Boston fishing boat

click photo to enlarge

One of my recent, self-imposed goals was to shoot more contre jour images. On a recent morning I managed to do just that on a visit to Boston in Lincolnshire. A small fleet of diminutive fishing boats operates out of the town, sailing down the River Witham into The Wash and nearby North Sea waters to search for their quarry. They berth alongside a small quay on London Road, not too far from the centre of the ancient settlement. Opposite their resting place is the Port of Boston with its single dock, large sheds, railway line, cranes and container lift. My photograph was taken from the quay as one of the boats came in on the tide. The railway swing bridge that has to open for each passing boat can be seen in the background.

One of the decisions you have to make when shooting into the sun is what to do about that very strong disc of light. There are three possibilities: leave it just out of frame, include it, or place it behind an object in the shot. On this image I chose the latter course, moving until the sun was behind a crane. The out-of-camera file had much more contrast than my final image. Shooting in RAW allowed me to recover a lot of the detail in the sky and elsewhere, but I tried not to reveal so much that the photograph lost its feeling of morning light. I was really pleased that the shafts of sunlight were hitting the leaves of the trees on the left of the image. It gave them a sufficiently strong presence to balance the "visual weight" of the boat and bridge on the right of the composition.

For another photograph of the port area of Boston see this post.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Scrap metal

click photo to enlarge

Two years ago I posted a blog article about how I set out on a foggy morning to take photographs of electricity pylons and wind turbines sticking up through the low-lying murk. The final paragraph reflected on how the only decent shot of the day was of a dew-laden spider's web on the gates of my driveway. My "hook" in the article was the Rolling Stones' song, "You Can't Always Get What You Want". That particular post came to mind the other day when I reviewed the photographic output of five hours on board a boat.

The craft in question took my me and my wife, with a couple of friends, and some other people, from the centre of Boston, Lincolnshire, down the River Witham, into The Wash, up the River Welland, and then retraced its journey back to our starting point. I imagined the day's photographic subjects would include a few images of Boston from the river, fishing boats on the Witham and The Wash, some birds, a few landscapes, and maybe some seals. Well, I got all those shots, and a few more. However, the weather was very windy, largely overcast (it rained towards the end of our voyage), and the light was very flat. Consequently I was satisfied with very little that I produced during the trip. The best of the bunch is this shot taken shortly after we set off, passing the Port of Boston, a relatively small undertaking that specialises in timber, grain and sundry other goods, including it seems, scrap metal.

As we cruised along against an incoming tide the sight of a great mound of shredded metal came into view. I've seen such things at other ports around the country, often with a boat alongside taking the precious commodity on board. A mechanical grab was making this mound higher. As our boat slipped by I noticed the yellow container hoist beyond, and thought I'd try for a shot with it framed by the arm of the grab. The whole composition worked out better than I  imagined. Not only did I get the framing I wanted, the grab was also in the act of flinging its load onto the pile, introducing a slightly odd touch. Added to those elements is the red crane (giving me all three primary colours) together with a weak burst of sunlight. I ended up with something I'd have found hard to achieve standing still to take the shot, never mind passing by at six knots.

This particular image looked like it might work in black and white - the absence of colour, I thought, would focus attention more on the shapes and the composition of the photograph. So I did a conversion. I'm still undecided whether or not I prefer it to the original colour shot.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 42mm (84mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On