Wheelie bin bother

click photo to enlarge

As far as wheelie bins (the colloquial  name for Britain's refuse and recycling bins) go, there are three kinds of people to be found: those who do, those who don't and those who can't. I'm not talking about the inability of some people to properly sort their refuse for recycling; that's perhaps the subject for a different post. No, on this occasion we are back in the realms of blots on the landscape and visual blight and, more specifically, the willingness, unwillingness or lack of facility to hide these ugly bins from view when they are in daily use.

If your house is in a terrace with little or no front garden and no easy access to the back then it's hard to hide your bins away. Your property wasn't designed with such things in mind and they need to be accessible for emptying. Consequently they very often have to be in plain sight of passers-by: there's not much you can do about it. Many properties, however, have space out of sight where bins can be placed for daily use and where they are not an eyesore to the locals and passers-by. Most people with this facility make use of it. But some don't, and the wretched bins stick out like spots and scabs on the face of the village, town or city. It may be due to indolence, it could be a lack of aesthetic sensibilities, or perhaps there are reasons too deep for me to fathom. Some local authorities, including the one responsible for my refuse and recycling collections don't help matters by choosing colours that have no place in a street scene. In my case it's a garish blue, but I have seen purple elsewhere. Sober green or brown, and even dismal grey - all colours in widespread use - have a chance of blending with the background. Every screaming blue and mad purple wheelie bin shouts its presence. At times they are collectively cacophonous.

Today's photograph shows the frosty recycling logo on the top of one of my wheelie bins. It sits with its partners out of sight at the back of my house. It could never be seen from the road. However, when I moved in it was visible from much of the rear and side of the house so I built a section of fence behind which they are now hidden. Such are my feelings about these eyesores!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 160 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blots on the landscape

click photo to enlarge

Mankind is responsible for many blots on the landscape. Limestone and other quarries take some beating. They are often found in areas of scenic interest and beauty and invariably produce the ugliest of scars that are not usually healed even decades after they've shut down. Then there are the so-called retail parks. Anywhere less park-like it's hard to imagine. Yes, they usually have a sprinkling of lollipop trees and a few shrubberies that are mechanically savaged yearly, usually at the wrong time, but they are basically a collection of ugly steel and glass sheds surrounded by acres of tarmac. I once opined that, had Breughel and Bosch been living today, they would have set their visions of hell in somewhere like Manchester's Trafford Centre.

Then there are the oil refineries. Mostly located on estuaries to enable the convenient supply of the raw material, and often incorporating other industries and processes based on oil, they are usually particularly bleak places. The forest of towers and pylons, some belching steam or smoke, are visible for miles. They are even, or perhaps especially, a night-time blot on the landscape. Because they are twenty four hour operations, when darkness falls thousands of lights appear and a sulphurous glow that reflects off low clouds marks their location.

And, yet, and yet. Even the darkest, most dismal of these blots, when seen in the right light, by someone in the right mood, can offer a fearsome grandeur. And, in much the same way that Philip James de Loutherburg found a subject for his paintbrush in the mighty furnaces of Coalbrookdale at the start of the industrial revolution, the photographer too can find something today in these places that offers a spectacle worth capturing on film. On my recent visit to Hull, when I was casting around for a subject, it was the distant refinery and power station at Killingholme that offered a detail to place between the darkening sky and the cold River Humber.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 218mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.00 EV
Image Stabilisation: On