Views from Cromer pier

click photo to enlarge
Victorian and Edwardian recreational piers make great photographic subjects. They stretch out from the shore into the sea, a wooden deck with pavilions, theatres, shops, shelters and railings, supported by a forest of cast iron or steel legs and cross bracing. Ornate metalwork, fanciful roof outlines, flagpoles and other excrescences make for lively shapes against sea and sky. People flock to them seeking the experience of being at sea without setting foot in a precarious boat or sickness inducing ship. Fishermen seek them out for the opportunity they offer to easily cast into deep water. Yes, piers offer the photographer subjects a-plenty.

However, piers offer more than a subject. The photographer at the coast, casting around for a vantage point from which to take shots of land,  the sea or the beach, can do a lot worse than position himself on a pier. I've been fortunate to have lived in the vicinity of piers for a large part of my life and I've frequently taken the opportunity of standing on one in search of a striking or unusual composition. The other day I was in Cromer, Norfolk, doing just that and I came away with a couple of views of the shore that please me. Both were taken fairly early on a Sunday morning before most holidaymakers were stirring. Both feature Cromer's medieval church with its tall tower, described by Pevsner as, "at 160 feet, by far the tallest of any Norfolk parish church." And both show the zig-zag sloping path that takes the pedestrian down to the pier entrance from the viewpoint in front of the Hotel de Paris (1895-6). But, only the smaller photograph shows the pier itself, a structure of 1900-1. It is currently undergoing a refurbishment and has "clutter" on its decking so I kept the amount in the frame to just enough for a strong leading line to the church and hotel. The main photograph, though the colour is not as interesting as in the smaller shot, has a composition that I like better, with the groynes, sea-wall, church tower and line of buildings combining asymmetrically to good effect.

If you want to see what the pier looks like in totality these views taken a couple of years ago tell the tale.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Silly brand names and pier views

click photo to enlarge

The other day I was idly thinking of silly brand names for ranges of clothing and I came up with two short lists. The first group of names are deliberately brief and not so sweet - DIVOT, THUNK, GAWK, CRUD, and SWAT. The second set are quirky - SYNONYM, OFF THE WALL, LEFT FIELD, HIGH HEAVEN and FIG LEAF. I think some of these names could definitely make it out there in the market place: they're certainly no worse than some of the ludicrous examples I've seen printed across the bosoms, backs and rear ends of shoppers on the local high streets.

My current holder of the silliest clothing brand name is, I think, BENCH, although I'm no expert on this subject and there are doubtless dafter ones to be found. It took me a while to work out that this was a brand name at all, so large were the letters on some of the items of clothing, and initially I thought the wearers were employed by a company of that name. And in a way they were - to advertise on their behalf, but for zero wages, for which they're likely to have paid a price premium! It wasn't always like this. Brand names used to be discreet or completely invisible, and drew their inspiration from the manufacturer's name(s), the place they were made, or latterly by the use of a simple proper noun. Today names are "designed" by companies that specialise in branding, though ultimately they do little more than I did and simply pluck a few words from a thesaurus. Moreover, we've moved on from nouns into other parts of speech. In fact it was this that prompted today's reflection. I was wondering what title to give to this post and the phrase "view from" popped into my head. Then I remembered that I've seen sports wear (or at least sporty leisure wear) with that brand name. Who on earth thought up "VIEW FROM" as a brand name? And why did it get any farther than that person's first utterance of it? Perhaps because in a world where a book store can be called Amazon, a bank can be called Egg, a new video-on-demand platform can be called Qriocity (it deserves to fail for its name alone), and a re-arranged expletive (F.C.U.K.) can be used as a brand name to sell clothes, then clearly anything goes.

Today's photographs show Southwold Pier viewed from the beach, and Southwold and the area of beach from which I took the first shot, seen from the pier. The first photograph was taken around midday, and the second at about 10.00a.m. Piers are good vantage points for shots of seaside towns, and of course, make good subjects in themselves. Here, to illustrate that point, and for comparison, are two "views from" featuring Blackpool's Victorian North Pier - the Tower seen from the pier, and the pier seen from the promenade.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1 (Photo 2)
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.) (36mm (72mm/35mm equiv.))
F No: f5.6 (5.3)
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100 (100)
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 (-1.0) EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Contre jour pier

click photo to enlarge

Contre jour means, literally, "against the day", but a better English translation is "against the light". Today's photograph is another of this kind of shot taken around the same time as yesterday's, further down the pier at Southwold. At one time in my photography of recent years I seemed to be taking these almost daily, perhaps seduced by the drama that is injected into an image when your lens moves near to the sun (see examples here, here, here and here). Today's photograph, however, whilst it has more impact than the same shot with the sun behind me would have had, is rather more subdued than the photographs I used to regularly turn out. Perhaps that's down to the clear sky, sharp details and shadows, calm sea and relatively few people.

