Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Many times, driving north on the M1, I have passed the signs for the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and made a mental note that I must go there sometime. Well this week I finally did go there. And was pleasantly surprised that entrance was free (but with a car park charge of £4 for all day parking).

Having researched its website the previous evening, I knew it would take a lot of time covering the many acres of park and exhibits, so I arrived at 11:00 and expected to stay until late afternoon. There is an excellent restaurant there, so an all day visit can be split into two sessions by a pleasant lunch.

The weather was slightly overcast in the morning but considerably brighter in the afternoon. Interestingly I found the overcast conditions more conducive to photographing outdoor sculptures: backgrounds are less obtrusive and there are fewer specular highlights on metallic exhibits. Back in episode one of this blog I said my aim was to get out with my camera at least once a week 'come rain or shine'. Well I'm quickly learning what many photographers have known all along: sunny, contrasty conditions can ruin photographs, whereas less clement weather can add drama and mystique. I have now made a mental note that the park will be an excellent place to visit in winter, in foggy, misty and snowy conditions and will best be avoided in the height of summer.

Photographing other people's works of art could be considered plagiaristic, especially if the art is already two dimensional and graphical. But a monument or sculpture can be viewed from many angles and can elicit different emotional responses from the viewer. So selecting a single view and attempting to render one's own emotional response into a two dimensional graphic is, in my view, a sort of art in itself. For instance, the following record shot shows a very large sculpture depictng three angry men apparently confronting each other:



I wanted to capture the anger and aggression expressed by the sculpture and decided that I had to focus in on the heads. But I couldn't find a way to put all three heads into a single shot successfully. So I settled for excluding the third head by positioning it 'edge' on and between the other two heads. In this position it provides a barrier between the other two heads, further strengthening the antagonism between them:



The size and construction of this sculpture allowed me to take many different shots of it. The following one completely abstracts the sculture and uses part of it as a frame for a nearby tree creating a totally different work of art to the original, having no anger or aggression, merely recording patterns created in turn by man and nature:



The majority of exhibits did not represent the human form and were therefore much harder to 'interpret'. Some were intricate, and could be admired because of the skill required to conceive and fabricate them. But many others were comparitively simple geometric constructions, which might be admired for a neat bit of welding, but, to me, were lacking in anything approaching a decipherable message or meaning. For example, the following cone attached to a cheese wedge shape did not speak volumes to me, so I decided to photograph it at an unusual angle.



I think I like the result, but it is no more meaningful than the original, just a pattern of shapes and planes. Someone I know said a few weeks ago that a photograph (or any work of art) should make a statement or ask a question. But what about things which are just nice to look at? Are they art? I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that I will be returning to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park again.

Lepidopteral Lemons

A complete change of pace this week: from last week's philosophising and social documentary attempts to a look at a few frustrations in one area of my photographic interests.

This Tuesday I noticed a few cowslips raising their heads as I made my usual early morning bike ride through the park. But a fortnight of fairly cold early April temperatures seems to have slowed down the arrival of Spring. So I decided that it wasn't worth making a spring wildflower trip into the Derbyshire Dales just yet.

Instead I opted to visit the Butterfly House in North Anston, near Sheffield. This is one of those places that provides a tropical environment, in what is essentially a large greenhouse, in order to breed and display tropical butterflies. I thought I could use a trip there as a practice session, to hone my skills for photographing wild butterflies in the coming summer months.

I use different techniques for photographing wild flowers to those I use for butterflies. Because flowers are attached to the ground I invariably use a small tripod at ground level and use manual focus on my fold-out LCD screen. This enables me to work at ground level without lying on the ground to look through the optical viewfinder. With the camera on a tripod I can select any aperture (to control the exact amount of depth of field I want), even if this means a slow shutter speed is required. The only fly in the ointment being that the slightest breeze sends most flowers into a St Vitus Dance, so a slow shutter speed means that the images can be blurred (sometimes this makes a nice 'artistic' shot). So I can spend a lot of time just waiting for that vital second or two when the breeze drops and the flower becomes still.

