Ross on Wye from Brampton Abbotts

The clarity of summer seemed to extend well into autumn this year but now that season's mist is regularly upon us. Hard outlines have become softened, strong colours muted and distant objects reduced to outlines. It's a time of year when I like to take landscape photographs with long lenses, stacking up the scene's layers in the image. Today's photograph shows a view of the town of Ross on Wye, with its prominent spire of St Mary, taken from near Brampton Abbotts church.

 photos © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Salisbury Cathedral through a sexfoil

If you were a bit concerned reading the title of this post let me set your mind at rest. A sexfoil is a 6-petalled (or 6-leafed) shape. Gothic architecture features a lot of different numbered foils - trefoil, quatrefoil, cinquefoil, septfoil etc. In this instance the sexfoil is one of many that alternate with cinquefoils in the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral. The reason I photographed the top of the cathedral tower and the bottom of the spire through it is for compositional reasons but also because it's difficult to get sufficiently distant to fit the whole building in the frame.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Fog, sun and silhouettes, Ross on Wye

There's a lot to be said for photographing in fog, not least the way that type of weather renders familiar scenes unfamiliar. In recent years I've posted quite a few photographs of the spire of Saint Mary's church in Ross. I've also included a few with the crenelated Gazebo Tower (here decorated with birds) and the crowded chimney stacks of the Royal Hotel. However, I've never made them, collectively, the sole subject of a composition. It was seeing them through the filter of the thick morning fog that prompted this shot.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Church at Welsh Newton, Herefordshire

When we visited the church of St Mary the Virgin, at Welsh Newton in Herefordshire, I was immediately struck by two things. Firstly, the amount of lichen that covered the church, the gravestones and all the other stone surfaces in the vicinity was prodigious. Secondly, the tower and spire, apparently thirteenth century, are the smallest that I've seen from that period.

 A third memorable feature became visible when we went inside - a stone rood screen of c.1330 - examples made of stone in parish churches are rare. Its existence also explained the fourteenth century dormer window designed to illuminate the rood (cross). One other notable feature is to be found in the graveyard: it is the tomb slab of St John Kemble who was executed in 1679.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

St Denys, Sleaford, Lincolnshire

During the ten years that we lived in Lincolnshire I must have photographed this view of the church of St Denys on more than a dozen occasions. The viewpoint is the stairwell of the National Centre for Craft and Design that is housed in a tall converted and extended warehouse. Any time that we visited the exhibitions in the building I would look out at the church and, if the sky offered the right kind of background, I'd take another shot. It was a bright winter day in 2017 when I took this one, an interesting contrast to the cloudy day in 2010 when I took what I think is my second photograph of the church.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10     2017

River Thames at Abingdon, Oxfordshire

The River Thames is navigable for 191 of its 215 miles that stretch from its source to the sea i.e. from Lechlade in Gloucestershire to the Thames Estuary, though small boats can venture, with care, a further 11 miles upstream, as far as Cricklade. A recent visit to Abingdon found the Thames (or Isis as it is sometimes known in this part of the world) busy with boats - inland waterway narrow boats as well as cruisers. I took a few photographs by the river and as I did so I reflected once more on the contribution that a church spire can make to a flat landscape: in this instance the medieval church of St Helen.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

St Mary, Ross on Wye

The tower and spire of St Mary mark the position of the town of Ross on Wye from near and far. This is due to the elevated position of the church at the highest point above the River Wye, as well as the height of the spire and the size of the pinnacles. The spire reaches 205 feet and dates back to the 1300s. It was subject to rebuilding in 1721. The pierced obelisk pinnacles were enlarged in 1743, and further restoration work, due to lightning and its exposed position, was undertaken in 1852 and 1911.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Monnow Street, Monmouth

I've commented before how essential vertical accents are in townscapes, and in the area in which I now live I see confirmation of this almost daily. Herefordshire and Monouthshire has but one small city and only a relatively small number of towns. Consequently there are no real tower blocks of flats or glass-walled skyscraping offices. The tallest buildings are churches and cathedrals and most of these make their statement with tapering spires or stepped towers. The contribution that the church spire makes to this view of Monnow Street in Monmouth becomes apparent if you mentally remove it from the scene.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

River Welland at Deeping St James

I've photographed this landscape view a few times because it holds some of the features that I most associate with the lowlands and the Fens - a church spire rising above the roofs of the surrounding village, willow trees by the riverside, and the slowly moving river itself, meandering through the fields and settlements, raised banks protecting the surrounding areas from its overflow.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100