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

Reflecting on walnut trees

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Over the past few weeks the same incident has replayed several times. A grey squirrel has hopped across the lawn with a large walnut in its mouth. It has stopped, dug at the grass with its front feet, decided the spot was no use, and then moved on to repeat this action until a suitable spot is found. There it buries the walnut. Do they ever find them again? I suppose so, but I never see it happen. Do we have a forest of sapling walnuts sprouting from the lawn in spring? No - so I guess they are retrieved and eaten by the squirrels at some point in the winter.

I never noticed walnut trees until I moved to Lincolnshire. They probably existed where I lived in the other parts of England, but not until I moved to this county in the East Midlands did I see them in sufficient numbers that I became aware of the trees. The village where I live has several. A couple are in a small playground/park where they provide amusement and collecting opportunities for the local children. Another one is in a field that is visible from the front of my house.

This tree is slowly succumbing to age and the weather. Last year, during particularly windy weather, a large bough fell off. This year the top branches were completely free of leaf. It can't have many more years left. The field in which it is located was once pasture and I imagine that the sheep and cattle found its shade welcome in high summer. For thirty years or more, however, it has been used for vegetable and cereal growing and as far as the farmer is concerned it has become an obstacle around which agricultural machinery and vehicles must be carefully guided. I posted a photograph of it on the blog two years ago when it was looking very fine against a dark and threatening October sky. The other day it was the tree's shape in the mist, augmented by a gathering of rooks in its topmost branches, that caught my eye.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Another view of fog

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Today's photograph was taken about seventy yards from and a few minutes before the shot in the previous post. And, where that image was captured with the sun behind me, this one was taken contre jour. That fact, the nature of the subject and the conversion of an essentially monochrome colour photograph into very definite black and white has resulted in this image acquiring a quite different mood. The previous shot has a slightly melancholic touch but it's essentially neutral, wistful or even slightly upbeat with the intrusion of that warming sunlight. However, here the stark gravestones silhouetted against the misty west end of the church is loaded with associations that, I can't help thinking, are largely the result of certain writers and a whole slew of horror and mystery films.

People such as Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens knew that there is nothing like a fog or mist to evoke a feeling of cold, menace or fear. Think of Pip and Magwitch in the misty Kent marshes in the 1946 version of "Great Expectations". Better yet think back to how Guy Green, the Oscar winning cinematographer on that film depicted the scenes, and how influential his work was for succeeding generations of film makers such as John Carpenter. And then consider how these images have affected how the man or woman in the street views a misty churchyard. From Bram Stoker's "Dracula" to the latest teen horror, the combination of fog and a graveyard have become, in the popular mind, synonymous with supernatural dread. Of course, none of this influenced me in any way as I carefully composed and processed this photograph. Really. Just as it wasn't a factor in this photograph of a "House of Correction" or this one of a ruined church. Honestly!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18.9mm (51mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Looking out of the window

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It's sometimes a welcome change when you don't have to actively search out photographs but instead they just appear when you look out of the window. Today's is a view from one of our upstairs windows, a scene that I spotted as I went to brush my teeth. I've always liked to photograph in fog. It's an experience that is often physically unpleasant but mentally stimulating. The way the suspended water droplets mute the colours, make objects less distinct, and can give a plain backdrop to a scene where it is usually busy and visually distracting, opens up new photographic possibilities.

In this shot all those factors came into play. However, it was the presence of the sun's dimmed disc that caused me to take the photograph. It offered both a sharp point of light as a visual focus and sufficient brightness to show off the skeletal trees. My first shot was of just those two elements. But, as I watched groups of wood pigeons  fly out of the village trees and head out to the fields - brussel sprout tops are favoured at the moment - I thought that a group of them in the top left corner would add to the composition. It took a wait of a couple of minutes before some appeared, but when they did I took my shot. Wood pigeons are the one bird that is generally unwelcome in my garden. They cause significant damage to our vegetable garden and the cherry trees, and cause me to use wire netting as protection. So, it was a refreshing change to hope for and then welcome the presence of these rapacious birds.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 183mm
F No: f7.1 Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.00 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

Fost and frog...

