Rose-coloured clouds

click photo to enlarge
"What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives."
E. M. Forster (1879-1970), English novelist

Some people find it hard to look forward to retiring from work because for them it signifies the beginning of the end of their lives, something they don't want reminding about. It can be just that if you let it, if you are one of the many people for whom the three stages of life are childhood and education, work, and lastly retirement. However, retirement can also be seen as a distinct, fulfilling, exciting time, one where each day offers experiences and opportunities that work in particular, often reduced to brief episodes, but more usually denied.

The quotation by E. M. Forster (above) is one that I like because it emphasises the importance and beauty of everyday experiences, phenomena that are too often overlooked because they are common. Moreover, the things that he itemises are those that work can relegate to the infrequent and the snatched, to the periphery of life. Retirement can, if you so wish it, bring them (and many other everyday pleasures) back to the centre of your existence and the joys that they offer can be life enriching.

In my working life I rose quite early and returned home quite late; I had long days. Getting up in the morning I would often speed through ablutions and breakfast and be gone. There was no time to do what I do daily in retirement: namely, open the curtains and look at the day and reflect on how I might fill it. Or admire the frosted grass, the autumnal leaves, the light fall of snow or the rose-coloured clouds of a fine sunrise. The sky in today's photograph appeared for only five or so minutes before I sat down for breakfast. Had I been working I probably wouldn't have noticed it. But, in retirement I got my camera and took a few shots of the beautiful sight.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

St Pancras at night

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Earlier this year, in May, I posted a photograph of the train shed at St Pancras station in London. Today's photograph shows the same location, from a slightly different point of view, at night. What the earlier photograph doesn't reveal is that the shot was taken through the glass wall that separates the Eurostar trains from the public areas of the building. The image above does show that through the three reflected lights that can be seen in front of the illuminated girders of the roof.

Each time I step into this station I look up in awe at the train shed roof of 1868 that was designed by William Henry Barlow. Its unbroken span was the largest in the world at the time it was built, and even in the twenty-first century, a time of architectural megastructures, it retains the power to impress. I quickly snapped this shot before we went into the nearby Booking Office Bar in St Pancras Hotel, captivated by the light and shade and grateful for the two silhouetted figures that gave the scene focus and a sense of scale. Incidentally the shot was taken with my Samyang 12mm f2 (24mm/35mm equivalence), a manual focus lens that I have had for a couple of months and which has become a firm favourite.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:5000
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A palatial pub

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Can there be any English building that has borrowed its style so readily and so widely as the pub (public house) or tavern. The first such buildings were essentially houses, and the subsequent purpose-built pubs followed the style of the periods in which they were built. So, many were thatched, timber-framed, tile hung, brick-built, stone-built, pargetted etc. Quite a few of these pubs from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century still stand and, where they haven't been converted into dwellings, still serve beer.

However, from the nineteenth century through into the twentieth pubs vied to attract customers. Two devices commonly employed were siting the pub on a corner so that it could be seen from two or more streets, and presenting a decorative exterior that attracted the eye and thence the customer. Backwards-looking styles were often favoured, particularly brick and timber-framing. Part-tiled exteriors that were showy (and durable) were also favoured. Many were decked out with the trappings of grand buildings, featuring towers, turrets, balconies, balusters and more. The other day I cam across an example of the latter in Islington, London.

The inspiration for the style of the Marquess tavern is clearly the eighteenth century English country house, the residence of the landed rich. It has a rusticated ground floor, a piano nobile with tall windows surmounted by alternating triangular and segmental pediments, smaller windows above and a balustrade hiding the low-pitched roof. The three-bay facade is divided up by giant Corinthian pilasters. Brick and painted stucco (no stone here) are the materials of choice. All this is, of course, a historicising veneer, a means by which to attract custom. It was built in 1854 and remains a pub today, a palatial pile in miniature in the tight streets of this north London borough.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reality and reflections

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No 1 London Bridge is a building that has featured before on this blog - quite early, in 2006, and a little later in 2008. On both occasions it was a detail that I posted rather than the whole building of the monolithic office block. One day I may post a shot of it in its entirety but it won't be for any qualities that I especially admire so much as its prominent position and unusual structure.

This building has always seemed to me to be an "eyecatcher" design - a hollowed out block with a supporting "leg" whose design is primarily intended to be noticed. And in that respect it works. You can't miss it, despite the subdued, glossy, brown marble cladding and reflective glass. A quality the building possesses that I do admire is the way the reflective surfaces work together to impart complexity and confusion. Sometimes, only by looking very carefully can you discern what is real and what is reflected, especially in a photograph. Today's shot was grabbed as we passed by on a recent brief visit to the capital, and is one of the few that I have taken of the building at night.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/40 sec
ISO:6400
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Delusions from on high

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When it was suggested that Tony Blair should have a prime ministerial jet for international travel - popularly dubbed at the time "Blairforce One" - his chancellor, Gordon Brown, wisely scotched the idea. He judged, quite correctly, that it wouldn't play well with the British people. George Osborne, quite typically, doesn't appear to be showing the same good judgement, and I read that an RAF Airbus is to be converted for travel by senior ministers. The justification for the expenditure is that it will cost less than chartering aircraft or using scheduled flights, which is, again, quite typical of a government that knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

It seems to me that it is salutary for a government composed largely of millionaires from wealthy families, who are privately educated and do not have to use many of the public services that those they govern must use, to use a more humble form of air travel, to know something of what the electorate experiences. However, I've come to expect double standards from people who can agree to their their own public sector salaries increasing by 10% while holding down those of lesser mortals in the the public sector to 1%. I'm sure that as they jet off on important business, by-passing the herds of plebeians shuffling through security checks and squeezing into their economy class seats, ministers will delude themselves that their luxury in saving the country money is the only motivation for their cossetted travel. And I'm sure we'll all agree that it is. Not.

Today's photograph shows a view of the Bay of Biscay from 37,000 feet. It includes four ships, the largest of which, a container vessel, is near the bottom right of the frame.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.2mm (33mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Selling the weather

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Over three years ago in a post called, "Banish weather forecasters" I lamented a number of recent efforts to "sex up" the weather forecasts that we receive in the UK. Since that time our weather forecasting has gone into overdrive with additional measures to capture the attention of the public, politicians, the press, advertisers and weather forecasting rivals. For example, we now have regular "severe weather warnings" even though we live in temperate latitudes where our climate is marked by an absence of extremes. If fog is predicted the forecast is plastered with yellow warning triangles bearing black exclamation marks to draw our attention to the coming event; this despite the fact that fogs occur every autumn, also at other times of year, and is obvious to all as soon as you step out of your front door. The same warnings accompany strong winds, heavy rain, frost etc, none of which are unusual occurrences in our islands.

The most recent gimmick to get us to give more attention to the weather forecast is the naming of storms to "raise awareness of severe weather". This device, borrowed from parts of the world that name hurricanes etc, serves little useful purpose. For everyone who is heedless of the weather that it manages to alert, there are more who are unnecessarily alarmed by the screaming headlines and warnings of dire peril that invariably follow such an announcement. Today's photograph shows the fine clouds of the sunset before the arrival of storm "Barney" (surely too cuddly a name for a potentially destructive force), the second named event of the autumn.  It was suggested it may bring gusts of wind up to 80 mph "in places", though looking at the detail of the forecast, in most areas they will be substantially less strong, something that will escape the notice of many. I suppose I shouldn't get worked up about this kind of headline grabbing. It is, after all, a characteristic of all the media today. Can it be long before "listicles" are a regular feature of the weather forecast?

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.8mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.) cropped
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Messy and tidy churches

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I recently went into a medieval church that proudly proclaimed itself to be a "Messy Church". And it was. One afternoon each week it held an informal meeting for families that included art and craft activities. It presumably subscribed to the "Messy Church" credo. I have no problem with that. However, this church was messy in the more widely understood meaning of that word - it was a tip! Surfaces and walls were littered with pieces of paper, furniture was spread about almost randomly, the underlying architectural order of the various parts of the building and its furnishings was undermined by signs, "displays", artwork and much else. It needed someone with an eye and a tidy mind to get a grip of the interior and show people how it was perfectly possible to have a "messy church" that was tidy, clean and looked cared for: one that showed the congregation and visitors the best of the church's past as well as present.

After the disappointment of that experience it was refreshing to step inside Sutterton church. The signs were good even before I entered the porch because I passed someone digging over one of the churchyard flower beds. Inside was an object lesson in how a church can meet the needs of today without obscuring the building's history. It was tidy, obviously well-cared for, had well arranged evidence of regular and wide-ranging activities, and for this visitor, a real pleasure to see. Of course, a dark November afternoon isn't the best for showing off a medieval church interior. But, such a day brings its own charms in the form of pools of light and areas of deep shadow. Both are shown in my photograph that is taken from the chancel looking towards the nave, font and west window. Incidentally, the leaning verticals are a result of time and the foundations, not my tilted camera.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/60 sec
ISO:2500
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

New among the old, Lisbon

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Looking out recently across the rooftops of an old part of Lisbon, from a vantage on the Castelo de Sao Jorge, I reflected on the old, the new "old" and the new that was laid out before me. The tightly packed streets were hundreds of years old as were many of the houses that were still inhabited. Stone, render and tiles (called in England "Roman" style) were the main materials on display. A lot of money and effort had gone into keeping the buildings in good repair, and the owners, like owners across Europe, had adopted one of three approaches to their restoration work.

Some had used old materials (where possible) and kept the building looking as it had done for a long time i.e. they ensured it was and looked old. Others had used obviously new materials but the extensions and refurbishments were in the style of the old buildings of the locality: they were new "old". But one owner had decided that a new style would be used for a new extension and had built something determinedly modern. When I saw it I thought, "Well done!". I have no objection to conserving old areas, but I think there are places where a sympathetic new building can complement old buildings and offer insight and interest. I also think there is sometimes a place for a new building among old buildings, one that loudly proclaims itself and fits in with its surroundings in ways that are not always obvious.

The modest blue, yellow and red building does, I think, do the latter. Its colour and materials make it appear radically different from its surroundings, but everything else makes it sympathetic to the location - its size, openings, roof lines, even angles; as well as the fact that it is unseen to all except the immediate neighbours and viewers on the castle ramparts!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (52mm - 104mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographing spires

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Pevsner calls St Mary Magdalen, Newark, in Nottinghamshire, "among the two or three dozen grandest parish churches of England." It is quite big - 222 feet (68 metres) long, with a spire reaching 237 feet (72 metres). The tower and spire of Newark church are a particularly fine pairing and a landmark that can be seen from miles around. The tower itself is unusual in that it is "engaged" i.e. positioned flush with the west facade. This isn't common. The lower part was begun in the thirteenth century (Early English). At the level of the bell openings we have a crocketed gable indicating the fourteenth century (Decorated). The spire above was completed during the same architectural period.

Newark's church is surrounded by a group of narrow streets and a fine, open market place. None of the surrounding buildings are particularly tall and so the view of the tower and spire are uninterrupted. This makes photography difficult in so far as a lot of sky is inevitable if you wish to include the complete spire. One answer to this problem is to tilt the camera and use trees, lamps and buildings to fill the area that would otherwise be clouds or sky.

Today's photograph was taken in just that way from a nearby footpath called Church Walk. The verticals were corrected in post processing. A November sky is, to my mind, one of the best for church tower photography. There is usually some interest in the clouds, which when combined with the shadows of autumn and any glint of sun make for an atmospheric feel.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Dumped in the canal

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On a recent visit to Newark in Nottinghamshire we were thwarted when we tried to cross a footbridge to walk by the canalised spur of the River Trent that flows through a small, formerly industrial area. A barrier had been put up to prevent the bridge being used, but no explanation had  been posted. Only when we went to a bridge further downstream did we find the reason. Apparently the section in question was undergoing maintenance and that included draining the stretch between the lock gates.

