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

Photographic aspect ratios

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The world wide web, it seems to me, has increased the amount of confrontation and stridency in photography. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that this outweighs the co-operation and learning that the online world confers on our hobby and profession. However, the early years of my forty odd with camera in hand certainly didn't feature the vituperation I regularly see today. Photography is not alone in this of course, and it's possibly the opportunity to adopt extreme postures and language anonymously that encourages the outpourings of bile.

To stick with photography, I continue to be amazed about the subjects on which people have unwavering views that they broadcast and defend with boorish language. Brand loyalty, sensor size, fixed lenses versus zoom, black and white versus colour, the list is endless when it comes to the subjects that some photographers can get exercised about. I've even seen people vociferously arguing the merits of one aspect ratio over another. Now when it comes to this subject I play the field. I'll use 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 1:1 as the subject requires. Sometimes I'll select the aspect ration before taking the shot, often I'll take it with the largest capture possible but with a different aspect ratio in mind, and frequently I'll crop post-capture. And the idea that one or another is intrinsically "best" or "better" than another seems to me absurd: all are possible, so choose the most appropriate. I've even been known - whisper it quietly - to choose a non-standard aspect ratio where it seemed to fit the subject better.

Today's photograph was one that I shot at 4:3 thinking that it might work well at 16:9. That turned out to be the case and is in fact the best aspect ratio for this image. It shows some of the inshore fishing boats on the River Witham at Boston, Lincolnshire, with in the distance, the tall tower of the medieval church of St Botolph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 34mm (68mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3
Image Stabilisation: On

Design, phones and fishing boats

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There's a widely held belief that the design of objects improves with each passing year. That certainly seems to be the case with, for example, cars. Today's models are more comfortable, safer, more fuel efficient, and more rust-free than ever. But there are many objects where design doesn't follow that upward curve of improvement.

I've mentioned before the new teapots that can't pour without dripping despite the fact that the solution to this failing was discovered centuries ago. Then there are shower controls. You'd think that the means of regulating the flow and heat of potentially scalding water would be either standardised - like headlight switches on cars - or at least made blindingly obvious to the first-time user of the shower. But no, it seems that every time I step into an unfamiliar shower I have to try to work out how the controls operate and then risk being burned by hot water. This appears to be because shower designers are more interested in the appearance of the controls than in safety of the user.

I recently bought a pair of new cordless phones from a reputable manufacturer. However, after a couple of weeks I discovered that there was a fault that necessitated me returning them. But, I'd have returned them anyway because the clarity of the voices I heard through the earpiece was simply not good enough. When I, temporarily, plugged in a corded phone - a low-cost model from a no-name manufacturer - voices could be heard as clearly as anyone could wish. Of course, the old-style phone didn't have a light-up display, a choice of ring-tones or a built-in directory. Nor did it show me the name of the caller and the time etc, etc ad nauseam. No, it simply fulfilled its primary function of letting me hear my callers clearly, something that many modern cordless phones seemed to have relegated to a secondary concern behind a cluster of inessential gimmicks. I bought a replacement pair of cordless phones from a less well-known manufacturer, not quite as feature-laden, but which made a selling point of audibility. They work fine.

I was reflecting on progress (or lack of it) in design when I was looking at inshore fishing boats recently in Boston and King's Lynn. Among the steel hulled craft were a few, older timber-built boats dating from the the 1960s (according to the searchable database of UK Fishing Boats LN95 in the smaller photograph was built in 1969). Were the newer vessels, I wondered, better designs than the older boats? Would they last as long and give as good service? I don't know the answer to those questions but I do know that it isn't a given that they will be better in every respect.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (49mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Obsolescence, repairs and tractors

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My web browser bookmarks include a folder marked DIY. It lists sites and web pages that I've found useful when it comes to fixing things or undertaking jobs around the house.With a bit of internet help I've managed to repair the cooker, heating radiators, the car, computers, plumbing, a camera and much more. To be able to do such things gives one a sense of satisfaction, saves money and does something for the environment by extending the life of objects.

However, during my lifetime the number things that are repairable has seemed to become ever fewer. Obsolescence appears to be built into more and more products. Items are made difficult or impossible to open without breaking something, spare parts are unavailable or deliberately expensive, non-standard screws or worse still, glue, are used to fix components together, and records show that often the same component lasts the same limited life-span in a particular product - usually a month or two after the expiry of the warranty! It really looks like some manufacturers construct products to fail after a relatively short time, and make them irreparable by the user or even a technician, in the expectation that it will result in another sale. This marketing ploy is additional to the regular "product-upgrade" cycles whereby the latest and greatest additional features are drip-fed into new models on an annual (or more frequent) basis.

