The sunset cliché

click photo to enlarge
The biggest clichés in photography are generally thought to be the sunset and the sunrise. With the possible exception of babies and, perhaps, cats and dogs, (and not forgetting, in recent years, food on plates!) these two subjects must account for more photographs than any other. If you want to stake a claim to photographic credibility make sure you steer clear of sunsets and sunrises!

Why this should be I don't know. Each is a splendid phenomenon, and each is unique -  no two sunsets or sunrises are the same. Fine artists down the centuries have thought them to be just as worthy of depiction as any other subject, and inventiveness has been given full rein in conjuring up a different take on this familiar composition. This blog has several examples, all different, and to the photographer, all worthy of recording. I make no great claim for them though some are better than others as photographs, but I also make no apology for photographing them either.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Fenland Sunset with Pylons and Wind Turbines
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.7EV

New perspectives on familiar subjects

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It occurs to me that the title of today's post states one of the aims of most enthusiast and professional photographers. It is still possible to find subjects that haven't been photographed before, or haven't been photographed very often. But, photographers number in their millions, photographs in their billions, and inevitably most of the things that you and I point a camera at have been subjected to photography before. Consequently we daily try to see our familiar subjects in a different way from the way they've been seen before.

There are two ways of achieving this goal. You can set about the task consciously, adjusting your viewpoint, focal length, time of day, weather or any of the other variables that you can deliberately manipulate. Or, you seize the moment when serendipity offers you the opportunity of a less usual kind of image. On my Thames-side walks from Rotherhithe into the centre of London I've taken more than a few shots of Tower Bridge, a structure that says "London" to the world. Most of them have been ordinary, unexceptional, cliched, hackneyed, boringly familiar - choose your own description. I've posted only two of my images that have the bridge as the main subject - one from a less familiar location, and the other a deliberate attempt at a "different" kind of portrayal.

A couple of days ago I seized the moment when a shaft of late afternoon sunlight illuminated the bridge and made it positively glow against the dark clouds and deep shadows, and I thought this serendipitously taken shot, though not unique, was unusual enough to post.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 45mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

A kaleidoscope of beach huts

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"Beach huts have become something of a photographic cliche for UK-based snappers." Or so I said in April 2009 when I posted a photograph of these brightly painted seaside cabins at Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk. Mind you, when I wrote that sentence I'd already posted photographs of beach huts at Fleetwood, Lancashire, and Mablethorpe, Lincolnshire. And I subsequently posted one from Cromer, Norfolk, and a different shot from Wells-next-the-Sea. Today I've got three shots of beach huts from Southwold, so I guess you could say that if they are a photographic cliche then it's one I'm happy to indulge in.

As I walked past these immaculate daytime residences in Suffolk (there are 300) I idly wondered whether there is a collective noun for them. I can't find one so I suggest "a spectrum of beach huts", "a variegation of beach huts", or better still perhaps, a kaleidoscope of beach huts". We came upon these long lines on promenade and sand fairly early in the day, so people weren't very numerous. Moreover the sky was bluer than we had any right to expect in mid-September, and these two facts together made my photography easier.

As well as being painted in each owners' chosen colour scheme most of the beach huts have names. Often they are humorous (Pete's Palace, Aunty Bong Bong, Jabba the Hut, OOZUTIZIT, ShoreThing), frequently they have a touch of the idyllic (Shangri-La, Sunny Retreat), and some just make you wonder (why "Shepherdess Rest")? However, the rightmost part of the group that are shown in the top and bottom images (the same set taken from different angles) were unusual in having names that follow a theme. In these collective action had triumphed over the rampant individualism that usually characterises these small dwellings. Here are some of the names - can you work out the theme? Victoria, Albert, Elizabeth, Queenie, Margaret Rose. It wasn't difficult was it!?

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

(Image 1)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Power, politics and PR

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A long time ago I heard Tony Benn, a Labour MP, remark that in politics it should be policies, not personalities, that are important. As the UK's general election campaign has followed its course over the past few weeks that thought has resounded in my head more than once.

The US-style TV "debates" featuring the leaders of the three largest parties have, in my view, been an unmitigated disaster for British politics. They have trivialised it in an entirely predictable way. The news media's headlines after each of the three events were all the same,"Who won last night's debate?" Why any rational, intelligent person should think that a matter of any importance is beyond me. The qualities necessary to make a presentation and to answer questions on TV are not those required by people whose job it is to formulate and implement policies that will take a country forward. There are those who believe that the character of the person leading a country is important. It is, but we are never going to know very much at all about the true character of our leaders. On TV and elsewhere we will only see that which the PR people, "handlers", managers and others show us (gaffes excepted). One would think that the example of Winston Churchill would resonate for the British. He has been variously described by biographers and historians as a drunkard, a mysoginist, a racist and much more. He was excellent with a prepared speech, but would have found a TV debate much more difficult. Yet, for all his failings, he clearly had the personal and political qualities necessary to steer the country in its darkest hour.

It seems to me that too many of the voting and non-voting public come to their decisions on the basis of flim-flam - "it's time for a change", "I don't like what this government has done for the last 5 years", " I like the sound of him". How many, one wonders, have read the election manifestos of the contending parties? How many have compared the policy proposals? How many realise that the best we can ever do is cast our vote for the least worst option! Perhaps my condemnation of these debates is excessive. As I write this piece most of the votes have been counted, and the party of the person widely judged to have done best on TV hasn't improved its standing. Maybe the British public treated them like "The X Factor" except that they didn't flock to the stores and buy the records!

What has any of this to do with my photograph of a London office block? The answer is "power." Looking at the image it reminded me of the cinematic cliche whereby a director wishing to emphasise the powerful, aloof nature of characters in business or politics, has the camera swing upwards to a gleaming, sun-lit office block with a grid of faceless windows. "But", you might be saying, "this block is in shadows". Yes it is, but that reflects my downcast demeanour at the probable outcome of the election. They say that people get the government they deserve. Well, I'm not aware of having done anything so awful that I deserve a government led by an ex-PR man who appears to be a political naif, and so lightweight as to be in danger of floating away in a cloud of his own hot air.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographic cliches and beach huts

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Beach huts have become something of a photographic cliche for UK-based snappers. These wooden, low-cost, weekend and summer holiday shacks are making something of a comeback. In the 1970s and 1980s it like they might disappear. However, there has been an increased interest and demand in recent years, and a few new ones have started to appear. The straitened economic times that are upon us will doubtless give them a further fillip as many families forsake the beaches of the Mediterranean for the beautiful, though cooler, coasts of the British Isles.

What is it about beach huts that makes people point their cameras at them? It must be a combination of their bright colours, the unusual and varied nature of their construction, the fact that they are redolent of times past, and the photogenic places in which they are located. I wasn't prepared for this particular group of beach huts at Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, until I went over the sand dune nearest the sea and came upon them. Beach huts superseded bathing machines at the end of the nineteenth century when mixed bathing became more acceptable, and people no longer minded walking across the beach to the sea in their bathing costumes. The examples shown here are some of the oldest in the UK, dating from around 1900, and differ from others I've seen around the coast by being raised on legs and having steps up to a small verandah. I don't know whether any are municipally owned, but judging by the way they have been individualised I'd guess not. Probably most are privately owned, though doubtless some are available for hire.

Given that I described photographs of beach huts as a cliche, why was I taking pictures of them? Well, there's a challenge in producing an image that gets away from the stereotypical series of multi-coloured gable ends (though I have done that one in the past!) There's also the desire to record these distinctive structures. So, with those two points in mind I ended up with this distant shot of the huts backed by the pine trees and holidaymakers as the right foreground interest.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On