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...is what sometimes comes out of the weather forecaster's mouth when delivering his or her predictions in front of the TV camera or radio microphone. This spoonerism of "frost and fog" is as much of a verbal trap for such people as "It is customary to kiss the bride" coming out as "It is kisstomary to cuss the bride" is for a clergyman. Though the latter has got to be apocryphal, hasn't it?

The cold weather that has affected much of Europe in the past week has been felt in Britain, though thankfully to a lesser extent. Night time temperatures have been well below normal for early February and these have been followed by first a light and then a heavy and widespread fall of snow. It doesn't take much of the white stuff to get me out and about with my camera. However, mist and fog accompanied the first morning and my photographs reflect this.

Today's shot shows a derelict barn surrounded by a few trees out in the ploughed fields. The fog has done its usual trick of isolating the foreground and mid-ground from the background. This shot on a clear day would have the houses, trees and church spire of a distant village breaking up the horizon and detracting from my subject. As it is, there is no horizon to speak of and only the hint of what long ago ceased to be a useful agricultural building.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 249mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  +0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ponds, marl pits and pingos

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When I moved from East Yorkshire to the Fylde Coast in Lancashire I was struck by the number of small ponds in the fields around where I lived. The geology of the area, the location of the ponds relative to field boundaries, the sheer amount, and the evidence of "spoil" at the edges of some, led me to the conclusion that they were marl pits, holes deliberately dug to find lime-rich clay to spread over a light, impoverished soil to improve its fertility and water-holding capacity. Such pits, which frequently become ponds, are common in many lowland areas of Britain. Cheshire abounds with them, though it also has large ponds the size of small lakes (meres) caused by gravel extraction or the subsidence of salt workings.

Britain's man-made ponds were also dug as watering places for cattle and sheep and perhaps some of those on the Fylde Coast were made for that reason - or served that purpose after the marl had been extracted. The period from 1750 was when many of these kinds of ponds were created. But not all field ponds are man-made. Some occur naturally where soil type and water flow lead to the build up of water. This kind of pond is often dry in high summer, but has varying levels of water at other times of year. Several of the Cheshire meres are thought to have been created thousands of years ago when glacial ice that was embedded in moraines melted. The eastern edge of the Fens and the Brecklands valleys have ponds that have been identified as pingos. These were formed during the last glaciation when ice below the surface caused mounds which collapsed when temperatures rose, creating ponds.

What of today's pond in the Fens photographed on a foggy day? It's my guess that it's man-made. In this area that was once littered with ponds and meres of varying sizes caused by the poor drainage of low-lying land there are, today, hardly any left. Agricultural improvement banished them, and with their disappearance went the wildlife that frequented them. This happened not only in the Fens but right across the country. In fact, three-quarters of our field ponds have been filled in or drained since the second world war. So, examples such as the one above are not only a worthy photographic subject, but are in need of preservation as precious ecological and scenic resources.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.2mm (48mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photography in the fog

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When I lived in Hull and the weather was foggy I often heard the sound of the ships' foghorns as they negotiated the River Humber into the port or went out into the North Sea. Living on the Lancashire coast I heard them occasionally: there were fewer ships, fog was infrequent, and technology had advanced compared with when I lived near the east coast. Now that I'm in Lincolnshire I experience more fog than in either of the other locations but I recall hearing a ship's foghorn only once. I suppose I'm too far from the sea and ships in The Wash are relatively few, smaller, and fairly quiet.

In common with much of eastern England we've recently had a few days of mist and fog and I've made a point of going out with my camera to see what I could snap. As I've said elsewhere in this blog, fog is one of those weather conditions - like snow - that transforms a landscape and allows the photographer to make very different images in very familiar surroundings. Unfortunately inspiration seemed to have deserted me on my forays into the gloom and I came back with very little that satisfies me. The two shots I post today are the best of my meagre pickings.

