The "Boathouse", Wisbech

click photo to enlarge
The Cambridgeshire settlement of Wisbech still retains much of its character as a Georgian market town. Many of its historic buildings have escaped the attentions of the improvers and developers, and it has a very high number of listed buildings - about 270 - for such a comparatively small place. However, this relative bounty in terms of eighteenth century architecture seems only partly the result of conscious conservation: the decline of the town from its glory years, with the attendant lack of development, is also an important factor.

However, Fenland District Council and the people of this part of Cambridgeshire are clearly taking steps to revitalise the area, and I came across one such example on my recent visit. The "Boathouse" Business Centre is a landmark office and services building next to the River Nene, the latest development in an area that already includes a marina, and promises more commercial space and riverside flats. The idea of "landmark" buildings as the focus of development seems widespread in Britain today, with museums (Manchester, Bradford), galleries (Salford, Liverpool, Gateshead), aquaria (Hull), and many other iconic, often cultural, structures being pressed into service. It seems to work: the failures - such as Manchester's Urbis (many say it didn't fail) which is to become the National Museum of Football - seem to be few.

This modest example in Wisbech has a shape that seems a little too obvious for its location: the pointed ends that echo a bow and stern, the white paint, the "bridge" balcony and the mast-like vertical wind turbine and street light all seem to proclaim too loudly, "I'm next to a marina - geddit!" That criticism notwithstanding, it is a good addition to the area, an interesting subject for a visiting photographer, and I hope it succeeds in bringing jobs and life back to this part of the town's riverside.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13mm (26mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

People as scale, focus and compositional element

click photo to enlarge
I've said elsewhere in this blog that people are rarely the main subject in my photo- graphs, family snaps excepted. However, I do value the contrib- ution that the human figure can make to an image. Moreover, in one area of photography I search for people where others would make every effort to remove them.

Perhaps it's my interest in painting that makes me include people in landscapes wherever it's possible. Look at landscape paintings from the Italian Renaissance through to the twentieth century and you'll usually see figures somewhere. Titian has them, Breughel too, the English landscape painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries invariably include them, as do the Impressionists. But, from Cezanne onwards, and particularly where an element of abstraction is introduced, landscapes start to appear that are devoid of the human form.

On the other hand, perhaps it's because I don't compose images around people that I include them in landscapes. I think not however, preferring to see my reasons for their inclusion as three-fold. Firstly, people can give scale to those scenes that aren't always easy to read in terms of the size of the objects on view. Secondly, our eye instantly recognises and is drawn towards the human form, so it immediately confers a point of interest or focus to an image. The third point arises from the second: given the visual importance that we attach to a person in a photograph, a figure can be a useful compositional device. Moreover, even if the figure is quite small it still has a lot of visual "weight". So, a relatively insignificant, distant figure on the left of a scene can quite easily balance a large and prominent object on the right.

Today's photograph exemplifies my first two reasons for the inclusion of people. I took several shots of the Humber-facing point of this aquarium in Kingston upon Hull called "The Deep". The thrusting, prow-like shape and the aggressive architecture (by Terry Farrell & Co.), alongside the navigation lights and markers, make for an interesting photograph, even when taken against the light. But, when a family came into view at the base of the building I knew that their inclusion would add scale and a point of interest that would add significantly to the image.

photographs & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 61mm (122mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On