Let's talk about the weather

click photo to enlarge

Anyone who's lived in Britain for even a short time knows that the British never stop talking about the weather. It's either too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy, or just plain beautiful. And if a judgement on the prevailing weather isn't being made, then a prognostication about the coming weather certainly is!

You might think this national trait is a character flaw, but it isn't. The fact is that Britain, lying in the path of prevailing westerly winds and the Gulf Stream, has generally mild but extremely changeable weather. Visitors to our country can find this perplexing - what do you wear! However, I love it for the variety that it brings to each day and each season.

The place where I currently live - in Lancashire near the Irish Sea - often seems to have several different types of weather each day. And it's rare for a weather pattern to settle over us for more than a week. This makes photography both interesting and difficult. Interesting because all the conceivable varieties of atmospheric conditions are guaranteed. Difficult because you can't easily predict when they will arrive!

The photograph above shows a February sky reflected in the clear and tinted glass of "The Sandcastle", a Blackpool swimming pool and leisure centre. As a photograph it is nothing without that lovely, but slightly threatening, sky. When I composed the shot I decided that asymmetry was needed to add interest to the two-tone glazing grid. The converging lines were brought back to vertical in post processing. What pleases me about this shot is the colour, and the way the stability of the window pattern contrasts with the instability of our changeable British weather.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen