On the beach

click photo to enlarge
A while ago I was talking with some friends about the sort future that was held out to mankind in the 1950s. We could all remember looking forward to shorter working hours, greater leisure, longer life-spans, limitless energy, automation, flying cars, interplanetary settlement and travel, the conquest of disease, and consumer goods and food a-plenty. Some of this future has certainly come true for those of us fortunate to live in the "developed" world, but much has not, and the time of plenty that was foretold is beginning to increasingly look like a transient period.

But memories are selective. Because what my friends and I had all forgotten - or perhaps repressed - was the other 1950s vision of the future that was no future at all. During that decade the possibility - likelihood even - of nuclear war was an ever-present subject in the newspapers, on television and in the cinema: the idea that the nuclear-armed nations of the world would destroy not only each other, but the rest of mankind, kept re-appearing. Novelists took up the theme too. Only after I'd given the title to today's photograph did I realise that it is also the title of the bleakest "post apocalypse" novel of the 1950s. "On the Beach" was written by the British-born Australian writer, Nevil Shute, in 1957. It imagines a group of people in Australia waiting for the radiation of the nuclear wars of the northern hemisphere to be carried on the wind to where they are waiting. When I read it in the late 1960s it seemed a grim, but not impossible, vision of the future. In the 1950s it must have appeared all too plausible.

So, if you want an antidote to the unrelenting Christmas jollities that will soon descend upon us you could do worse than dig out a copy of this novel, or find a DVD of the film. However, if the prospect of time spent reading or watching is just too much for your busy schedule Wikipedia can oblige with a helpful synopsis. Happy reading! :-)

The photograph above dates from early 2007, before my re-location to Lincolnshire. It shows the beach at Cleveleys, Lancashire, with Blackpool in the distance. I was reviewing my shots from that year recently, and I thought this was one worth posting for the brave dog walkers, the litter of gulls, and the nice way the spray and haze gives a blue cast to the scene and makes the distant Tower and cliffs almost disappear.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 118mm (236mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

This bike is rubbish!

click photo to enlarge

The first two-wheeler bicycle that I ever owned was assembled by my father. He took an old steel frame, stripped, it painted it, then fixed all the other components to it. A few parts he bought: some he re-used. There was a time when bicycles were repeatedly recycled! But no more. Today bicycles seem to be "use once" consumer items, much like electronic goods, furniture, and virtually anything else you care to name.

How did this situation come about? Why is a machine that has the potential to last a lifetime, with occasional component replacements, now something to be thrown away after a few years' use? I suppose the fact that western societies are richer is part of the answer. The days when a bicycle was an expensive item are (enthusiast machines excepted) long gone. Manufacture in low-labour cost economies has also had the effect of reducing the price. The use of shorter life alloy components and frames means that they wear out quicker. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of gears, and the introduction of frippery like suspension has made them less user-serviceable. Put all that together, and a scuffed, broken, or otherwise non-functioning machine is thrown away rather than repaired! And that's sad. The bicycle is an environmentally-friendly form of transport that becomes an environmental problem if its life is short. It can also become litter, like this bicycle revealed by the receding tide at Cleveleys, Lancashire.

I took this photograph just as the water had flowed away from the bike, and placed the image in the middle of the frame, knowing that its shape and the background would introduce considerable asymmetry. I used a wide zoom lens at 22mm (35mm equivalent), with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f7.1 at 1/200 second), ISO 100, with -0.3EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Flotsam and jetsam

click photo to enlarge

"Don't be a sinner, be a binner!", anti-beach litter slogan devised by a school student

The Irish Sea is an almost land-locked body of water. It is connected to the Atlantic Ocean in the south by the narrow St George's Channel between the Pembroke coast of Wales and Rosslare in Ireland. To the north the aptly named North Channel between the Mull of Galloway in Southern Scotland and Larne in Northern Ireland is the linking point. However, these are fairly tight straits, and therefore any item dropped into the Irish Sea has a good chance of circulating in those waters for a long time.

One consequence of this is that the sea and many of the bordering beaches have accumulations of natural and man-made debris - flotsam and jetsam. Nowhere is this more true than between Rossall Point and the mouth of the River Wyre near Fleetwood. Here the tides, winds and currents of Morecambe Bay deposit fish boxes, plastic bottles, tree trunks, fishing nets, and countless other items of detritus from land and sea. Yesterday I saw two gas bottles and three large orange fishing floats! The Marine Conservation Society's annual survey shows this beach to have copious and increasing amounts of debris. This mirrors the general MCS findings that over the past 10 years beach litter in the UK has increased by 80%. The "top twenty" items of beach litter make interesting (and depressing) reading. Interestingly, to the south of Rossall Point the beaches suffer much less. Flotsam and jetsam must pass through these waters, but the scouring action of the sea ensures that it isn't deposited in the same quantities as it is further north. With the exception, it seems, of rope and netting! These droppings from inshore trawlers and other ships frequently snag and decorate the piers, groynes and railings of the Fylde Coast. And, whilst fifty years ago this debris would have been made from natural materials, and consequently degraded quite quickly, today much of it is man-made, long-lasting and luridly coloured! It is, therefore, not surprising to find that rope, cord and net is the second most commonly found litter on UK beaches, accounting for 10% of the total amount.

My photograph shows some of this sea-borne waste wrapped around the chain railings of a Cleveleys "slade" (the local name for a slipway). Now, regardless of the fact that it is essentially "rubbish", I have to admit that the achingly bright orange and the subtler turquoise of the polypropylene, alongside the drab natural hemp, bring colour and interest to this image. In fact they make it! To capture the shot I used a wide zoom lens at 34mm (35mm equivalent) with the camera set to Aperture Priority (f8 at 1/200 second), ISO 100, with -0.3EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen