photography

From The Old Africa Album: 5 ‘Best’ Shots

This week at Lens-Artists, Steven Hyde asks to see our 5 best ever photos. So how to choose? On the one hand I have a large archive of scanned photos (the Old Africa Album), taken in the 1990s when we lived in Kenya(7 years) and Zambia (ten months). On the other hand, I have an even larger file of digital shots taken over the last 20 years. The scanned images come from slide and film negatives that were processed a decade or more after the originals were taken; they are not as sharp as the original prints (and some of my scanning was distinctly incompetent).

So it is perhaps a touch perverse to choose my five ‘best’ from this scanned collection. And also to further to discount photos from the ‘on safari’ archive (i.e. the so called Big Five wildlife attractions). Instead, then, here are five, mostly chance photos of local people. These are encounters that often hold many memories, far bigger than the sum of visual parts captured here.

The header photo was taken during a too brief Christmas-time stay on the island of Lamu. We had spent Boxing Day on a small fishing dhow, sailing through the mangrove swamps of the Manda Strait and out to the reef where some of us had fished for our lunch. The owner of the boat, seen dozing here, was Mzee Lali, a Bajun man who spoke no English, a devout Muslim and father of twelve. His youngest boy, ten year old Miski, came with us on the trip. He said not one word that I overheard for the whole trip. Meanwhile, Lali’s nephew, Athman, our guide, and for official tourism purposes, the boat’s captain (since he spoke English, Kenya’s official language, and could sit the necessary captain’s exams) told us much about island life, of livelihoods dependent on tourism and fishing now that the big Arab trading dhows no longer plied the East African coast.

This is Esther and Tom. Esther had a curio stall on the roadside in Kiboko, on the Mombasa Highway some hundred miles south of Nairobi. I saw her now and then when we were staying at nearby Hunter’s Lodge. (Graham had a project in progress at the Kiboko agricultural field station). She was very keen for me to trade any spare clothes for some of her Akamba wood carvings. She also had a notion about where she wanted to have her photograph taken, and took me along to the Kiboko petrol station where there was also a cafe with this zebra mural. She then told me her address in nearby Emali where I could send the photos.

A young woman with a plan, or indeed several.

While Graham worked, went to seminars, visited Kenyan farmers, I camp followed. And so here I was passing time, sitting in the garden of a Mombasa beach hotel with a fine view of the shore. Some of the transactions taking place there were tawdry to say the least – everything for sale at a good price, but then these Digo girls came laughing by. Probably going shopping, but so brilliant in their kanga wraps…

Taking photos of sweet Kikuyu lads wasn’t the idea. I was supposed to be manning the fieldwork clip board and recording data. Or when required, holding the end of a large surveyors’ tape while Graham measured a plot of Napier grass. (There’s clump in the top left corner).

Napier grass is a staple fodder crop in the highlands above Nairobi, essential to smallholder farmers who, lacking access to pasture, must zero-graze their animals i.e. take feed to cattle and sheep kept in pens or small paddocks. The grass grows quickly and could be found planted out on any ground not given over to human food crops. This included roadside reserves. It’s a vigorous plant, but can also be susceptible to a fungal smut disease, which happened to be the subject of Graham’s field research. Our visits to the Kikuyu farms and the welcome we always received there, even when we told the farmers that some of their grass had smut and should be burned, were some of the best times of our years in Kenya. We always came home with gifts – sugar cane, orchard plums and pears, a live cockerel…

Another country.

While we were living in Zambia, we took a road trip south into neighbouring Zimbabwe. This snap was taken one early evening in Harare. I wasn’t even intending to take any photos; for one thing the light wasn’t very good. We were coming back from the post office, but the young man with the biggest grin, spotted the little Olympus-trip in my hand, and asked me to take a photo. These are security house and shop guards waiting for the night shift pick up to take them to work.

Those smiles remind us of much that we miss.

Lens-Artists: Five of the best This week Steve Hyde asks us to post our 5 best ever photos. Now there’s a challenge.

In A Certain Light

I was walking in the deep shadows of Much Wenlock’s old railway line when a break in the tree cover provided this moment for a backlit photo: the spread ‘palms’ of Horse Chestnut leaves holding up the sun.

