Hull, UK City of Culture 2017

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For part of the 1970s and 1980s I lived in the city of Hull, or to give it its Sunday name, Kingston upon Hull. Before I went to there I knew little about the place other than that it was a large, Yorkshire port on the east coast of England. What I discovered was that it is a fascinating place with a long and interesting history, an appearance that is substantially different from many English cities. I also came to understand that it has a bad press from people who have never been there and only know of it from reading the opinions of other people who have never been there for more than a day.

Consequently, when it was first announced that Hull was to be the UK's 2017 "City of Culture" I thought, "Good, it has plenty of culture and can wear the accolade well." Of course, no amount of exposure to its galleries, theatres, concert venues, architecture,  etc will overcome the opinion of some who will continue to know the city through the saying, "From Hull, Hell and Halifax, Lord deliver us", and through its passion for sport, particularly rugby league. When I moved to Hull it was rugby league that dominated, and despite the town's soccer team ascending to the Premiership (and being relegated from it this year), that remains the case.

Today's photograph risks confirming that stereoype because its focal point is someone in a Hull Kingston Rovers rugby league shirt. Incidentally Hull KR are the rugby team of east Hull, and Hull FC the equivalent of west Hull. Here the wearer of this welcome bright red note for my photograph is returning with his companion from west to east. They are ascending the new Scale Lane swing footbridge over the River Hull, the waterway that bisects the city from north to south and separates east from west.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm (17mm - 34mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6 Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Albemarle Music Centre, Hull

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Sandwiched between the prominent St Stephen Centre shopping area and the Hull Truck Theatre Company building, and forming part of the regeneration of this part of Hull, is the Albemarle Music Centre. This striking building, erected in 2007, is the music hub for the city's school children. It provides a base for the specialist staff who teach music across Hull's schools as well as practice and performance spaces for young musicians and visiting music groups. Part of the building is a 164 seat auditorium that can accommodate a full symphony orchestra. This space can seat a further 80 when smaller ensembles perform. The large (purple) cone shape forms part of this concert hall.

The building is the work of Holder Mathias Architects, a firm with a wide practice that includes the neighbouring shopping centre. The Albermarle Music Centre is a nice contrast with the adjoining sites and, through the prominent rounded shape, tips its hat, it seems to me, to Le Corbusier. The only aspect of the project that concerns me is the material of the dark purple cone-like shape. It is rough textured and already has a green growth in the shady areas. It will require regular cleaning and maintenance.

When I took my photograph I had thought that the colour of the cone would be the feature I'd highlight. However, black and white, to my mind, is a treatment that often suits architecture. In this instance I liked the way it describes the form of the building so I chose it over my initial preference.


photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Old cinema architecture

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The design of the first railway carriages were closely modelled on that of the horse-drawn carriage. This seemed entirely right at the time. After all, wasn't there a similarity of function between a carriage pulled by an engine and one pulled by a horse?

When architects and builders began to erect the first purpose-built cinemas a similar mind-set seems to have taken hold. Cinemas were places of mass entertainment that held a large audience of people who all looked at the same spectacle in front of them. This was very much like the music-halls, theatres and concert halls of the time. Consequently it seemed entirely reasonable to draw upon their designs and decoration when building the new venues of mass-entertainment. To look at the music-hall architecture of someone like Frank Matcham and then at the cinemas of the first two decades of the twentieth century is to see many similarities. It is true that the sum spent on the average cinema's architecture was often less than on a music hall. However, the same debased classical features and the borrowings from exotic architectural styles (Moorish and Oriental were popular) pervade most such buildings.