For butterflies, which flit around from one position to another, I find a tripod just too cumbersome, and so resort to handheld shots and rely on autofocus rather than manual focus. Sometimes I will use the optical viewfinder and sometimes I will use the LCD screen, especially where the target is a bit high up or low down. Depending on light conditions, I will sometimes use flash, but prefer not too as flash with close-up photography can lead to unnatural dark backgrounds.

Choosing between all these options, whilst stealthily creeping up on a butterfly so as not to disturb it, certainly makes photographing them a challenging past-time. Hence the need for a practice session on captive butterflies.

When you retire you think you can go out visiting places in mid-week, when everything is quiet because the kids are all at school. What you don't realise is just how little time kids actually seem to spend in school. It always seems to be half-term, or an INSET day, or something like that. This week I completely forgot that, although Easter had actually happened a couple of weeks ago, it was so early this year that it played havoc with normal term lengths. This caused many local authorities to delay their 'Easter' holidays for a fortnight. Going to an attraction which is so popular with parents trying to keep kids occupied during school holidays was a bad decision!

Entering the butterfly house they were everywhere (kids that is) whilst the butterflies seemed to be hiding up in the rafters to keep away from the sticky fingers and the high decibel shrieking going on below them.

Eventually both the butterflies and I began to acclimatise to the havoc and I began to spot one or two on flowers and leaves at lower levels. The larger, and more exotic ones, however, tantalisingly stayed up near the rafters, occasionally fluttering past my head, but never settling on anything remotely within my reach.

All told I took about a hundred shots, experimenting with aperture and speed settings, most of which had to be discarded for technical shortcomings. What was worse, though, was the number I had to discard because the butterflies themselves were imperfect specimens, with bits of their wings missing. Here's a typical example:-



It's a bit galling to get the right exposure, everyting in focus, nicely composed and then find the butterfly is imperfect. For some reason I just don't notice the imperfections when concentrating on the technicalities. This also happens when I'm photograhing flowers and don't notice imperfections in petals.

Anyway, with this particular butterfly I did get a 'head and shoulders' shot which doesn't show the imperfections:-



To conclude with here is the shot I liked best. Unfortunately the tips of its wings were missing, but I thought the shot was good enough to merit a bit of extra work to rescue it. I have reconstructed its wing tips using the clone tool:-

Decisive Moments in Bradford

This week it's up to Bradford, with a few other members of the Photographic Society, to visit the National Media Museum. The main attraction of the visit is an exhibition of the famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, or HCB as he is known among the cognoscenti. Trained initially as an artist he became famous for his pioneering photography from the 1930's through to the 1960's.

When most other serious photographers were still using large format cameras HCB adopted the relatively new Leica 35mm rangefinder 'miniature' camera. This enabled him to get close in to his subjects without being conspicuous. Even today the Leica, and its small lenses, is still a favourite of 'street photographers' who want to capture the spontaneity of people going about their daily lives.

But HCB can explain it better than I can. Here is part of what he said about photography:

"For me, the camera is a sketch-book, an instrument of intuition and sponataneity, the master of the instant which in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to give a meaning to the world, one must feel involved in what one singles out through the viewfinder. This attitude requires a concentration, sensitivity, a discipline of mind and a sense of geometry."

If you have heard anything at all about HCB, you will have heard the expression 'the decisive moment in time'. Every photograph of course captures a single moment of time, but HCB was the master at capturing that precise moment when all the elements in his viewfinder came together in a happy juxtaposition to change a mere moment into the decisive moment.

The exhibition itself consisted of several hundred very small prints which were part of his scrapbooks, interspersed with a few larger prints of his more famous shots. One problem I find in viewing and judging his work is that I don't know how much the fact that the photos are of bygone eras affect my response to them. There in a crowd of Londoners at the coronation of King George VI is a boy in a cap and raincoat who could be me on my way to school in the 1950's. So my response to the photograph is different to that which I would have experienced had I seen it when first published.

Would I have been a supporter and admirer of his style, or a doubting antagonist who decried his breaking of the normal rules of composition? Probably the latter!

I decided to give myself a little challenge: to go out into the streets of Bradford and see if I could get any shots even remotely like his style. I always find it difficult to point my camera at complete strangers, but do find it slightly easier away from home. I enjoy wandering around foreign markets, while Sue and her friends are occupied in retail therapy, trying to capture candid shots of stall holders and customers. Well Bradford is as near to foreign as you can get in England so that helped.

I only had half an hour to spare so I had to be quick. After one or two unsuccessful shots (of people walking away from me!) I spotted a constant stream of what looked like students coming out of college passing in front of a building. The light walls of the building provided a good backdrop to isolate the figures and expressions.

This first attempt was cropped deliberately to position the 2 outermost figures so that they are walking out of the frame:



It breaks the rules, but doesn't really 'say' anything: its just a pattern of four figures.

This second one could be considered an improvement:



It breaks the rules with two pairs of figures at the edges of the frame and nothing to look at in the middle, but I can give it a lot to say:

The two pairs are separated; they are in different worlds; two older business like figures, two younger students; they apparently have nothing in common; but wait, there is a commonality - both pairs comprise a white and non-white person, so they represent our multi-ethnic society. The younger pair are communicating with each other, the elder pair ignore each other: the younger pair represent the hope of a future confict free multi-ethnic society, the older pair represent current suspicion and uncertainty. What a pity I wasn't thinking about all that when I pressed the shutter!

So onto my final shot:



I'm not sure I can read any profound meaning into this but I do like the geometry of the three figures and I think I just caught it at the right moment that the lad was impressing the two girls with a funny story. Ah well, I suppose it's a little late in life to become a world famous surrealist photographer - it's been done before.

A Country House in Decline

Down to the very south of Derbyshire this week, to the National Trust property Calke Abbey. I've intended to visit this place for many years but never got round to it. As you will see fom the above picture it is not in fact an Abbey, but a fine example of an early 18th century country house. The 'Abbey' name derives from the fact that it is on the site of a former Cistercian Abbey which met the fate of most such establishments during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries.

Although not built by them, the house eventually ended up in the Harpur family. The 20th century saw a gradual decline in it's state, a not uncommon fate with these large houses, which required an army of servants to run and maintain them, and attracted crippling death duties. Eventually it was donated by the family to the National Trust in the 1980's, after a period in which it had been occupied by only one member of the family.

The NT decided to keep the house and its contents largely in the state in which it was on donation. It has been made safe by repairs where necessary, but not restored to its former 18th and 19th century glory.

I knew from the NT website, when I planned the trip, that photography inside the building was not allowed. But I figured the garden and external surroundings would still provide some good photographic opportunities. I also harboured an optimistic hope that once I got there and asked nicely they might allow me shoot without flash. My optimism was unfounded, however, which left only a slightly more optimistic hope that I might be able to sneak a few crafty shots in when nobody was looking.

Again the optimism was unfounded, but for a reason which made my trip round the house one of the most informative and enjoyable visits I have made to such institutions: a veritable army of NT volunteers is in attendance in every room which you are allowed to visit. These volunteers are there to interact with visitors and pass on as much of their knowledge of the place as you are willing to receive. So crafty photos were out, but interesting chats and information exchange were in.

Many of the rooms are jam-packed with stuffed animals and birds of all descriptions - a bit like a dusty old Natural History Museum. Apparently one of the family members was keen on documenting all native British species, his modus operandi being to go out and shoot them and then have them stuffed! In today's more environmentally conscious times, I pondered, he would have been a wild life photographer and his 'shooting' would not have had such a drastic effect on his targets.

After my internal tour I went to visit the gardens. Again these had deteriorated due to neglect, and have been repaired, where necessary, rather than restored. And one or two areas have been preserved in the state in which they were taken over. This shot of one of the garden sheds gives a good idea of what some of the rooms in the house itself are like:-



The gardens themselves were in an early spring state of having been prepared for bedding plants and vegetables, with some greenhouses being packed with pots of seedlings bursting forth. It was in one of the greenhouses where I got my 'Picture of the Week', this close up study of an unknown (to me) flower bloom just on the point of fulfilling its spring glory:-