This section of clear-felled woodland viewed through a row of standing conifers caught my eye on a walk up to Iron Age hillfort, Croft Ambrey, just over the Shropshire border in Herefordshire. It was a bright autumn day, the last day of October in fact.

Here’s the non-sepia version:

I’m often inclined to take photos in very unpromising light conditions. This next shot, edited in sepia tones, is of the ruined nave of Much Wenlock Priory taken after the sun has just set. I like the slices of remnant light inside the windows and on the corner stonework.

No people in glasshouses in the next shot, only weeds and general abandonment. It was a chance shot one winter’s afternoon as I was leaving my allotment plot. The glow inside the old greenhouses struck me as unearthly, a bit E.T.-ish. What alien life forms might be sprouting in there as the sunlight strikes them?

This next structure was caught in full-on spring sunshine.

Whereas these Pembrokeshire rooks, were snapped as they came home to roost in winter twilight:

Finally, a sunsetting shot, taken looking out on the Mawddach Estuary. It’s a favourite Farrell spot in the garden of Borthwnog Hall, near Dolgellau, mid Wales

Monochrome Madness: Backlighting This week at Leanne’s Monochrome Madness, Brian aka Bushboy sets the theme. He wants to see our backlit photos, but for more inspiration, please take a look at his post.

In The Frame ~ A Garden Treasure Trove

We’re back in Corvedale, the lovely valley that lies between Wenlock Edge and the Clee Hills, not far from the ancient Heath Chapel that featured in Over the Edge and faraway.

Wildegoose Nursery is a plants persons’ dream, conjured within an old Victorian kitchen garden. The owners lease the walled garden from Millichope Park and, over the last few years, have transformed decades of dereliction into a magnificent showpiece for uncommon varieties of herbaceous plants. We went there because my sister Jo kept saying we should. You’d love it, she said.

She was right. We did.

So: I’m posting this set of photos in response to Lens-Artists’ weekly theme. This week Amy asks us to think about how we frame our shots, and as this happened to be my particular challenge during our garden ramble: how to capture the essence of the whole, as well as the particular, it seemed a good opportunity to post them.

The colourways and combinations of the Wildegoose planting schemes are captivating, painterly, often flamboyantly informal, sometimes riotous.

Incidentally, I think this lily is hosting an invader harlequin ladybird. They originate in Japan and according the Royal Horticultural Society, were deliberately spread about the planet as a biocontrol for aphids, though not in Britain, whence they came of their own accord. They began arriving here in 2004. Unfortunately they also eat butterfly and moth eggs and our native ladybirds, and there are fears they will outstrip our native strains.

One particular challenge camera-wise was how best to photograph the astonishing Millichope Glasshouse. This too had been restored, all 12,500 postcard sized hand-made glass overlapping panels replaced. The glasshouse dates from around the 1830s and is highly unusual with its curved profile.

Restored from this:

Originally a Victorian kitchen garden such as this would have been cultivated by a small army of garden men and boys, all under the stern eye of a head gardener like Charles Ashford, my own grandfather. The glasshouses would have been devoted to producing exotic fruit, tropical plants for table and drawing room display; the garden walls used to support espaliered fruit trees – peaches, apricots, cherries, apples of many varieties, pears, each sited according to the most beneficial aspect. There would have been hot beds for melons and cucumbers and for forcing early crops, strawberry and asparagus beds, salad crops and vegetables of every kind, and also borders for cut flowers. Such production units were very expensive to run and by the interwar period most big gardens like that were beginning to be abandoned.

Wildegoose Nursery does have some vegetable beds, but mostly the garden is given over to exuberant herbaceous planting. There is also a small, beautifully arranged plant sales area, and a very welcoming tearoom which served such lovely food, we forced ourselves to stay for lunch, even though we’d not long sampled their coffee and cake for a late elevenses.

And here are some planting schemes that especially caught my eye:

And here are some general garden views with Clee Hill in the background. I should add there was also a particular soundtrack to these scenes: above the hum of a million pollinators and the soft chatter of garden volunteers, the thrum of combine harvesters in nearby fields, and overhead, the plaintive mew of buzzards.

