noticed that the fruit vary considerably in size and that the largest are usually to be found in a bright, sunny location. This common observation of the variability of brambles is under-pinned by a piece of information that I came across only recently: namely, that in the UK there are approximately 400 recognised microspecies of bramble and probably considerably more. They each differ by one or all of the following: fruiting time, size, texture and taste. The above photograph shows a woodland bramble seeking out light filtering down through the canopy above. When fruit appears on such plants they only rarely compare with plants growing in brightly lit locations.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2