Photographing stairs

I've always liked stairs, and like many others, I've always liked photographing stairs. Stairs vary from the utilitarian to the highly decorative, from those designed to impress to those built with the minimum cost and materials that simply aim to get people from one storey to another. Over the centuries architects have come up with ever more inventive designs for stairs and they are a subject I've posted on this blog reasonably regularly. The example above is in the museum and gallery in Cheltenham. I like the materials used and how the stairs' change of direction is handled. I also liked the pair of legs visible at the ground floor level!

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Tacked and nailed

This old wooden pole is at the start of a footpath that follows part of the line of an old railway. The pole may well date from the time when track was still down and trains were running; maybe the 1950s or 1960s. Today it is treated as a site for pinning informal notices, mainly about lost cats and dogs. The thumb-tacks that hold such notices are flimsy things and they succumb to the weather very quickly; rust soon replaces colour. Longer lasting is the inexpertly hammered nail, put there for who-knows-why. It could easily outlast the pole.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Sunlit blinds

Sometimes the transformative effect of directional light on everyday objects turns them into something that causes you to stop, stare and see them as if for the first time. So it was with these wooden Venetian blinds in our bathroom. The sun was shining through figured obscure glass throwing swirling lines and shadows onto the repeated flat surfaces, giving them qualities absent in flatter light.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus E510   2009

A wooden font

The fonts of English churches are usually made of stone, sometimes with a lead lining to the bowl. However, in the eighteenth century wood gained a little popularity and the wood carver's art was turned to the embellishment of these baptismal objects. Today's photograph shows a detail of the carved bowl of the wooden font in St Mary Magdalene, near Croome Court in Worcestershire. The church is in the "Gothick" style i.e. a self-conscious eighteenth century re-working of Gothic at a time when the classical style was ascendant. It was built in 1763 and there is no reason to believe that the font doesn't date from that time.

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

Green Man misericord

A misericord is a seat in church choir stalls. It folds up and offers a small ledge on which a medieval monk would lean. This would rest his weary legs and make onlookers think he was standing during the periods of the long religious service when that was required. The one in the photograph, is raised (the ledge is above the carved head), and has like most misericords, a carving on its base. Here it is a "Green Man", a character that is widely thought to be pre-Christian i.e. pagan, but which the church adopted and adapted. This example is one of the "disgorging" variety. That is to say, leaves come only from his mouth. It dates from c.1370-80 and is one of a group in the church of St Margaret at King's Lynn in Norfolk.

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