P.S. There is a fee for going round the garden, but we thought it worth every penny.

Lens-Artists: Framing the shot

Look Out! Granny’s Nightcaps Are Blowing All Over The Woods

Wood Anemone . Anemone nemorosa . Windflower . Grandmother’s Nightcap

I hadn’t meant to go wild flower hunting. I was only intending a quick dash along the old railway embankment beside the Linden Walk. A bunch of wild garlic leaves was the objective. They had started appearing soon after the second snow, and I’ve been cropping them on and off since early February. Now all the shady ground either side the former track bed is carpeted in clumps of lush, green, garlicky leaves.

I’ve found that chopping them into a jar and steeping them for a week or so in unfiltered cider vinegar makes for a delicious salad dressing ingredient. You can also treat this as a general spring tonic – a dessert spoonful in a big glass of water. The leaves are also good in a pesto sauce instead of basil, and you can chop them with abandon into soups, curries and casseroles. When they start to flower, you can use the tiny white florets too.

Anyway, as I picking my way through the undergrowth I came upon the wood anemones creating their own little galaxies under the lime trees. They are one of the loveliest of our spring flowers, and their presence is an indicator of ancient woodland. In his Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey also says they do not seed, but their roots spread very slowly in dappled shade. If you spend some time with them, you will see how they turn their faces always towards the sun. Less appealingly, their foliage is said to have the musky odour of foxes, though I can’t say I noticed any such smell when I sniffed the leaves.

Thursday’s Special ~ Sempiternal?

This month Paula has given us 5 words to spark our photographic imaginations: dawning, condensed, coalescing, verdant and sempiternal. This skyscape view from our house on Wenlock Edge says everlasting (sempiternal) to me, though that could be wishful thinking on my part – to think the world as I know it will always remain the same. I think, with the different cloud formations, this image also covers condensed and coalescing. No hidden verdant though, for this is a winter scene – the big bare ash tree in the corner of the allotment. And it was definitely taken at sunset and not at dawn.

Thursday’s Special

The Changing Seasons December 2017 ~ A Snowland Gallery

Our week of snow in mid-December was probably the highlight of the month for many of us – more magical than mithering about Christmas shopping or if the larder shelves had enough food on them. So here are more scenes of ice art. Also a big, big thank you to Max for hosting the The Changing Seasons challenge.

The Changing Seasons – December 2017

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Thursday’s Special ~ Best Shot 2017

This week Paula asks us to post our best photo from 2017. I wasn’t sure where to start, but decided to reprise the cricket which, the first time around, Ark kindly identified as a Katydid or bush cricket. It is certainly my most surprising shot of the year – both for its clarity and the fact the cricket appears to have been watching me while I organised myself with the camera. I also like the curving grasses and the bands of light and shade, and the way the cricket appears to be super-illuminated. But best of all, it reminds me of Kalamata, and the mesmerizing views of the Taygetos and the Mani across the Gulf of Messinia for I find myself still badly smitten with the Peloponnese. Ah, well. Maybe next year…

Thursday’s Special

Monday Magic ~ Today In My Wenlock Garden

Good heavens! This morning we woke to frost. The windscreens of the cars parked across the road were definitely glinting whitely. But there was bright sunshine too, lighting up the last of the leaves on the lime trees. They looked like great golden flares.

And since the temperature was much keener today than yesterday, sun notwithstanding, my cooking thoughts turned to making Greek lentil soup. While it was it was cooking I went out in the garden to snap whatever was blooming.

Extraordinary, isn’t it. We’ve had vicious gales, heavy rain and yet on the 30th day of October we still have sweet peas on the back fence. There are also masses of buds on the Morning Glories, though when they do open, it’s a half-hearted show of the decidedly shivery. I’m not sure why they waited till October to get going.

The real stars are geranium Rozanne, now in its second or third flowering, and the little border of coral and shell pink Hesperantha; pull off the lilies’ spent stems and more burst forth.

So welcome to my autumn garden and all that’s still flourishing there. Frost, what frost?

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