Skegness lights

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Items of street furniture - seats, bollards, planters, bus shelters, lights etc - go through design phases reflecting the era in which they are constructed and installed. A few local authorities, in the interests of harmony, heritage or conservation, install copies of existing items but, in the main, such items are of their time.

During my lifetime it has been interesting to watch the evolution of the street light. My first conscious memory of the design of this common piece of street furniture involves reflecting on the need for a short arm that projected on one at a point below the light itself. As children we knew it was great for climbing up to, and for swinging on. But, even at that early age, I knew it hadn't been designed with my fun in mind. Only later, when I saw a ladder leaning on it as a workmen effected repairs, did its real purpose become apparent. Ever since that time I've taken an interest in the straight, curved, steel, concrete, fussy, spare, "antique", "modern", rectangular, globular etc shapes and materials that designers have employed in making street lights. And yes, periodically they have been the focus of my camera.

Today's examples were photographed during a brief visit to Skegness, a place where I've photographed lights of one kind or another before. As the autumn afternoon daylight began to fail the sensors had activated the bulbs on these promenade lights and their orange glow amplified the yellow of the deliberately "ornate modern" hood of these fairly recent lights. As ever with seaside lights a gull found one to be a welcome perch.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Promenade Lights, Skegness, Lincolnshire
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 75mm (150mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The essential compositional element

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Photographic compositions can be constructed in many ways, some orthodox and some not so usual. Down the years I have come to realise that some compositions depend on a single element to complete it or to connect the disparate parts. It can be a leaf, a reflected figure, an empty can, or a tiny group of people whose compositional significance outweighs their size.

On a recent walk by the River Witham in Boston, Lincolnshire, I took a couple of photographs of some old hulks, wooden boats of early twentieth century vintage that have been left to rot on the river banks, their mud-covered forms inundated daily by the tides and exposed at low water. I couldn't compose a satisfactory photograph of the complete boat that features in today's photograph but I liked the bow detail and thought that, together with the gull, it would make a composition. But, the space between the two elements was too great and, to my mind, the whole did not bind together satisfactorily. However, when I changed my position the gull's footprints leading to its position at the water's edge were more strongly emphasised and they created an essential element that, for me, made the composition work much better.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 52mm (104mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3
Image Stabilisation: On

Archilense

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Last October, in a post called "WYSIATI" I described how I was underwhelmed by a series of art installations in King's Lynn, a collaboration between Amiens, France, and the Norfolk town. What I didn't mention was that the installation that sounded the most interesting hadn't been set up and so I couldn't have a look at it. That was remedied recently when we made one of our regular visits to King's Lynn.

"Archilense", an optical installation by Thibault Zambeaux, is described as "a transparent door to a new landscape". Moreover, the website says that, "To create the distortion and images each panel has magnifying glasses inlayed (sic) to build a unique pattern related to King's Lynn." From a distance the piece looked interesting due to the shapes built into the glass. Looking through it, however, proved very disappointing. The inversions and distortions were not sufficiently interesting to engage the viewer: for me the piece failed in the main task that the artist had built into the piece. While we were there I saw a few people look through it and after a few seconds move on. The longest period of attention the work received was from a black-headed gull in its winter plumage that found it to be a very convenient riverside perch. In fact, it was reluctant to leave it and allowed me to get quite close. Looking at the bird I was reminded of some Lincoln sculpture that daily provides a similar avian resting place for both gulls and pigeons.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 20.4mm (55mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  - 0.3EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A flight of fancy

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Picture, if you will, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier of World War Two vintage, say HMS Illustrious, on active service sailing a choppy sea, her deck crowded with Seafires just returned from a mission. A lone aircraft appears out of the mist and spray, engine faltering, wings shot up. The pilot says he hasn't enough fuel for a second pass, one of his wheels won't go down, and he's coming in to land. Cue action stations. It's a scene that is, give or take a few details (it could be Lancaster bombers, Flying Fortresses (on land) or U.S. Corsairs) a staple of many films based on the 1939-45 conflict. And it is a scene that I was reminded of when I came to process this photograph of a lone gull on final approach, trying to find a landing space on a packed footbridge hand-rail.

As it happened, this black-headed gull did have enough fuel to go round again, and by the time it had done so several birds had taken off, wary of my too close approach, so it made a safe landing towards the end of the rail. Looking closely at my shot on the computer screen I noticed that a couple of the birds are ringed and there are two common gull interlopers among their black-headed brethren.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 300mm
F No: 5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Birds, man and the plough

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Today I was looking at the bird box in my willow tree. I placed it there two years ago in the hope that a blue tit (Parus caeruleus) would nest in it. Unfortunately it has been spurned each season; as was the other one I put in the cherry tree. So I've decided that I'll enlarge the hole to make it suitable for the slightly larger great tit (Parus major): I've had better luck with that species in the past.

Those thoughts prompted a short reflection on the way in which birds have adapted to man. Our obsessive tidiness has reduced the number of naturally occurring holes that the blue and great tits formerly used, and nest boxes now provide a significant number of the sites favoured by these species. House martins (Delichon urbica), as their name suggests, have also found man to be a useful provider of nesting places. They get their name from the habit of building their cup-shaped mud nests under the eaves of houses. Before man built houses with eaves these birds built their nests under overhangs on cliffs. I'm only aware of one location in England where that still happens - Malham Cove in Yorkshire; everywhere else man-made structures are preferred. So too with swallows (Hirundo rustica), a bird that I've never seen construct its nest anywhere other than in a building. In the UK one of the key bird habitats is the man-made suburban garden, those that naturally frequent woodland edges finding it particularly to their liking. The food that friendly households put out for them is also a big incentive to hang around dwellings, especially in the leaner winter months.

Of course birds aren't infinitely adaptable to the activities of man, and many species - particularly those of open farmland - are in steep decline. However, today I saw a scene that must have been replayed every year since a farmer first ploughed a field: black-headed gulls (Larus ridibundus) (and rooks) following the tractor, picking up the morsels revealed in the turned soil: a symbiotic relationship if ever I saw one. It being February a few birds were showing their breeding plumage of a full head cap of chocolate-brown feathers, though none would be ready for nest building for another three months. I took a couple of shots of the tractor and plough working the Fenland field, one as it headed towards me, and this one that shows the birds to better effect after it had turned away and started its next set of furrows.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Simplifying images

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One way of reading a photograph is to consider it as a story with a narrative: to ask the question, "What is it trying to say to me?" That question can be easy or hard to answer, and the extent to which it is one or the other often depends on its complexity.

Complicated photographs can tell stories well, but it's probably done better by simpler images. In fact, a good rule of thumb in photography is to decide your subject, and then see how you can depict it with the minimum of content. A shot that is constructed on these principles will often be more striking, forceful and pleasing. Over the years I've found that high contrast and silhouettes are effective means of simplifying a photograph, and this blog is littered with examples of both these techniques. Today's image is a case in point.

The subject of my photograph isn't the gulls, rather it's the gulls in their setting and a particular kind of light. The shot depends on the gulls (and the posts, water and colour) for its content, but achieves any quality that it has by simplifying all of these elements, and presenting a semi-abstract, asymmetrical, but balanced composition in silhouette. I could have photographed this location from a different angle, and had a fairly well-illuminated picture, but I think it would have been quite dull. I find that when I'm photographing early or late in the day I actively search out such images, and am often pleased by them. But then perhaps that's just me, and I'm easily satisfied!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 134mm (268mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Vicarious revenge!

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Just as big fish eat little fish and muscle-bound bullies kick sand in the face of the ten stone weakling, it's always the little guy that seems to come off worse. You're about to drive your tiny Fiat 500 on to a roundabout when a 4X4 the size of a truck, all shiny chrome bull-bars, bristling with external lights and plastered with decals announcing its name - Rampage, Pillager, Half-Wits 'R' Us, or somesuch - barges in front of you, its boorish action the very epitome of the "might is right" doctrine. It's the same at the seaside. You throw the crusts from your sandwiches to the black-headed gulls and they delicately flutter down to hesitatingly snatch a morsel. But before the first one alights in come the herring gulls, slicing heedlessly through the smaller birds like fighter bombers, not landing at all, but sweeping up the food, swallowing it in one gulp, and wheeling round for a second pass. What is a little gull to do? Well, there's no point taking on the big bullies because they'll just flatten you. But if, as is the case at Southport, Lancashire, there's a big bronze statue on the promenade of a proud and haughty herring gull, you can go and crap on its head and get safe, vicarious revenge!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A