The Celebrated Boston Water Filter

click photo to enlarge
In a post of 2006 I wrote that I could never have been an entrepreneur or venture capitalist because I would dismiss so many money-making ideas as ridiculous. I cited the proposition that in Britain water could be sold to people in plastic bottles at many multiples of the price of inexpensive, pure and palatable tap water. I would have dismissed this out of hand, and I still find it extraordinarythat money can be made in this way. Equally puzzling to me is the notion of water-filters. I can understand their use in parts of the world where the water is not purified and on tap. But, in countries where those conditions do prevail why does anyone buy water filters? The fact is that all the necessary filtration is done before the water comes out of the tap.

On a recent visit to the medieval guildhall in Boston Lincolnshire, I came upon "The Celebrated Boston Water Filter". This stoneware device lacked a tap at the base, but it was obvious that it filtered water for the recipient at a time when piped water either wasn't available or wasn't of the standard that it is today. In other words, the filter had a purpose. The other thing that struck me as I surveyed this water filter was a thought that I often have since my relocation to Lincolnshire not too far from Boston. It is this - when I search for anything to do with this Lincolnshire town I have to be careful because I get lots of hits relevant to Boston Massachusetts, the place that was named after the town near where I live. That problem shouldn't arise here because the filter proudly proclaimed that it was "Improved and Manufactured by Isaac Walker, Boston, England", and I am making that very clear. However, I'm sure that won't stop visitors from the U.S.A. Boston alighting on this page in hope and departing disappointed.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: "The Celebrated Boston Water Filter", Guildhall, Boston, Lincolnshire
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/80 sec
ISO:2500
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Not better, just different

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There are two basic approaches to starting a business - offer something that hasn't been offered before, or do something that is already on offer, but do it better. Those two stratagems also apply to photography it seems. There are many photographers who crave novelty in their subjects, needing to shoot that which they have never shot before. And others - I include myself in this group - do a lot of photography that involves re-shooting a subject in different light, weather, time of year etc. In recent years I've taken quite a few shots of the Humber Bridge because I've driven over it and lingered around it every couple of months. The different circumstances have been enough to produce shots that offer diverse interest.

Today's photograph is about the sixth shot I have taken of the Old Guildhall in Peterborough but only the second I've posted on this blog; four I judged to be not good enough. The weather of today's shot contrast markedly with the first shot I posted though the season is the same, and I like it less. But, it offers something that pleases me, particularly in black and white with the application of the digital equivalent of a yellow filter.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Windows, frames and light

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Commercial buildings of today have virtually banished the window as a discrete architectural feature. Glass curtain walls have made the window as a transparent opening in a solid, opaque wall seem like a quaint artefact of the past and have merged the features of the elevation into nothing less than a giant mirror. However, in traditionally built houses the window continues, a hole that admits necessary light and that also frames the inhabitants' views of their surroundings.

Down the centuries windows have changed and evolved. Early medieval examples were often simply apertures, left open when the weather was kind and calm, covered with translucent greased cloth when inclement and windy. I've seen sixteenth century windows filled with glazed, iron casement windows that were only an approximation of the shape they filled, through which draughts must have whistled and where heavy curtains were required for any kind of winter warmth. Today's house windows tend towards the utilitarian, their plastic frames requiring neither paint nor a second glance.

Some of the most elegant windows date from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when simplicity and proportion were imposed on window design in a way that we could learn from today. I came across an example recently in the Guildhall in Boston, Lincolnshire. This mid fifteenth century building, erected for the Guild of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been added to and modified over the years. Some of the upstairs windows were replaced in the eighteenth century and it was one of these that I stopped by to look down into the garden of Fydell House (also eighteenth century) next door. The way the light and sharp shadows fell across the fielded panels of the internal shutters had caught my eye, and as I looked at the nine-over-nine sash window and the view through the panes I was moved to take this photograph. What had appealed to me was one of the fundamental attractions of traditional windows that have all but disappeared where curtain walls have taken over, namely the way the entry of light models the interior and the way the firm outline of the window frames the world outside. It's a charming attribute that a painter such as Vermeer could build a career on and it's something that has the capacity to captivate us still.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Banish weather forecasters

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In the UK, over the years, the profile of the TV weather forecaster has risen to the point where they are now seen as familiar figures with names and "personalities". Their exposure to the public now goes well beyond telling us about the weather and exchanging a few cheery banalities with the news presenters when their spot has ended. Some undertake public engagements, others feature in newspaper and magazine articles. Their dress, utterances, private lives and more are presented to the public by the media with the assumption that we will be interested. How has this change come about?

There seems to be, on the part of television in particular, a desire to make the weather forecast more exciting, more interesting, something to stay tuned for rather than a respite from regular programming when the audience might go off and make a cup of tea. The presenters themselves have been complicit in this. The problem with it is not just the flim-flam associated with the cult of personality: more importantly the weather forecasts are regularly skewed as a consequence. So, wet weather is presented as "bad", hot sunny weather as "good" or to use the favoured description of one male BBC presenter, "glorious". Of course, quite a few sectors of society (farmers, ice cream sales people, gardeners, etc) will not share this point of view but they seem of little consequence. Continuing "bad weather" is often reported with relish to the point where the forecaster appears to adopt the guise of a Jeremiah. Then there's the technology; the swooping camera, the animated symbols, and the specific forecast for whatever is the current newsworthy sports event. If the weather is stable (or in the presenter's eyes, "boring") the forecast is often livened up by a report about extreme weather somewhere else in the world. Why we need to know about Indonesian typhoons, mid-western tornadoes, droughts in Australia, or flooding in Bangladesh during the UK weather forecast just because the presenter needs to "sex it up" a bit, I really don't know. My answer is to banish the presenters, to have a simple voice-over connected to a visual presentation of the current weather and the weather that is anticipated for the next twenty four hours. That way we might get a little more sanity in the forecast and people might take notice of it rather than the wide-eyed, enthusiastic, over-gesticulating presenter.

Today we went to Peterborough to do a little shopping. The weather forecast was accurate I'm happy to report and we had the anticipated rain. I hope tomorrow the dry weather that was promised materialises because I have some hedges to trim. The subject of today's photograph is the Old Guildhall of 1671 in the Market Place at Peterborough. It is flanked by the church of St John the Baptist which was rebuilt in 1402-7 from the material of the old church and the nave of the now no longer extant, St Thomas. I used the medieval Outer Gate of the cathedral precinct as shelter from the rain as I took my photograph of the damp scene.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 84mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Flushwork

click photos to enlarge
The builders of Britain's vernacular buildings created many regional styles. One of the most charming is found in East Anglia, and is known as "flushwork". This involves splitting small pieces of flint so that the black or grey interior is exposed. These are then mortared into patterns which are set in, and contrast with, areas of dressed stone. It is often seen on the medieval churches of Norfolk and Suffolk where letters (often "M" for Mary), quatrefoils, daggers, shields and other designs are built into buttresses, towers, walls and porches.

The most notable example of flushwork in King's Lynn can be seen in the form of the chequer pattern that covers the walls of the Guildhall, a building of 1422-8. This structure was built for the Guild of Holy Trinity after an earlier hall burnt down. The ground floor of the Guildhall is an undercroft lit by pointed windows under square hoodmoulds. The central pair of arched windows were formerly doorways. Separating them is a slender and delicate vaulted niche that must once have held a statue. The large, panelled-tracery window lights the Stone Hall which forms the whole of the upper floor. In the 1600s the facade with the Doric doorway, circular windows, coat of arms and decorative panel was added.

To the left of the Guildhall is the Town Hall of 1895. Its architects, Tree & Price of London, elected to build with deference to the illustrious neighbour. They continued the chequer pattern and chose a style that mixes free Gothic with Renaissance details. The whole ensemble makes an appealing sight in the sun of an autumn day. Incidentally, the building to the right is the former prison of 1784 with suitably grim decoration (out of shot) modelled on that at Newgate Prison, London.

photographs & text (c) T. Boughen

Photo1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.):(12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On