The other day I stood in front of the former Tower Cinema in Hull. This was built by a Hull architect, H. Percival Binks, in 1914. The overall style is classical with domes, obelisk pinnacles, pediments, pilasters, rustication, swags, even a pseudo Diocletian window and an allegorical figure. However, it is faced in the then fashionable green and cream faience and has debased Art Nouveau touches - see particularly the stained glass lettering and its surrounding low arch. When built it must have seemed very up-to-date and quite different from the staid stone and brick of the Victorian buildings of the city; in fact, perfectly in keeping with the technological marvel of the moving pictures on display inside. Today it is no longer a cinema but some sort of night club. Mercifully, with the exception of a band of grey paint over the lower level tiles, little has been changed on the facade and so it remains an interesting building that speaks of its time of construction.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographic parts and the whole

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 I favour compositions that feature the whole of something - a building a flower, a tree, etc. It may be asymmetrically placed, sometimes it's centrally located, it may be small, or it can just about fill the frame. But, nine times out of ten I include a complete and recognisable subject in my compositions. On the other occasions I deliberately don't! Moreover, when I photograph a fragment, or multiple fragments of several objects I'm fighting my natural predilection.

Take today's photograph. I took a couple of shots of all of this ornamental fountain in Queen's Gardens, Hull, with its wind-blown jets of water partly obscuring Christopher Wray's magnificent Dock Offices of 1867-71. However, the compositions didn't satisfy me; there was too much in the frame and no definite visual focus. So I tried  a composition featuring part of the fountains and just two of the three domes in a composition that has a strong diagonal element running from the top left to the bottom right. It proved much better. And, with a fairly contrasty black and white conversion that made the best of the dull day I produced a monochrome shot that pleases me more than most of my recent efforts.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm (52mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

White roses

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I was raised in the white rose county of Yorkshire but, because I was born in Westmorland, I've never considered myself a true Yorkshireman. Our boys are Yorkshire-born, as my wife, but I still see myself as a son of Westmorland, an ancient county that in 1974 was carelessly and unthinkingly parcelled up with Cumberland and part of Lancashire into the newly formed county of Cumbria. However, when I was growing up I seem to have absorbed some of the characteristics of Yorkshire being both stubborn and argumentative, proud of the area in which I lived and showing a certain disdain for the neighbouring red rose county of Lancashire.

The Wars of the Roses on which the Yorkshire/Lancashire rivalry is based was something that was impressed on us children, and I was fascinated by the way that, after much bloodshed, the two roses symbolic of the two counties were combined to form the Tudor rose. That union did not, however, end the rivalry between the counties. For example, during every childhood summer I took note of the outcome of the regular cricket matches between Yorkshire and Lancashire, always rooting for my adoptive county. But then, after thirty odd years living in Yorkshire I lived for twenty years in Lancashire. That put an end to any vestigial disdain for Lancastrians because in living among them I found them to be friendly people with an equally fine and interesting county of which they are justifiably proud.

I was thinking about my childhood affection for the white rose the other day when, with a visiting friend, we went to a few of the local church flower festivals. One particular display featured a variety of white flowers against a black background and I selected part of it for this shot of a group of white roses. The lighting in the church was such that it only needed a bit of underexposure and some "burning" during the post processing for me to make the blooms "float" against the black card the arrangers had used to show off the flowers.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 640
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The tambourinist

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According to my edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) the word violinist (like the word violist for a viola player) is first recorded c.1670. Cellist however, first appears quite a bit later, in 1888, though the currently much less used violoncellist is recorded earlier, in 1835. I delved into the etymology of these words when I came to caption today's photograph. How does one describe someone who plays a tambourine? A trumpet player is a trumpeter not a trumpetist, though someone who plays a trombone is a trombonist. By association I made a stab at tambourinist, then checked to see if that was the word. The OED does list it with an earliest recorded use in Webster's Dictionary of 1961 and subsequent examples of tambourinist cited from 1970, 1971 and 1983. This struck me as a very late coining of the word given that the earliest recorded use of tambourine dates from 1579.

The tambourinist in the photograph can be seen in the gardens of Brodsworth Hall, South Yorkshire, one of the most complete Victorian stately homes. This figure is one of a number of statues bought in 1866 by Charles Sabine Augustus Thellusson for his newly built hall, many supplied by the Italian sculptor, Chevalier Casentini, who may have been responsible for this example.

It's not difficult to photograph a statue or piece of sculpture in context, and just as easy to select an interesting detail. What is harder is to make a satisfactory photograph comprising more than a representation of the work. My attempt at that here involved using a dark background of conifers together with a tree in autumnal colours, and positioning the sculpture relative to those so that colour and contrast worked together to make a bold image.

For more photographs of this location see these general views, this garden statue and topiary, and this garden building.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Penyghent and walking

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I've just spent a few days in the small Yorkshire Dales market town of Settle, the place in which I grew up. From the town you can look north and see, five or six miles away, the peak called Penyghent, one of the "Three Peaks". This mountain, along with Ingleborough and Whernside form a trio of summits that constitute a well-known walk. Moreover, the side of Penyghent that faces down the valley of the Ribble to Settle, also has a track that forms part of the long-distance footpath called "The Pennine Way" - named after the range of hills and mountains that the 267 mile trail follows.

Each time I go to Settle I gaze at Penyghent to see if the Pennine Way path is visible, and each year the scar that it makes grows more obvious. When I was young an enclosure-period drystone wall climbing up the slope and cliffs was all that the naked eye could see from where I lived. But, by the late 1960s, the track was succumbing to the erosion of thousands of booted feet and it was becoming ever more clear. Today it is an irregular gash many tens of yards wide in places. Repair work by the National Parks authority has not mitigated the disfigurement. I remember, in my 20s, someone asking where I came from. When I replied Settle, the person said, "Oh, you'll have done the Three Peaks Walk then". My response, that I wouldn't do that walk because of the damage it does to the area, was seen as odd, even offensive. But, it's a view I still hold today. The Three Peaks Walk, and the Pennine Way, seem to be undertaken by people who regard walking as a challenge rather than an exploration, or a literal and metaphorical path to greater understanding and appreciation of a landscape. Their physical and psychological needs seem to be superior to the needs of the environment in which they pursue their hobby, and the effect is there for all to see.

The photograph above was taken on a walk over Giggleswick Scars. The shadows of the clouds and the beautiful autumn light and colour gave the scene an attractive quality that I tried to capture. The track that so offends me, mercifully, isn't visible in this shot and this light!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A Victorian garden

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There's small wonder that when children go into a public playground one of the first things they head for is the see-saw ( that is if "health and safety" hasn't banned it.) It seems that the human psyche just loves to go first this way, then that. Yesterday lending was good: today it's bad. Bust inevitably follows boom, and the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.

This see-sawing (or perhaps it's a swinging motion, and I chose the wrong piece of equipment for my metaphor) affects gardening just as much as international finance, the length of skirts, or the nutritional value, or otherwise, of the humble egg. England's great contribution to gardening - the landscape garden -was triumphant in the eighteenth century. Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton, and their followers recast the gardens and parks of the well-to-do to look like the vision of "wild nature tamed" as seen in the paintings of Claude. Romantic ruins, serpentine paths, "eye-catcher" follies, asymmetric clumps of trees and shrubs all contributed to the look. However, by the 1830s people had become tired of this, and the pendulum (to introduce a third metaphor!) swung back to the very formality that the landscapists had sought to banish. The gardens of Italy during the Renaissance, with their rectangular, geometric forms, prominent fountains, statues, axial layouts, tall conifers contrasting with tidy, cut shrubs, were the inspiration for this new direction. That this recreation wouldn't have been recognised by either an ancient Roman or a later Italian was of no consequence: even parterres made a comeback, and newly imported exotica like the monkey puzzle tree were included in this heady mix.

Today's photographs show something of this style of garden at Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, in the month of February. The two views each show a part of the same area, the first illustrating the favoured axial symmetry, here lined up on the centre of the west facade, and the second the degree of "close control" that such gardens exhibit: not so much nature tamed, as nature caught, caged, muzzled and trimmed like a pampered poodle!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Second image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Classicism and topiary

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The poet and atheist, Andrew Motion, has called for pupils in English schools to be taught more about the Bible. He is concerned that many students arrive at university ignorant of the text that underpins much of English literature. I have sympathy with his arguments, but I'm not sure how it can be done. In the past, and in my education, pupils learned about the Bible through the Christian worship and religious education that were features of almost all English schools. These are still, nominally, compulsory in schools, but the amount of time devoted to them has declined, and the almost exclusive focus on Christianity has been replaced by shallower study of more religions, for reasons that are certainly defensible.

Similar arguments could be advanced in support of teaching pupils about classical civilization, including Greek and Roman mythology. In fact, in a largely secular society, it is arguable that the legacy of the ancients remains almost as pervasive as that of Christianity, yet general knowledge of it is fast disappearing. But here too I struggle to think how one would achieve a wider understanding of the classical foundations of western society. Yet such knowledge was, for centuries, a cornerstone of education: the trivium and quadrivium grew out of it, and through the Great Books programme a number of American universities have more recently sought to use the seminal classical texts (along with the major works of later centuries) as the basis for their academic curriculum.

From the allusions to classical mythology that pepper poetry and prose, the Orders of Architecture and their associated ornament that grace our cities, and the etymology of a large portion of the words of the English language, the influence of Greece and Rome remains strong, and a knowledge of classical culture enriches one's day to day experience of the world. On a recent walk through the gardens of Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, I came across a number of classical statues set among the gardens and glades. They were largely of a general nature rather than specific, recognisable characters from the past. However, most displayed the contraposto stance derived from the ideal of beauty that descended from the ancient world, through the Renaissance and down to the nineteenth century from when these statues date. One held the mask of Janus, and another looked the model of sobriety in a toga, the badge of Roman citizenship. Such figures became traditional in English gardens from the 1700s onwards, and apart from providing focal points among the planting, served to display, on the part of of the Victorian owners, an image of learning. My photograph shows one such statue apparently passing purposefully through the topiary.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/120
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Target House

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So, are the Morris dancers of England an endangered species or not? A few weeks ago a newspaper article suggested as much. It sparked a flurry of investigative journalism by other newspapers, radio and TV, and reporters found themselves getting to grips with this arcane pastime. At the end of the media's rummaging in the unfamiliar world of common figures, distinctive figures, bagmen and fools, the general consensus seemed to be that there was nothing to worry about, and the Morris was quietly (and sometimes noisily, to the sound of bells, swords and staves) thriving.

Traditions and pastimes change down the centuries, some dropping out of favour only to re-emerge as something consciously revived or re-discovered. The same is true of games. Who would have thought that the end of the twentieth century would see the re-appearance of croquet, a game that reached a peak of popularity towards the end of the nineteenth century? Yet, this apparently genteel lawn game played with mallets, hoops and ball, seemed to suit the times, and many middle-class dinner parties across the land concluded to its clack and clatter.

A question I pondered the other day was, "Will domestic archery make a comeback?" The Victorians, particularly women, greatly enjoyed this pastime, and when the men went to play billiards or blast pheasants from the sky, the ladies would often retire to a distant lawn and launch arrows at targets. It was a recent visit to Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, a Victorian country house and grounds now in the care of English Heritage, that set me thinking about this. Near the edge of the extensive gardens, in what must have originally been a quarry, was a long, flat grassed area with a small, one room, Victorian/Georgian building called The Target House. This was the place where the Victorian owners and their guests practised bowmanship (and presumably stored the targets.) My photograph shows part of the main elevation of the building with what appears to be an eighteenth century, classical, Venetian window filled with incongruous (probably later) Gothic glazing bars. Below is an ornate bench with a cast-iron frame. The remainder of the building with its slate roof, chimney and too-large, ornate barge board also seems to be later.

So, will archery make a comeback? The other reason I ask is that last year I bought a recurve longbow, arrows and target, re-awakening an interest that I had in my teenage years. Could it be that, for the only time in my life, I'm on the leading edge of a trend, and in a couple of years English gardens will once again resound to the thwack of arrows hitting compressed straw? Perhaps not!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 21mm (42mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On