A website I sometimes use for repair advice is iFixit. It ranges fairly widely in its coverage, but is particularly useful for electronics. The staff frequently do what are called "teardowns", i.e. the opening up of new products to see how they are made. Then they pass judgement on their potential for repair. Recently the website published a list of ten electronic devices that are almost impossible to repair. A model of the Apple MacBook Laptop with Retina Display was judged worst in this regard. There were five other Apple product in the list (and two Nikon DSLR cameras). Interestingly their ten easiest to repair electronic devices, published earlier, also included an Apple product.

The sight of this old Fordson Major tractor triggered this line of thought. It's a model from when? The 1960s? I don't know exactly, but it's a good few decades old and still giving service in the harshest of environments: sand and salt water are a recipe for mechanical problems. It is used to haul a crab boat into and out of the sea and its basic, rugged construction, the availability of parts, and the opportunity to improvise or make them where they are unavailable (check out the seat and radiator grille!) means it still works after all these years. I like products that are user-serviceable and user-repairable: they are good for the individual and good for wider society. It would be great if more manufacturers took this into account when they designed their products.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 100
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

Photography, fishing boats and the sea

click photo to enlarge

I've lived near the coast and spent quite a bit of my time photographing it for a fair chunk of my life. That's not unusual, of course, when you live on a relatively small island. However, one of the characteristics of the British Isles, England in particular, is that it is densely populated and and its landscape can change quite markedly over short distances. A consequence of this is that some people don't visit the coast much because it requires a journey on heavily used roads or public transport. Others forsake regular visits because there are competing attractions in the form of mountains, lakes, moors, woodland etc.

I've always enjoyed the coast, not least because of the sense of space that you find there and the quality of the light that positively invites photography. Then there's the distinctive sights that are also manna to the photographer. Whether it is shingle or sand, salt marsh or sea cliffs, harbours, bays, promenades or whatever, the coast is a great place for photography. It's also, I find, a location that encourages you to slow down and contemplate as you gaze out over the flickering water. Small wonder that people often retire to a seaside location.

One of the things I often reflect upon by the coast is the fishermen that I see in small, inshore boats. Their life is, I know, dangerous and not without its travails, both physical and financial. And yet, on a sunny, summer day with the wind a benign zephyr and the water quiescent it appears to have its attractions. Perhaps without such days people wouldn't continue in the occupation: stormy weather and the icy blasts of winter must have their compensations. My photograph shows an Aldeburgh fisherman attending to his catch accompanied by gulls feeding on his scraps. His was the sole craft on the sparkling water that morning, an image of easy tranquillity as the tide reached its maximum height. For my shot I positioned the boat off centre and used the coiled rope on the beach as a visual counterweight. Black and white seemed to suit this fairly minimalist composition better than the original colour.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Aldeburgh, keyboards and dead letters

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Several years ago I received a couple of old Dell computer keyboards (Model AT102W). They were mushroom coloured, large, robust and a dream to type on. They have never matched the computer cases that I've bought and assembled, or the screens that I've used, but that doesn't bother me in the slightest. Why? Well, unlike most contemporary computer keyboards they use mechanical linkages beneath each key rather than a plastic membrane. Consequently typing on them is bliss and reminds me of the pleasures of using an electronic typewriter rather than the experience of typing in porridge offered by today's cheap keyboards. But, nothing lasts forever, and for the past few years I've been typing happily on the last remaining AT102W, all the while fearing the day when it too will give up the ghost.

There have been a few false alarms as individual keys have stopped working. However, I would simply take the keyboard apart (just six screws to remove), indulge in some vigorous brushing and vacuuming, the recalcitrant keys would dutifully return to life and off we'd go again. Until today. This morning the "w" key refused to work. On previous occasions it had been the "b" and the "9". I completed my cleaning cycle, re-connected it and it appeared to be working fine. But when I came to write this blog post about the Suffolk coastal town of Aldeburgh the "w" had packed in again. I only realised this when I looked up from the keyboard and noticed I'd written a couple of sentences that were even worse (or should that be "orse") gibberish than usual. So, I'm going to try more cleaning. But I'm also going to buy a second hand keyboard (same model) off eBay, and hope that between my faulty one and a newer (to me) old one I'll continue to experience pleasurable typing.

Today's photograph shows a small boat that is also past its best. It stands at the southern edge of the area of beach that is used by the local fishermen and appears to have been abandoned. It looked just the sort of foreground interest that I could use in my composition of the shingle beach and the sea-front buildings.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Inshore fishing, Hornsea

click photos to enlarge

The inshore fishing industry of England's Holderness coast, an expanse that stretches from Flamborough Head in the north to Spurn Point in the south, has changed out of all recognition down the centuries. In the middle ages the summer fishing was centred on herrings, but by the eighteenth century it was a selection of whitefish - cod, haddock, ling, skate and halibut - that were hunted using lines baited with shellfish. Herring continued to be caught, and were sold salted, or were smoked to produce kippers. Crab and lobsters also formed part of the regular catches by the small boats that went out from the coast's towns and villages.

However, the development of larger, powered trawlers meant that by the twentieth century over-fishing had so reduced the whitefish stocks of the North Sea that a change of emphasis was necessary, and today the small inshore fleet specialises mainly in brown crabs and lobsters, with a very few flatfish and cod being caught. And small the fleet is, the number of boats/men/pots being as follows: Bridlington 42/97/33,750, Hornsea 7/14/4,440, Tunstall 2/4/250, Withernsea 9/18/4,850, Easington 2/4/1,100, Spurn Point 1/2/500.

On my recent brief visit I saw the reltively new compound and buildings at Hornsea where the seven inshore boats are based, and watched as one was recovered from the sea by its tractor. I grabbed a few quick photographs of these developments that had grown up since the time, twenty five years and more ago, when I regularly visited this coast. Looking at the crew bringing their boat in on a bright and relatively warm March day, the prospect of fishing the coastal fringe of the North Sea appears to have its attractions, but on a cold, grey, gale-swept January day I'm sure it would be decidedly less alluring.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 105mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Hornsea beach tracks

click photo to enlarge

It occurred to me the other day that during my life I've flip-flopped from one side of the country to the other. I was born in Westmorland (now Cumbria) and raised in the western Yorkshire Dales, moved to the city of Hull for a while, then went back to north-west England for many years, and latterly re-located to Lincolnshire. During all but my early life I was a keen photographer, never specialising in anything in particular, but rather dipping my toe into many of the recognised genres. I suppose that architecture, landscape and natural history have figured large in my output, and of course, down the years I've shot many thousands of family snaps.

In the past decade, as I've spent more time with my camera, I've deliberately selected a few specific subjects and begun building collections of images. Examples of this include spiral staircases, motion blur, and the subject of today's photograph, tracks in the landscape. Lincolnshire's man-made landscape is the place where I began to notice these man-made intrusions, and where the sinuous, sometimes semi-abstract quality, that they impart first impacted on me.

Wheatfields and barley fields offer good opportunities for this kind of photography. The former sometimes provide intriguing examples that appear to have no beginning. But pasture can have good tracks too, and land freshly prepared for a salad crop offered one of the craziest examples I've come across. I've also photographed these tracks on sandy beaches where they temporarily hold a record of cleaning vehicles or the launching of boats. Today's photograph is an example of the latter that I took on a recent visit to Hornsea in East Yorkshire. This seaside resort on a long, sandy coastline, has a small fishing fleet that specialises in brown crabs and lobsters. The boats are launched and brought in by tractor, and this recovery offered an opportunity to add another shot to my "tracks" collection.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
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

A black and white argument

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I've often thought that black and white photography is to colour photography as drawing, ink wash, etching etc is to painting. Not so much in the sense that it is inferior (as some believe), but because in printed form it pre-dates colour. Today, now that colour photography is widespread,  black and white continues only where lower cost or "artistic" reasons demand it. In the field of art photography, of course, black and white is a conscious choice, frequently the preferred medium of a practitioner, and is usually printed to the very highest standards. However, the man in the street frequently sees it as a lesser medium, a fragment of reality from which something has been deliberately witheld.

It's not my place to convince anyone of the fine qualities that black and white photography offers, though if I were to do so I'd begin, not with examples of noted practitioners such as Bill Brandt or Alfred Steiglitz, but with the work of John Bryan and Wilfred Shingleton. Most photographers are perhaps scratching their heads at these names: cinematographers are more likely to have heard of them. Bryan and Shingleton won the 1947 Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Art Direction - Set Direction, Black and White, for their masterful work on the 1946 film of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations directed by David Lean. I watched this film (for the third or fourth time) over the Christmas period, and as I did so I marvelled again at the striking use of monochrome; at the drama, beauty, style and atmosphere that it brought to the production. As an opening argument for the virtues of monochrome photography it is hard to beat. It is also the best film version of this dark tale. If you haven't seen it then do so!

Over the past few weeks I've slipped into black and white a little more than usual. I've always liked the medium, have processed my own prints from film, and continued using it in the years when colour printing gained the ascendancy in the UK. Winter has always seemed to me to be a good time for black and white images. Today's photograph of an Ipswich registered fishing boat near the quayside at King's Lynn, Norfolk, cried out for the treatment because of how it made so much more of the boat's silhouette against the light expanse of water and sky.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: 6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

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

Tractors and crabs

click photo to enlarge
A few years ago, when I lived near the North Lancashire coast, I took a photograph of old tractors on a beach at Lytham. They were used for catching shrimps and for launching small fishing boats. The tractors are necessary because the estuary of the River Ribble at this point is often almost empty of water, and boats have to be taken to the channel to be launched, and must be dragged above the high tide line to be stored.

Today's photograph shows some more old tractors at Cromer in Norfolk. This fishing port is on an open section of coast with no harbour. Consequently boats have to be launched and retrieved with trailers hauled by vehicles. The boats shown are used for catching the famous Cromer crabs (and lobsters). Each has a one or two man crew, and sets pots on a bank about three miles off shore. The crabs they catch are smaller than many, but afficionados declare them to be the tastiest in Britain. The tractors are two Fordsons (Major models I believe), and the third I can't identify. They must date from the 1950s, and the fact that they are still working fifty or sixty years after they were made is a testament to the durability of the design and materials. Salt water and sea air is a corrosive mixture, and doubtless the tractors have received repairs and regular maintenance down the decades, but I still find it remarkable that they continue in daily use.

I took a few shots of the tractors at work, but this one, I think, is the best. I like it for the composition and the distant dog walker. I cropped the shot to remove excess sand and sky, and have ended up with a shot that looks like it might have been produced by the 16:9 aspect setting on the LX3.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Number 9

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The trio of albums - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles ("The White Album") (1968) and Abbey Road (1969) - for me, represent the summit of the Beatles' achievement. There are those who would say Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966), with hindsight, are as good or better than the later works, but, whilst they include some excellent songs, I think the subsequent recordings surpass them.

My recollections of those years is that Sgt Pepper burst upon us like something from another planet. The musicianship, invention, breadth, instrumentation, and sheer spirit of the work meant that it rarely left our turntables. In retrospect Revolver had pointed us in this direction, and other bands had dipped their toes in the pool that the Beatles plunged into, but the phrase that one critic used to described it at the time, "revolutionary popular music," wasn't an overstatement. And the question on everyone's mind in 1967 was, "How can they top that?" Well, in 1968, with The White Album they showed that there was no need to try. In that work they extended some of the ideas of Sgt Pepper, but also side-stepped into Anglo-American music's past. Affectionate Beach Boys parody (Back in the USSR), grinding blues (Yer Blues), music hall brought up to date (The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill), Noel Coward-like crooning (Wild Honey Pie), love songs, hard rock and the rest - not forgetting a clutch of George Harrison songs that are amongst his best - made it an album that revealed its subtleties only after many listens. And, just as Sgt Pepper had one song that probably didn't deserve its place on the album (Within You, Without You), so too did The White Album (Revolution 9). John Lennon's eight minutes of musique concrete influenced by Yoko Ono's regard for Stockhausen and Cage was worth a listen, maybe two, at most three. However, it sat very uneasily alongside works that bear multiple hearings. It would have been better if George Martin and Paul McCartney had got their way and left it off the album.

My mind strayed onto this subject, and I heard that EMI engineer repeating "number, 9, number 9, number 9", when I was deciding how to title the photograph above. It shows a marker (Number 9) at the end of one of the submerged groynes at Hunstanton, Norfolk, with, farther out, a distant ,small, sea-fishing boat. Its minimalistic subject, spare composition and limited colour range make this image as much of an oddity amongst my output as the track of that title is amongst the Fab Four's ouvre.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 64mm (128mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On