Certainly, to my mind, they don't compare with some of my earlier efforts such as this jetty and yacht, this tree, this cottage or this Fenland "view". The smaller of today's offerings shows a new footbridge over a dyke on a footpath near Donington. The main image is the west end of Donington church. This marvellous piece of medieval architecture has a very interesting west doorway. It dates from the fourteenth century and, unusually for a village church, has a projecting hood with an ogee arch that protects the inner arch and door. Time and weather have eroded the sharp details of this feature, but the sculpted leaves and other mouldings can still be discerned under its current generous covering of moss.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Main Photo
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -1.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The story of a blog post

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Most of the responses I get to PhotoReflect are polite, friendly and thoughtful. However, once in a very rare while an individual blog post takes on a life of its own and roams the web, ending up in odd places and provoking unusual reactions. Here is the tale of one such recent post.

On 4th December I posted a piece called "Rooks, hoar frost and adverts". In it I mentioned the humour that I'd experienced reading the advertising pitches that Toyota and Land Rover were making during the present spell of exceptionally cold, snowy and icy weather. The photograph that accompanied it was O.K., but nothing special, and the text was mildly diverting for me, but not, I think, particularly noteworthy. Consequently I was puzzled to see it achieving so many hits; enough that it is now the fifth most visited page on PhotoReflect since I changed my page counter to Blogger Stats in July. So, I did a bit of Googling and discovered that a Wiki site that trawls blogs and that indexes "similar" subjects had picked it up and listed it alongside sites discussing the Land Rover Freelander. A couple of days later I got an intemperate email (complete with expletives) from someone who owned a Freelander, and who wanted to explain to me why I was wrong to describe it as "dangerous", and how he, with a young family, had chosen it because it was a very safe vehicle. I did what I always do with unsolicitited emails and deleted it.

Later, however, I wondered whether I should have responded - in the spirit of broadening his thinking on the ownership of such vehicles. I'd have talked about how bigger, heavier vehicles are only relatively safer, and how their safety comes at the expense of increasing the risk to other road users and their children. Then I'd have suggested to him that by his logic he should have bought the biggest available 4X4, or better still, have got a massive lorry (HGV) because as far as the passengers go (though certainly not other road users), these are by far the safest vehicles on our highways. Instead I wondered why someone would invest the time and effort to justify himself, using such language, to me, a complete stranger. Perhaps, I thought, it is an extension of the "forum" mentality, whereby people proclaim their own opinions about news articles, etc. and defend them in a completely unrestrained, and often abusive, way. Most odd.

On the day I took this photograph we had hoar frost again, alongside a thick fog and temperatures that never rose from several degrees below zero. During a circular walk I passed a lone tree that I've photographed a couple of times thinking it would make an image, but which thus far hasn't. On this occasion the weather and the frosted white umbellifer in the right foreground made a composition good enough for me to think, "That will do!"

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 47mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Early evening sun, snow and mist

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It's surprising how much of the detail of what you learn in school stays with you throughout your life. I was looking at a cup of cold tea the other day and into my head popped the phrase "colloidal substance". A colloid, as I recall, is a substance dispersed evenly throughout another substance. The word was explained to me by my teacher by reference to, among other things, cold tea. The following day I was looking for a late afternoon/early evening photograph while walking along a track past the village of Bicker when mist started to roll in from the north west. As I started to take my photographs of the trees and church tower with the bright disc of the sun above, the mist started to thicken and the whole of the horizon gradually disappeared from view, the landscape becoming enveloped in a thick fog.

On my journey home I tried to remember the precise difference between mist and fog as it had been explained to me in geography lessons. I recollected that the density of water droplets and the consequent degree of visibility was what separated one from the other, and it was in the hundreds of yards (metres today I suppose), but I couldn't recall the precise figure. So, later that day I looked it up. The current definition of fog is visibility less than 200 metres. However, if you are a pilot it is less than 1000 metres. That latter fact wasn't one I knew and puzzles me somewhat. Do pilots have enhanced vision? As far as mist goes, it is the discernible presence of water droplets with visibility greater than 200 metres.

So, by my reckoning this photograph, which incidentally was taken from near the point where I took this one the other day, shows mist. What it doesn't show is how cold that afternoon was. The temperature was about -8 Celsius (not cold in world terms, but quite nippy as far as the UK goes), however the perceived temperature was a good bit lower due to the wind. The time I had my gloves off to change lenses was as long as I could stand it, and I haven't felt that cold for a few decades - in fact, the last occasion would probably be when I was at school learning about colloids, and the difference between mist and fog!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 228mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A drought then a deluge

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When this present spell of snow came I eagerly went out into the lanes, fields and village hunting for photographs. For four consecutive days I came back with shots on my memory card, none of which were any good. I find that I sometimes have periods like this when I can't see the images, and the more I try the less I succeed. But, I've been involved with photography long enough to know that if I carry on looking and shooting, eventually things will come right.

And so it proved this time. On the fifth day I gathered a clutch of minimalist images, and on each subsequent day I've been happy with at least one shot I've taken. Today's was taken on the same day as yesterday's image, when the light seemed to brighten but the fog thickened to the point where the horizon began to be difficult to discern, and earth and sky started to merge. It gave me a landscape that included very little, and so I needed a focus of interest. And what could be better than my wife in her bright red jacket, a small point of brilliant colour against the almost monochrome background!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +0.6 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

On the other hand...

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...I have five fingers.* What I meant to say before that joke intervened was (with reference to yesterday's thoughts on what morning light can bring to your photography), "On the other hand you can go out in the afternoon and just deal with what ever fate sends your way". A couple of days ago fate dealt me snow with fog sufficiently dense that the other side of a very large field could barely be seen, but not so thick that the sun wasn't making its presence faintly felt every now and again. Looking at the scene I immediately thought of Whistler's paintings - his tonalist style, his nocturnes and his waterscapes. Or perhaps Mark Rothko, a painter who said there was no landscape in his works.

I probably wouldn't have taken the shot but for the sun. Its brave attempts to force its way through the murk gave a weak and watery spot of interest to the sky. That seemed to be just enough to work with the snow covered field with the odd pieces of earth showing, and the hedges, trees and buildings of the village on the horizon. So I framed a 1/3:2/3 split and took my photograph of not very much.

Minimalist photographs, "photographs of nothing", appeal to me, but aren't always easy to spot. Here's another one that I took last year by the sea where they can more often be captured, and here are some more thoughts on the subject from an early blog post.

* A Steven Wright joke.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: +1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Early morning light

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As I said in one of my early posts on this blog, I'm a morning person. Of all the times of day the morning is the one that I value most. It seems to hold in its grasp the promise of the day to come, to have a freshness that afternoon and evening cannot match, and the first light of the day is incomparable. It has been said that if you want to take photographs that catch the viewer's eye, then go out with your camera in the early morning. If the sun is present, with or without clouds in attendance, its low angle allows you to make silhouettes, add drama, and simplify your images. Those three things are important in making your photographs noticeable. Often when you include the sun in the image the results are not quite what your eyes see, and can be quite unpredictable, but that's part of the fun!

The other day I strode out into the snowy morning just as the sun was rising. The temperature was -8.5 Celsius but there was no wind, and the crispness of the air was matched by the sharpness of the light. I set off down a lane that I don't use very much, largely because it holds less visual interest than others that I favour. However, at this time of day it allowed me to walk towards the rising sun. Hares scattered as I walked along, their feet throwing up powdered snow as they dashed away, and I stopped periodically to frame trees against the ever brightening sun. The photograph above is one of the best I took. It's not much of a subject, but for me (though maybe not for everyone!) it demonstrates the power of light to transform the ordinary into the interesting or extraordinary. I liked this one because as I progressed down the lane a bank of fog made an appearance, and it added a diffuse quality to the image that contrasts with the the harder outlines of the branches.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Fenland fog

click photo to enlarge

In a talk I gave last month I was waxing lyrical about the purposes and pleasures of photography. During the course of my delivery I described photographers as one of the few groups of people who, on seeing fog from their bedroom window when waking, exclaim, "Hooray!", gobble their breakfast and hurry out into it. With hindsight I recognise that may be an overstatement. In fact, thinking about it more, I'm possibly the only person who does this! And yet, what can be more enticing than atmospheric conditions that change the face of the landscape that you know and photograph regularly, and which presents you with fresh views at every turn? I know that photographers definitely relish the falls of snow that bring about a similar kind of transformation, so I perhaps can't be the only one to welcome the arrival of a good, thick fog.

As I write this we've just had the first snow of the winter. But, as is sometimes the way, a walk in it with the camera produced nothing that I considered good enough to post here. So, back to the fog. Today's image is of a Fenland cottage out in the fields by the side of an unfenced lane, muddy from the passage of vehicles that have been harvesting the beet and brussels. Had I taken the photograph on a clear day the horizon would have featured telegraph poles, pylons, a few houses and trees. The fog transformed the scene by obliterating this clutter and left me to focus on the small building and its surrounding plot and trees. In fact it turned the image into one that could have been taken at any time between, say, 1850 and the present day. With that in mind, and to add to the soft qualities that the fog gave to the scene, I thought I'd convert the photograph to black and white.

For another shot of this cottage in last December's snow, see here.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Foggy day photography

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I like to convert colour photographs to black and white. I'm not one who does it all the time, nor can I say that I do it with the majority of my images. But, when I have a subject that I think suits the treatment, I have no hesitation about going monochrome. People, buildings, some landscapes, shots with shadows or large areas of darkness and occasional highlights, are the subjects I favour. The Black and White gallery in my "Best of PhotoReflect 5" features many such images.

However, there is one subject that, I think, particularly lends itself to a black and white treatment and that is fog. Many photographs that are taken in fog (as opposed to above it from a hill) have very muted colour. Consequently the step to monochrome is smaller than it would otherwise be. Furthermore, the gentle gradations that foggy images feature are emphasised when they are in shades of a single colour rather than broken up by the complication of several. In addition, black and white often has the effect of giving a foggy image a more sombre or mysterious mood; something that can be very appropriate for the right subject.

Today's photograph is, to my mind, the best of the three foggy photographs that I'm posting following my recent morning expedition. The simplicity in terms of composition and subject make it for me. The road, hedge, two areas of grass, sky and the pair of pine trees would be complicated by a backdrop of more trees and a distant farm in clearer weather, and the image would be much busier. When I composed it I also liked the way the trees were near, but not at the intersection of the converging lines. It's probably not a shot that will have particularly wide appeal, but I do think it's one of my better recent photographs.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Foggy winter pond

click photo to enlarge
Today when I woke up there was a dense blanket of fog over the countryside, and a temperature that was flirting with freezing. So, after I'd re-fuelled and warmed up with my morning breakfast of porridge and a cup of tea, I set off to look for photographs.

Usually when I photograph in the fog I'm searching out the simplification and flattening that this atmospheric condition brings. Simplification happens because the background to objects fades quickly into invisibility, leaving them highlighted against a clean backdrop. Simplification comes about through the thick atmosphere masking the detail of things, giving them the appearance of faded silhouettes. I got some of those kind of images. However, today's post isn't one of them because it's full of detail.

It shows a pond opposite a farm at Quadring Eaudike. I took the shot for the silhouettes of the leftmost trees that gradually fade into the distance, their reflections in the pond, and the reddish brown of the dead reeds. The branches of the tree in the right foreground add a layer of dark sharpness that contrasts nicely with the bluer, more distant trees. This whole package appealed to me in the fog. However, it will also offer something different when the fog has gone so I'll probably return in a week or two to see what other shots I can harvest.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Gotham City-on-Thames

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When I drive into London down the M11 from the north, my first glimpse of the capital is the cluster of towers at Canary Wharf. As I get closer, off to the right, the tall buildings of the City and the London Eye start to compete for attention. But, my destination being the south bank of the Thames upstream from Canary Wharf, it is this landmark, and particularly the pyramid-topped Canary Wharf Tower (One Canada Square), that acts like a lighthouse guiding me on to the A13, the north bank and the Rotherhithe Tunnel.