Black and white is often used as a means of emphasising the powerful qualities of contre jour. Nineteenth century photographers noticed this effect almost immediately, and early cinema exploited it too, although in motion pictures it was the German Expressionists, such as Fritz Lang, and the Hollywood "film noir" of the 1940s and 1950s who took it to its heights. It's something I mean to do more of as autumn progresses and the sun is lower in the sky.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 22mm (44mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/2500
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Southwold Pier

click photo to enlarge

As you point your camera nearer to the sun the dramatic quality of your image increases - and the colour drains away. That thought ocurred to me when I reviewed this photograph on my computer. But then I thought, hang on a moment, Southwold Pier is pretty devoid of colour anyway, so this image doesn't make that point very well.

I used to take more contre jour shots than I do now. I think it is my change of location to rural Lincolnshire: the subjects that work with this approach are now harder to find. However, on a recent visit to Suffolk I did take a few against the light, of which this is one. I kept the sun's brightness out of the shot - you can just see the edge of it at the top right of the frame.

I chose this shot for today because it happens to illustrate a few of the compositional devices I listed yesterday. Framing, using the posts and pier name; contrast by shooting contre jour; leading lines (the railings and pier itself); repetition of forms; balanced asymmetry (the sweep of the near pier to the left, the thrust of the main pier and pier name to the right); and a single subject. But, as I say above, it doesn't make my point about colours dying away as you point the lens closer to a strong light source.

Southwold Pier opened for business in 1900. That being the case you'd expect it to have large, ornate pavilions, substantial benches, decorative railings, and lashings of bright paint to emphasise that a pier is all about FUN. However there are a couple of reasons why the pier is a sober and studied essay in white, black and grey (the primrose yellow landward building excepted). The first is because, as with most piers, it has been knocked about a bit and very little remains from the early days. In 1934 a storm swept away the T-shaped landing stage at the end of its 810 feet (245m) length. Then, during the Second World War, like many east and south coast piers it was cut to prevent it being used by invasion ships. A further indignity was visited on it when it was struck by a drifting mine that exploded taking down another section. Repairs in 1948 proved to be insufficiently robust to prevent a 1955 storm cutting it in half, and in a storm of 1979 it was reduced to a stump a mere 150 feet (45.4m) long. However, in 1999 a fund raising campaign secured enough money to rebuild it, and in 2001 it was re-opened in the form we see today. That brings me to the second reason for its sober colours and undemonstrative architecture. Southwold is one of the English seaside towns without an "amusement" area. The place has a reputation as a middle-class playground, and I imagine that this is not unconnected with the pier's appearance and its difference from most other English piers.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blogging and popularity

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Ever since I started blogging I've used a hit counter to give me some idea of the level and sources of the traffic that comes my way. For years I've used a free version of Sitemeter, and found it supplied all my needs. However, for a while the policies of Sitemeter with regard to cookies has been questionable. So, when Blogger introduced Stats* several weeks ago, I thought I'd dispense with my old hit counter and use the "in house" offering. But, the information I am now provided with is slightly different and in some ways less useful: it has more aggregation of results and less information about individual hits. Consequently I've added Google Analytics as well. I've been familiar with this evolving tool for a few years, using it on another website that I have. What both these counters do that Sitemeter doesn't is rank the most popular pages on my blog by All Time, Month, Week, Day and Now. When I looked at the All Time (in this case only several weeks) information it surprised me: the list doesn't include any of what I consider my best photographs or supporting texts, and I've been pondering why these specific pages are popular. Here is then, the current All Time top ten with my thoughts on why they prove more attractive than the rest of my PhotoReflect offerings.

1 Tree shadows and architectural drawings
Surely it can only be architecture students looking for CAD symbols.
2 Lichfield Cathedral
All those vertical lines and arches say "cathedral" to a lot of people, plus, Lichfield is probably less photographed than many other English cathedrals.
3 Promenade silhouettes
It's an eye catching shot - but not much else.
4 The megapixels war and dynamic range
This piece got picked up and referred to by a few online sites and blogs so that accounts for its popularity.
5 The corrugated chair
Making chairs out of found materials seems to be on the curriculum of some educational institutions, and the corrugated chair in question is not particularly widely illustrated.
6 Dog daisies
I have no idea! Perhaps my name for the flowers draws others who also use it rather than the more widely used ox-eye daisy and marguerite.
7 St Leonard, Kirkstead, Lincolnshire
I can only think that this small building in Lincolnshire's rural fastness is not widely covered on the web.
8 Plates of meat
Maybe I'm attracting gourmands rather than people who know that the term is Cockney rhyming slang for feet!
9 The fan vault
Probably another subject with relatively little illustration or text on the web.
10 River Welland landscape
Not one of my best landscapes, though one that is in the English tradition. Perhaps the River Welland doesn't have many such images on the web.

