Fog and The Haven

click photo to enlarge
I've written before about my liking for the transformative effect of fog: how bright colours become muted, silhouettes are emphasised, graduated fading is introduced, and landscapes are transformed by the masking of the usual distant objects. A recent brief shopping trip into Boston, Lincolnshire, gave me the opportunity to photograph the inshore fishing boats, usually a very colourful subject, in these foggy conditions.

As I selected a few shots I reflected on the name given to the River Witham between the Grand Sluice in the town and its exit into The Wash and the North Sea - "The Haven". Such a name clearly came about because boats leaving the turbulence of the sea and entering the mouth of the river would find the sudden calming of the water instilled a sense of safety - its shallows would indeed seem a haven from the dangers of the briny deep. In dense fog, such as that on the day of my photograph, that sense of sanctuary would be so much greater. Gone would be the featureless horizons of the open water to be replaced by the welcoming river banks that would usher them to anchorage on the quayside of Boston.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19.5mm (53mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Look behind you

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A casual observer, watching me walk down the street or through the countryside may think that I'm paranoid, that I imagine I'm being followed, that I have a persecution complex or that I think everyone is out to get me. Why? Well, the fact is, I  regularly stop and look behind. The more perceptive observer would notice the camera or at least the camera bag, and would work out that I'm looking to see if there's a shot in the opposite direction to the one in which I'm walking.

I take most of my photographs on walks, and I learned fairly early in my photographic development that we tend to see shots ahead and to the side of us, but often forget to look for those that are behind. It's now November and we've reached the time of year when, if you are walking with the low sun behind and floodlighting all before you, there may well be a contre jour shot to be found by turning round towards the sun. Yesterday's blog post illustrates that quite well. Today's photographs show that this habit of looking behind you is also helpful if the sun is from the side because it reveals a composition that you might have missed due to your attention being fixed on the direction in which you were walking.

Both shots show part of the River Witham in Boston, Lincolnshire, that is known as The Haven, a stretch a couple of miles long where inshore fishing boats berth. I took the small photograph first, using the moored boats as foreground interest and the river bank as a line through the image leading to the short curved terrace of houses. On this photograph I was keen to minimise the amount of sky and to include the figure on the left. My second shot was taken when we'd walked further downstream to a point past the most distant boat in the small photograph and I looked behind me. This view - the main photograph - is dominated by the tall tower of the church of St Botolph with its lantern top, and that meant more sky needed to be included. But once again the same group of boats is important, and with the curve of the river and the buildings by the roadside, provides the main subject of the shot. However, though the subject remains the same, the differing viewpoints make for quite different images.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 75mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Colour, fishing boats and aspect ratios

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"When you look at a colour picture you see the colour before you look at the message."
David Bailey (1938- ), English photographer

The quote above is taken from a recent interview that David Bailey gave to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. Being David Bailey, the interview is full of quotable utterances, some of them insightful, others outrageous and a few that are intended, I'm sure, to "take the mickey". But, sticking with this statement on colour, here it is in context: "...black and white gives you the message immediately. Colour’s a warning thing. Berries are red so that the birds know to eat them. When they’re green they don’t eat them. When you look at a colour picture you see the colour before you look at the message. " I don't agree with Bailey on the first part of this. Black and white can give you the pattern before the message. Moreover, sometimes monochrome overlays the artist's message with meaning that derives from the medium. But, I do think that the last sentence is often true, and I think it is a positive aspect of working in colour. Colours do seduce the eye, and it usually happens immediately, before subject, line, composition, and rest come into play. It happened to me this morning when I decided to photograph these fishing boats on The Haven in Boston, Lincolnshire. The sun was strong, the light was harsh, and there were no clouds in the sky - not my favourite photographic weather. But when I looked at the boats I saw three primary colours in a row - yellow, red and blue - and I thought that this sequence was enough to hang a photograph on, despite the countervailing circumstances.

However, there was one thing I knew I'd have to do wth this subject: change the aspect ratio from 3:2 to 4:3. I find myself doing it reasonably frequently with my current camera. It wasn't something that bothered me too much in the days of 35mm film, but having used a 4/3 digital camera for several years I have come to appreciate the less elongated shape of 4:3.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 75mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sepia, Sutcliffe and boats

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Every now and then I come over all Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. I blame this affliction on the book of his photographs that I was given on leaving a job many years ago. The most recent occasion when I was struck by the condition was as we walked by The Haven. This is the tidal section section of the River Witham below the Grand Sluice, that serves as both a mooring place and quay for pleasure boats and fishing vessels, and links with the dock of the Port of Boston. The usual varied selection of craft were tied up along the winding waterway, and as the river was low, a selection of ancient, rotting hulks, stained green and brown with weed and mud, were also visible. It was the latter that made me think of the great Whitby photographer, because the shape and style of some of them reminded me of the craft that fill the photographs he took of that town's harbour. Some of them may even have plied the coastal waters during his lifetime.

Among the well-kept yachts and utilitarian inshore fishing boats I saw a few of, what I call, "hobby boats". By that I mean craft that are past their best and have been bought by an enthusiast as a "project". Such vessels can often be identified by their paintwork (colourful), name (fanciful), lettering (amateurish), the slabs of marine ply that replace original timber, and the clutter of tools and other bits and pieces that litter the deck. I first became acquainted with such craft when I lived in Lancashire. The River Wyre and Skippool Creek near Poulton le Fylde had a few dozen such boats. The biggest was called "Good Hope". My wife and I called it "No Hope" because the speed of renovation never kept pace with the speed of decay.

The little group of craft in today's photograph look like hobby boats. Interestingly most of them are not Boston registrations, but are from nearby King's Lynn. Their styles and arrangement brought Sutcliffe to mind and I took my photograph. Later, back at the computer, I compared a sepia treatment with both colour and black and white versions and decided I preferred it. Sepia tone is often used in photography today to suggest the past, but I think it has merit of itself. The warm cast that it gives to an image is different from the colder tones of black and white and lends a different feel to a photograph.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 84mm
F No: 10
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 1000
Exposure Compensation: -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Don't interact

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"Interactive" has to be one of my least favourite words. So-called "involvement" through "interactivity" seems to be the 21st century's ubiquitous "democratic" bolt-on feature. Everything has to be interactive. Radios want you to call in or text and give your point of view. So do TV stations with their "tickertape" messages from the public. Have you ever read any of those - they must be the new outlet for the green ink brigade. Whole programmes now feature nothing but "real" people "interacting" with each other. Websites everywhere solicit the user's input, sometimes (like Facebook) to the point of being almost "content free", apart from people craving recognition in its most meaningless form from other people. And zoos, museums and galleries have caught the interactive disease too.

A couple of years ago I went to "The Deep", a new aquarium in Hull. It had some great fish in some stunning tanks, and I enjoyed seeing them. But the whole experience was spoiled (and limited) by an interactive section with computers, buttons to push, knobs to spin, headphones to wear, etc. Most adults seemed to be walking straight past all this. Children pushed, prodded, rarely listened, and raced between interactivities so rapidly that any information that was supposed to be conveyed must have gone straight into the ether. Art galleries offer this type of thing too - draw like an Impressionist, do a jigsaw of this famous painting, remove the layers of a painting electronically to see what's underneath, all in a feeble attempt to "involve" the visitor. What I - and I suspect many others - want is a well mounted exhibition, with interpretation by someone who is knowledgeable, that entertains, challenges and informs. The money a gallery saved on interactivity over a year could mount an extra exhibition. So, I was pleased when I heard this week a politician say that Government funding of the arts was to be more focussed on quality, and less on participation and "ticking the boxes". Until I realised that this might just mean even bigger doses of the juvenilia of Damien Hurst, Tracey Emin and co, and less space for new artists!

Today's photograph shows the exterior of "The Haven" gallery in Boston, Lincolnshire. It is currently showing some landscapes by the U.S. photographer Hope Greene, and drawings by David Lloyd Brown. I liked the confusion resulting from the layering of lights, the reflected converted warehouses, the grid of the glass curtain wall, and the passing person.

POSTSCRIPT: "Don't interact" seemed a prescriptive, rather killjoy title, and I was going to change it. Then I read this article about "Facebook" in today's Guardian newspaper. It only deepened my concerns about this type of phenomenon. If only half of the article is true, this post's title is advice worth following.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0EV
Image Stabilisation: Off