The chimneys at Melton Ross

click photo to enlarge
We periodically travel from our Lincolnshire home to north of the Humber on family business. Our route to the Humber Bridge, the crossing that takes us over the river from Lincolnshire into Yorkshire, is always the same, though our route home is frequently varied to include the opportunity for shopping, a walk and photography.

Travelling north we always drive past the chalk quarries at Melton Ross. Chalk has been dug in this location for nearly two hundred years and chimneys of one kind or another must have been a feature here since whiting first began to be produced.Today a variety of lime products and services keep four large chimneys and assorted smaller ones sending very visible plumes into the north Lincolnshire sky. I've photographed part of the works (click photo for extra large image)before - also on a damp, overcast day - but this time I went to the summit of the road bridge that goes over the nearby railway to get my shot

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title:Chalk Quarry Chimneys, Melton Ross, Lincolnshire
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 56mm (112mm - 35mm equiv.) cropped
F No: f5.5
Shutter Speed: 1/800 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Signal box levers

click photo to enlarge
There was a time, during the Renaissance, when scientists spoke of the "six simple machines". Building on ancient Greek and Roman understanding they identified these as the lever, the wheel and axle, the inclined plane, the pulley, the screw, and the wedge. Each of these uses a single force applied as work on a single load to produce mechanical advantage. All more complex (or "compound") machines, such as the wheelbarrow, windmill, trebuchet or shears, were seen as composed of multiples of the simple machines. The industrial revolution made this elegant, if somewhat basic, understanding insufficient as a way of describing machinery and forces. However, it retains a place in the teaching of physics.

These thoughts came to mind as I stood in a railway signal box at Bressingham the other day. I think it was the first time I'd been in such a building. This particular example had been moved from Raydon Wood, Suffolk, to be used with the railway exhibits at the Norfolk gardens. I was particularly taken with the levers in the lever frame that the signal man used to control points, signals, gates etc thereby facilitating the safe movement of a train through the area for which he had responsibility. I'd often seen these through the window of a signal box. However, the elevated position prevented me noticing what I could see now - they are colour coded, numbered and each has its purpose described. By manipulating single levers, or combinations of them, the signalman determined the course of the train. Today this is done electro-mechanically but for decades muscle power, augmented by the lever did all that was required.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon 5D2
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 90mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 400
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Sleaford station

click photo to enlarge
One day I'll count the number of photographs I've posted that have a person as the main subject. Ignoring the occasional self-portrait the total must be less than five out of the 878 on PhotoReflect and 60 on PhotoQuoto. In fact, I'm struggling to remember more than one!

However, I do like to include people in photographs for interest, scale and as strong compositional elements. I regularly post shots that feature people for one or all of those reasons. Moreover, I find that some photographs, and landscapes in particular, benefit from a human figure, though I think many photographers appear to hold the opposite view. I also like, where I can, to take photographs of urban scenes that include people, though my images are never just about the people. One of my own favourite shots of this sort is a very Victorian looking view of Greenwich Park in London. When I say "Victorian-looking" I mean that in terms of its feel rather than the details.

Today's photograph has something of that feel too. It shows passengers waiting on the railway platform at Sleaford. The station in this Lincolnshire town - like most British stations - is a Victorian construction. The oldest Tudor-style stone building dates from 1857, and much of the rest, of brick, from 1882. I stood with this range of buildings behind me to take my shot. The photograph shows the ornate Victorian cast-iron and wood canopies and the more modern information board and monitor displaying train times. However, it wasn't just the architectural details that prompted the shot, it was the four people spread along the platform and the light from the low sun beyond. The brightness added silhouettes, shadows and halos to the scene that appealed to me. Like the image of Greenwich Park this one has a feel of some of the Victorian paintings by minor artists that one sees in regional art galleries - views of the local high street, station or horse racing course. The one thing that is quite different, of course, is the number of people in the image. In the nineteenth century this station would have been packed with waiting passengers, but at the end of a cold January day in 2010 there were only the four.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.2mm (48mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f3.2
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Futurology

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I have said elsewhere in this blog that I think I could have been a futurologist. It's a job with little responsibility - I mean, honestly, how many people really believe your predictions? Moreover, you know for a fact that much of what you foresee will never come to pass, so failure in your job is a given. However, it would definitely be great fun (for a while at least) to get up each morning and sit at your desk trying to discern trends; extrapolate the present into the future; and make inspired (or otherwise) guesses about things that will come to be that don't yet exist, even as a figment of someone's imagination.

This thought went through my mind as I walked down the London Underground pedestrian tunnel shown in today's photograph. Though I've travelled on gleaming, stainless steel escalators and moving "walkways", none of them said "future" to me in the way this tunnel did. Perhaps it's because it looks like a glimpse of the future as dreamed up in the 1960s. The concealed lighting, muted colours (only the blue handrail and matching blue flecks on the wall enlivened the whites, greys and earth tones), circle segments and converging lines could be a set on the 1968 Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

As we used the tunnel to move from one section of the network to another I paused a moment, letting my companions continue ahead to provide some mid-ground interest, set the LX3 to its widest angle (24mm at 35mm equiv.), and took this shot. The original colour version of the image isn't especially colourful, but when I looked at it in black and white I liked not only the way it emphasised the converging lines but also the "looking at the future from the past" feel described above.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The Welland Viaduct

click photos to enlarge
The Welland Viaduct (also known as the Harringworth Viaduct and the Seaton Viaduct) is a railway viaduct that crosses the valley of the River Welland. In so doing its brick arches straddle the border of the counties of Northamptonshire and Rutland. It was built between 1876 and 1878, is three-quarters of a mile long, has 82 arches each of which is 40 feet wide (with an average height of 57 feet) and required 20 million bricks, 20,000 cubic yards of concrete and 19,000 cubic yards of stone for its construction.

As was often the case on large engineering projects in the Victorian period, workmen ("navvies") came to the site with their families to secure employment. Here they were housed in two temporary settlements. A curate built a mission hut in one of the camps to serve the religious needs of the 400 migrants! The bricks were made nearby with local clay, those who dug it earning £2 a week. Bricklayers were paid £2 10s weekly, foremen £3.00, labourers £1 5s, and mechanics £1 16s. All could earn overtime pay for working into the night. Part of the labour force comprised 120 horses used for pulling waggons.

The viaduct is the longest such structure in Britain and its unique size and form has resulted in it being designated a Grade II listed structure. For a number of years after the 1960s trains used the viaduct only infrequently. However, a regular service now runs across it (as you can see from my second photograph). I took my images during a bicycle ride that included visits to a number of churches, villages and this monument to the vision of our Victorian forbears. Incidentally, I was really pleased to be able to incorporate the very co-operative horse in my first image: it gave a welcome touch of scale to a subject that is very difficult to photograph.

photographs & text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photo 2
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 110mm (220mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blurred reality

click photo to enlarge

The critic John Berger writes that the invention of the camera "showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual". In his view the invention and use of perspective in painting "proposed to the spectator that he was the unique centre of the world", but the camera demonstrated that there was no centre, and that "what you saw was relative to your position in time and space". He goes on to note that the invention of the camera changed the way men saw, and " the visible no longer presented itself to man in order to be seen", rather it being "in continual flux, became fugitive." Much late nineteenth century and twentieth century art is built on this idea.

I was reflecting on this during the processing of the photograph above. The outing on which it was taken included a visit to a gallery where I saw paintings of such depressing banality that you wondered whether the artist was familiar with any of the notable practitioners of the past two centuries. If he had been he surely couldn't have displayed his own work. My image shows the reflection of a railway bridge that crosses the River Witham near the Grand Sluice in Boston, Lincolnshire. The bold shapes and the clouded sky attracted my eye, and I decided to shoot it with a slow shutter speed to blur the water. The resulting image reminded me a little of the Abstract Expressionist paintings of Franz Kline that feature strong, dynamic and spontaneous shapes against lighter backgrounds. Whatever the association it's a strong contrast to the style (and inspiration) of my preceding two blog images!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 31mm (62mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f9.0
Shutter Speed: 1/10
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: Off

Not so common sense

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"Common sense is the collection of predjudices acquired by the age eighteen".
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist

Many would think Albert Einstein's view of what constitutes common sense somewhat jaundiced, but it clearly contains an element of truth. Perhaps the dictionary definition of "sound judgement not based on specialised knowledge" would receive more support. Common sense is a great quality, but it can often lead us astray, and is frequently enlisted by those wanting to cut through what they see as the obfuscation of deeper analysis.

In the debate over the environment, and in particular the production of greenhouse gases, common sense is used to support the growing of biofuels. It seems obvious that renewable sources must replace depleting oil, and will have less environmental impact. And yet, recent analysis by scientists from a range of disciplines suggest that the proposed cultivation of crops for fuel is often worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Similarly, the purchase by consumers of locally-sourced food is widely felt to be better for the environment, reducing the cost and pollution associated with transport. It just seems like common sense. Yet the production of green beans in Kenya, which are then flown to the UK, is found to be less environmentally damaging in all but the main months of the UK outdoor harvest. Apparently Kenyan beans are grown more organically, without the machinery and range of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that are used here. And, whereas the UK (and nearby mainland European growers) use heat to get early and late crops, in Kenya this isn't necessary. Research turns common-sense on its head.

I was thinking about these issues when I photographed this steam engine, 5224, a C.B. Collett design of 1924 on loan from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, here at the preserved North Norfolk Railway line at Sheringham. I reflected on whether improvements to the coal-burning steam engine would ever make this type of propulsion compete economically and environmentally with diesel and electricity. Common sense tells me that it is unlikely, but then common sense sometimes proves to be nonsense!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13mm (26mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On