What has all this to do with my photograph of a section of the neon sign that proclaims Skegness Pier? Nothing. The fact is I had little to say about the photograph other than that I liked the colour combinations chosen for the neon tubes and their backgrounds. Oh and the fact that despite my shutter speed being rather slow for the focal length the shot is pretty sharp.

* only currently available (I think) for those using Blogger in Draft

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cromer Pier now and then

click photo to enlarge
Frances Frith (1822-1898) was a Victorian entrepreneur, who, after making his money in wholesale groceries and printing, established himself as a photographer and a supplier of postcard views. It's likely that he took an amateur interest in the relatively new field of photography before he set off to photograph Egypt and the Holy Land in 1856. After his return to England he established a business in Reigate supplying postcards of the images he had taken overseas. However, his firm really took off when he set it the task of photographing every town and village in the British Isles, so that postcards could be sold in all these localities. Frith took many of the images himself, but increasingly employed staff to assist with the task. He persuaded the Post Office to stock his cards, as well as two thousand tobacconists, newsagents and other shops. His photographic postcards were printed in enormous quantities by a firm in Saxony. Frith tried not to just record the places and historic sites, but to compose images innovatively and sensitively, offering the buyer a record that was both pleasing and truthful. He never quite succeeded in his aim of photographing every location, but his firm was, nonetheless, a great success. It remained a family business until 1968, and in other hands continues to this day as The Francis Frith Collection.

I recently bought a book that features a large selection of Frith's photographs. They are shown in the context of Britain as it was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, compared with photographs of the same scenes today. An extensive narrative comments on what the images depict, and opines on the changes that can be seen. It is the most disappointing book I've bought for a very long time. This is largely because the tone of the author's voice is, in the main, too negative and too condemnatory of change for my taste. He seems to have some difficulty seeing and writing about the changes for the better that are evident today, and to be too accepting of the superiority of the past. Fortunately I'd bought the book second-hand for very little!

I was reminded of my book when I was processing this photograph of Cromer Pier. It contains three photographs of the Norfolk coastal town. However, the search facility at The Frith Collection took me to a list 169 views! And very interesting and useful this proved too. I was able to compare my photograph with a view from 1901, the year before the pier's official opening, and get an idea of what remains of the original structure.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Cromer Pier and tribute bands

click photo to enlarge
I play the guitar enthusiastically but not very well. Over the years I've played in public a few times, and even taught people to play. I've never written any songs, and those I play and sing come from a wide range of sources - from traditional folk and blues to contemporary (well fairly recent!) rock. When I "do" a song I usually try do it in my own way, varying the treatment, tempo, phrasing, etc. And, though there are a few performers that I particular like and whose songs I sing, I've never felt the desire to focus on just one of them, or to try and emulate their performance in every detail.

Consequently, I have a hard time understanding the appeal of "tribute bands". I'm of the view that if you can't see the original performer, then it's better to hear their songs interpreted by someone rather than have them replicated by an ersatz outfit. My view is probably a minority one because these bands seem to be popular and everywhere, covering all kinds of performers, those still living and those no longer with us. However, whilst I've never been to see a tribute band there is one aspect of the genre that I do rather like, and that's the names they come up with. The Bootleg Beatles is pretty lame, Bjorn Again (Abba) is better, AC/DShe (female AC/DC tribute) is clever, Definitely Might Be (Oasis) leaves you in no doubt about what to expect, and Fred Zeppelin is just wonderfully daft. If you like this sort of thing, there's a pretty extensive list of such bands here.

So, what's the link between tribute bands and today's photograph of the pier at Cromer, Norfolk? Well, whilst I was taking my shot I noticed above the entrance, immediately over the sign advertising "Calamity Jane", another banner promoting Buddy Holly and the Crickets. I commented to my wife that the organisers musn't have heard about the plane crash, but she pointed out to me that I'd mis-read what it said. In fact it was advertising Buddy Holly and the Cricketers. That made me smile. It seemed an appropriately English twist on a tribute band to the early U.S. rockers, and I idly wondered whether they performed in white flannels, jumpers and caps.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19mm (38mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Incendiary bicycles?

click photo to enlarge
A few decades ago, in my teenage years, I was cycling down a long, steep and winding hill above Langcliffe in the Yorkshire Dales. As the drystone walls and sheep flashed by the smell of burning impinged on my consciousness. Glancing briefly around I could see neither burning man nor flaming beast, but looking down I saw smoke coming from my brake blocks. I suspect I had bought the cheapest available, and they didn't appear to be up to the job. When I stopped, got off and inspected the source of the heat and smoke, I could see that a burnt residue had been smeared around my wheel rims by the friction of rubber on metal. I think I can honestly say that is the only time I have ever considered a bicycle to be anything remotely resembling a fire hazard.

And I suppose that's why I found this sign fixed to a seaside pier in Blackpool, Lancashire, very puzzling, not to say quite bizarre. I tried to imagine the kind of bicycles that the author of the missive might have in mind. I could see that if the clowns from the Blackpool Tower Circus left their car on the pier it might well explode with a flash of flame and a puff of smoke - clowns' cars often do that. But their bicycles? Never! And anyway, most of them have only one wheel so if that was what the sign-writer had in mind he should have prohibited unicycles too! To this day that sign is probably the oddest that I've been motivated to photograph, and the whole point of it, including the spurious "health and safety" justification, puzzles me still.

I came across this image as I was transferring files to my new hard drive after my recent misfortune. It makes a good companion for the image I posted a couple of weeks ago. If you're not keen on this sort of shot, hard luck, I found a third example that will appear soon!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E500
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: N/A

The end of the pier

click photo to enlarge
2008 was a bad year for Britain's piers. In July the end of the 104 year old Grand Pier at Weston-super-Mare was devastated by fire. Then in September the landward buildings of the pier at Fleetwood, Lancashire, a slightly younger structure dating from 1910, was burnt out. Of the two piers Weston's older structure is a great loss that certainly warrants repairing and renovating. Fleetwood's pier, which I know very well, was not however, a thing of beauty, and the remains should be cleared away. The promontory on which it stands will be improved by its removal.

It seems ironic that structures resting on metal over boundless water should so often be consumed by fire, but it has been a reasonably regular occurrence down the years. When I was a child the Lancashire resort of Morecambe was my frequent seaside destination. The town had a pier at that time. In earlier times it had two, but the West End Pier had lost its pavilion to fire in 1915, and subsequent storms slowly destroyed the rest. The Central Pier, that I remember, had pavilions known as "The Taj Mahal of the North". They burned down in 1933, so when I saw it the structure was truncated and had newer, less grand buildings. However, these too succumbed to fire and storms and the pier is no more.

The story of St Anne's pier farther down the Lancashire coast is depressingly similar. When it opened in 1885 it was 914 feet long with a "Moorish" pavilion. However, fires of 1974 and 1982 resulted in the seaward end being demolished and its length reduced to the present 600 feet. Thankfully it still has its Tudor-style buildings at the landward end, and a stretch of new building extends seaward from that. Today's photograph shows part of the old wooden tip of the pier with ornate, openwork, tapering metal columns with balls on top. Were they lights I wonder? I photographed them on a December day with the low sun throwing shadows across the sand, and the sky a mixture of deep blue, turquoise and grey.

Here is another of my photographs of this structure.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19mm (38mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/640
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Language and confusion

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The pleasure to be found in language is limitless. You can learn history through language, conceive beauty by arranging it well in poetry and prose, better express yourself by understanding it more, create humour playing with it, and reveal your own ignorance by uttering just a few words!

In, I think, the 1970s, at the height of frosty relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, I heard a senior US politician being interviewed by the BBC. He was complaining that the Soviets weren't negotiating in good faith, and were putting obstacles in the way of reducing tension between the two super-powers. "You know", he said, embarking on what he saw as a clinching argument, "it's significant that the Russian language doesn't have a word for detente." I wanted the interviewer to point out that neither does United States English, which is why it borrowed one from the French! But he didn't, and the moment passed. But not without my concern about the safety of the world ratcheting up one more notch!

On another, more recent occasion I was talking to a young boy, newly arrived in England from Malaysia. We were talking about the differences between his country and England, and in the course of our conversation I asked if, during his weekend exploration, he'd enjoyed the pier. He paused before answering, and then politely told me that he'd enjoyed everything he'd laid eyes on, and that England was a fine country with many wonderful sights. It took me a few moments to realise that he thought I was using the word "peer", meaning "to look searchingly"- an understandable confusion by someone young whose first language wasn't English, and who clearly was doing well in it! The homophones of the English language can be decidely baffling.

Today's photograph is of the pier (as in a long structure on legs extending over water!) at St Anne's, Lancashire. I was taking a few shots of it at the end of the day, and captured this one of a figure walking in front of the ironwork. I liked the bold and delicate silhouettes making lattice-work across the orange glow of evening. My camera had a long zoom lens at 226mm (35mm equivalent), and was set to Aperture Priority (f6.3 at 1/1000 second), ISO 100, with -0.7EV.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen