Windless turbines

click photo to enlarge
As the rise and transformation of personal computing in recent decades demonstrates, specific technologies come and go. What I find interesting in this regard is how a continent such as Africa largely missed the desktop computer and laptop and went straight to the computer that is the smartphone. Clearly, the step-by-step evolution in computer technology that the industrialised nations have experienced is not the only way forward: it's possible to miss out a stage or two.

Here's an example of technology arising and then vanishing. A couple of centuries ago the area that is now Greater London was home to about three hundred windmills. There were several thousand elsewhere across the country. These were not the generators of electricity seen in today's photograph, but machine/buildings for milling grain and other products. Today there is but a handful of working mills, none of them commercial. With that in mind I wonder how long wind turbines will be generating a portion of our electricity requirement. I've read that the life-span of a turbine is about twenty five years on land and I imagine it must be less than that at sea. But, quite a bit of energy infrastructure is used beyond its sell-by date so it's likely they'll be around for a little longer than that. However, the fact is that it might be a new technology - one currently in development, or one yet to be imagined - that makes wind turbines redundant. When that day comes the wind "farms" that have sprung up on land and sea will be no more.

I have mixed views about wind turbines. I wish our politicians and energy companies would favour green power generation that is less visually intrusive, or even - heretical thought! - work seriously at reducing consumption. Yet, if they did, I'd lose a photographic subject that is undoubtedly interesting. I've taken quite a few shots of these tall structures at various Lincolnshire locations, including those offshore at Skegness. I took several more on a recent visit to that seaside resort. We arrived at the coast when the wind was barely perceptible, the sea was still, a light mist was clearing, and the sun was illuminating the stationary turbines. This particular image presents the white monsters looking benign and beautiful.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 112mm (168mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Number 9

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The trio of albums - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Beatles ("The White Album") (1968) and Abbey Road (1969) - for me, represent the summit of the Beatles' achievement. There are those who would say Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966), with hindsight, are as good or better than the later works, but, whilst they include some excellent songs, I think the subsequent recordings surpass them.

My recollections of those years is that Sgt Pepper burst upon us like something from another planet. The musicianship, invention, breadth, instrumentation, and sheer spirit of the work meant that it rarely left our turntables. In retrospect Revolver had pointed us in this direction, and other bands had dipped their toes in the pool that the Beatles plunged into, but the phrase that one critic used to described it at the time, "revolutionary popular music," wasn't an overstatement. And the question on everyone's mind in 1967 was, "How can they top that?" Well, in 1968, with The White Album they showed that there was no need to try. In that work they extended some of the ideas of Sgt Pepper, but also side-stepped into Anglo-American music's past. Affectionate Beach Boys parody (Back in the USSR), grinding blues (Yer Blues), music hall brought up to date (The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill), Noel Coward-like crooning (Wild Honey Pie), love songs, hard rock and the rest - not forgetting a clutch of George Harrison songs that are amongst his best - made it an album that revealed its subtleties only after many listens. And, just as Sgt Pepper had one song that probably didn't deserve its place on the album (Within You, Without You), so too did The White Album (Revolution 9). John Lennon's eight minutes of musique concrete influenced by Yoko Ono's regard for Stockhausen and Cage was worth a listen, maybe two, at most three. However, it sat very uneasily alongside works that bear multiple hearings. It would have been better if George Martin and Paul McCartney had got their way and left it off the album.

My mind strayed onto this subject, and I heard that EMI engineer repeating "number, 9, number 9, number 9", when I was deciding how to title the photograph above. It shows a marker (Number 9) at the end of one of the submerged groynes at Hunstanton, Norfolk, with, farther out, a distant ,small, sea-fishing boat. Its minimalistic subject, spare composition and limited colour range make this image as much of an oddity amongst my output as the track of that title is amongst the Fab Four's ouvre.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 64mm (128mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Soft light by the sea

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Where yesterday's image was all about strong, bold colour, hard edges and "in your face" impact, today's is just the opposite. It's a shot taken two days earlier, during my visit to the Norfolk coast, and is soft, with muted colours and more sublety, an image that sidles up to you rather than plants its feet in your way and won't be ignored.

I've said elsewhere in this blog that there's absolutely no chance of my photography moving to the point where I have a "style that is all my own", the point to which the great and good in photography urge us to travel. I've never believed that to be a goal that we have to seek, or that a photographer is necessarily a better practitioner if it happens. But, as I say, for me it's academic anyway because I like to point my camera at anything that comes my way.

Cycling west along the foreshore at Sheringham, the concrete promenade narrowed, then came to an end by a lifeboat building. I walked out onto the shingle to photograph this lonely looking boathouse. I was glad it was there because it gave a point of focus to my composition, a small but definite man-made structure, whose hard white edges contrasted with the cotton-wool clouds, and the earth colours and natural forms of the cliffs, beach and sea. It also gave some visual weight to the left of the image to counter the quite dominant cloud on the right.

The location looks deserted, and it was. However, just out of sight on the cliff tops people in bright checks, unlikely caps, and loud socks scurried about in twos and fours, trying to coax small white balls into tiny holes with "implements ill-adapted for the purpose." Yes, it's the location of Sheringham Golf Club!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/640 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On