We were able to stand on a bridge and survey the work taking place. We could also see the objects below the bridge that were revealed after the water had been drained away. It's a cliche in many cartoons and pieces of writing that such locations are the watery grave for old bikes and supermarket trolleys. And guess what? It's true - these were the most common items dumped in the canal from the bridge. Today's photograph shows a  cluster - there were more!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 42mm (84mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:640
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Flocking starlings

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Ever since, during childhood, I developed an interest in birds  I've enjoyed watching and learning from these fascinating creatures. Over the years, as my knowledge grew, I came to see certain species and their habits as markers of the changing seasons. The arrival of the wheatear and the call and tumbling flight of the lapwing were pleasurable and sure markers that spring had arrived. Similarly, the flickering wings and screech of the swift said "summer" just as surely as the warmth of the sun. The onset of autumn is always marked by the gathering of swallows on the wires and the distinctive calls from skeins of geese in lines and "Vs" overhead. And equally representative of that season is the evening flocking of starlings as they gather before going to roost in a favoured place.

When I lived in Lancashire I often saw starlings in clouds, thousands strong, so-called "murmurations", heading for the supporting metal-work under North Pier in Blackpool. This was a favoured site and an impressive sight. I often wondered what a night spent sleeping above a stormy sea was like for these birds. Since my move to Lincolnshire I haven't seen a gathering of starlings as big as the one in Lancashire. However, I do regularly see flocks of a couple of hundred assembling on wires or pylons before going to roost. I'm aware of a few small roosts in conifers and hawthorns, but I've yet to discover a large roost.

Today's photograph is part of a group we saw one evening, as the light was beginning to fail, on some wires on the nearby Fen. It was about fifty to a hundred strong. I took a photograph as they departed, reminded of a similar shot I took a few years ago of rooks.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.) cropped
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Vodafone Offices, Lisbon

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Sometimes you don't really see and understand something until you've photographed it. I find this is particularly true of buildings. Take today's photograph. I took several photographs of the Vodafone Corporate Headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal, recently. I liked the blocky surface that the architects, Arquitectos Associdos, specified for some of the elevations.

On first looking at it the wall covering appears to be completely random, but close study of the photograph shows this not to be the case. There are three horizontal bands of blocks with a pattern that repeats. Each group of three bands is separated from the next by a band of windows. It is here that the random element is introduced because the shutters are flat projections when light is being admitted but fold out then into a flat position when deployed. Since each window's shutter is operated separately the surface of the elevation is randomised by the people working behind each one. It is unusual, visually interesting and, I imagine, works well in controlling the light and the heat generated by solar gain.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (36mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Shadows and silhouette

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On our relatively frequent trips north of the River Humber we often stop off on our return journey at Barton on Humber, a small town located on the Lincolnshire bank. If a cup of coffee and a walk is required we park at Waters' Edge, a modern multi-use "ecological" building combining information centre, cafe and business units. Its location, with the river on one side and flooded clay pits that have been made into a wild-life area with paths and walks on the other, make it somewhere to get refreshments, have a gentle stroll, and take a few photographs.

I've pointed my camera at the building a few times - both the exterior and the interior. However, the place I come back to quite frequently is a short corridor that ends with a glass block wall. It has what appear to be elements of the heating and ventilation system at high level, and at roof level are large metal tubes. The filtered light, hard utilitarian surfaces and materials give it, to my mind, an unwelcoming atmosphere that contrasts markedly with the light, open, airy spaces with large, laminated wood spars that feature elsewhere. On a recent visit I took this photograph, with my wife as the silhouetted focal point, and added a vignette to emphasise the downbeat character of the space.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On