Canary Wharf is London's financial district. Ken Allison, in his book London's Contenporary Architecture +, describes it as an "instant Gotham City", and with good reason. Not only has it appeared in a relatively short time, but the overall planning for this area of derelict docks was by Skidmore, Owens and Merrill (SOM), the Chicago-based architectural firm who were responsible for some of the iconic towers of the C20. They also designed several of the lower buildings in the development in a Post-Modern and post-Post-Modern style. However, it is the cluster of tall structures, in particular Canary Wharf Tower, HSBC, and Citigroup that give the place a metropolitan character that is much more of the U.S. than England. The architects of these three buildings - Cesar Pelli and Norman Foster - have produced sleek, but quite bland emblems of global capitalism that impress more in a group than individually.

In fact, at night, or when low cloud wreaths their tops, or when sun burns off early morning fog as in my image, the buildings have a brooding quality that brings to mind some of the more recent Batman films. But, a bright, clear, sunny day reveals them as just another set of opulent, shiny boxes. My photograph was taken last autumn, and is one I overlooked at the time. The indistinct quality of the image, the fog and mist (partly of the buildings' own making), and the way the early sun was falling, has made a photograph that seems to have more than a hint of the Gotham City-on-Thames alluded to by Ken Allinson.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 50mm (100mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Winter photography

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A spell of winter weather that is colder and duller than usual has kept people indoors recently. A quick skip round the photography forums finds many in the UK wishing for brighter skies. Like most photographers I relish bright, contrasty light. A sky with 70% broken cloud of different hues (the kind seen after rain), blue showing through here and there, and pools of sunlight reaching the ground, is probably my ideal for landscape shots.

But, different weather presents different opportunities and we must seize them. Heavy rain is pretty useless as far as I'm concerned, with only a few opportunities for images. Light rain or drizzle offers more chance of capturing glistening photographs. A leaden sky with a blanket of stratus above is lamented by many, but can be fine as long as you keep the camera pointed down, and, if it's bright enough, is particularly good for saturated colours and therefore plants and flowers. Snow is great, not only for the novelty (at least in much of England), but also because of the way it converts scenes into drawings with dark shapes and lines across a white surface, and for how it changes the light and illuminates the shadows. Fog is good too, and I often venture out in such weather to try and capture the graduated tones and simplified silhouettes it offers. That was my thinking the other day when we went for an afternoon walk near Swineshead in Lincolnshire. A weak sun was shining through wispy cloud and visibility was poor. It looked like mist and fog would start to appear as the sun went down. And so it did.

I took this photograph towards the end of the walk, balancing the faint outline of Swineshead church towering over the village houses, with the silhouettes of trees on the right, and used the curve of the road as a leading line into the shot.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 137mm (274mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Canary Wharf thoughts

click photo to enlarge

The fog that enveloped London early yesterday morning was the precursor to a beautiful, uplifting, sunny day with an unseasonal maximum temperature of 23° Celsius. But, as I walked along the south bank of the river at Rotherhithe, and the towers of Canary Wharf loomed up out of the mist, my mind was filled with darker thoughts. Along with the City of London, these buildings are the country's financial powerhouse - Citicorp, HSBC, Barclays, Lehman Brothers and others have their headquarters at Canary Wharf. Looking at them I couldn't help but see the fog that surrounded the towers, a fog that had swept in and enveloped them, but also was of their own making from their heating plants, as a metaphor for the financial turmoil that surrounds and penetrates most of these institutions.

However, my mind only allowed these thoughts to last for a moment, because the way the sunlight was falling on the buildings, turning them into amorphous masses, casting deep shadows that contrasted with the illuminated particles of water that filled the air, caused the name Hugh Ferris to surface in my consciousness. Among American architectural draughtsmen of the twentieth century Hugh Ferris (1889-1962) stands supreme. His charcoal, pencil and crayon perspectives of imagined and actual skyscrapers created romantic, almost Piranesian views, featuring towering mass, deep shadows, converging verticals, and the multiple step-backs of the early buildings. Ferris clearly saw drama, poetry and a vision of the future in the skyscrapers that were springing up in New York and Chicago.

Had the morning been clear and sunny I'd have looked at Canary Wharf and seen the buildings of organizations that once revelled in their omnipotence and omniscience but now crave state hand-outs. But the fog and the light allowed me to forget the troubles of the world for a while, and see it through the eyes of a visionary draughtsman. For that I was grateful.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm (48mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/2500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Chimneys and the picturesque

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This derelict Lincolnshire cottage has four chimney stacks, some of them leaning quite alarmingly. Four! That probably equates to an open fire in every room. It looks like a nineteenth century structure, so for much of its life coal and wood would have burned merrily in its fireplaces, offering the inhabitants visual cheer and limited warmth.

The earliest houses had a hole in the ceiling for smoke to exit, but as building skills developed a chimney to confine the smoke and make it leave the building in a controlled way became firstly desirable, then mandatory. Houses made of wood frequently had a chimney made of bricks or stone for safety reasons, and these can still be seen on such houses built during the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fireplace and chimney breasts were often a focus for decoration - arches, pilasters, brackets and mythical figures are common, as are mantelpieces for the display of family artefacts. The chimney stack above the roofline was also often embellished too: a clay pot on a stepped brick cornice for the humble dwelling; spirals, castellation, and more for the well-to-do residence.

Today, ever fewer buildings have chimneys. Indeed the day is coming when new buildings will not require, or be permitted, a source of heat that requires combustion. Consequently chimneys will probably, in time, disappear and with them the focal point of the fireplace and the finial-like finish to the top of houses. Am I alone in thinking that the photograph above would be much less interesting, less picturesque, without the chimneys? Perhaps it's an age thing - maybe younger folk don't see things that way? However, I certainly wouldn't have photographed this scene had there been no chimneys on this building, regardless of the allure of the sun breaking through the cold, foggy, autumn morning.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13mm (26mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Dedications and weather

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All Church of England churches have a dedication, usually to a saint, but often to the Virgin Mary, the Trinity, the Holy Rood (Cross), or one of a few other religious symbols. This dedication is usually included in the full name of the building. So, the faintly seen structure in this photograph is The Parish Church of St Swithun, Bicker, Lincolnshire.

Usually the dedication that the church carries today is the one that it originally received a thousand years or more ago. But sometimes it is changed. Bicker's church has always, as far as I know, carried the name of St Swithun, although sometimes it has been, and still is, written as St Swithin. Who was this person? Well, he was a Bishop of Winchester, who died in the year 862, and whose life is relatively well recorded. He appears in"The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" and several other ancient texts. Like most saints his fame increased after his death, and miracles began to be attributed to him. Swithun's best known miracle is the restoration of a basket of eggs that some workmen had deliberately broken! However, in England, his feast day - 15th July - is much better known than that of many other saints. This is mainly due to the saying that surrounds rain falling (or not) on that particular day: "St Swithun's day if it does rain, For forty days it will remain, St Swithun's Day if it is fair, For forty days 'twill rain no mair (more)." So, English folk who know this saying pay special attention to the weather when 15th July comes around, and hope that precipitation does not bring forty days of wetness right in the middle of summer!

Rain wasn't the prevailing condition when I photographed St Swithun's. An overnight frost had coincided with fog, and the early morning sun forcing its way through gave an opportunity for a contre jour shot. A horizontal crop seemed to make best use of the photographic elements available.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off