Photographing the horizon

click photo to enlarge
I grew up in a valley on one side of which were, nearby, high, rugged hills and on the other lower hills with a more distant prospect. As a child I called the very tops of the higher side of the valley the "skyline" and summits of the most distant part of lower hills the "horizon". Nobody told me to make this kind of distinction - it simply seemed natural that the skyline was near and clearly above you whereas the horizon was the distant point where earth and sky appear to meet. I still feel that is a reasonable viewpoint.

Perhaps it was growing up in a valley that gave me an interest in the horizon - observing its peculiarities, noting how it changed as I moved, wondering what was beyond it. Quite a few of my photographs feature the horizon (or skyline) and in some, as is the case with today's photograph, most of the detail is clustered there. What I like about scenes and photographs like this one is the way that man's massive achievements - cooling towers, cranes, chimneys, ferries become as nothing when seen against a great river and the vastness of the sky.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: River Humber Seen From Hull Pier
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 42mm (84mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Reflecting on cameras and capital cities

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A recent couple of days in London coincided with the two warmest days of the year so far and I returned to a cooler, windier, wetter Lincolnshire with a face turned ruddy by the sun. I'd gone to our capital city for a small family gathering. However, the visit also became an experiment with my recently acquired compact camera and I made it an opportunity to photograph some of the city's most recent buildings as well as those that have been around for a few years.

The best way to get to know a camera such as my Sony RX100 is to use it. So, I made it my sole camera for the trip and turned its one inch sensor and 28-100mm (35mm equiv.) lens to the sort of uses that I would usually apply my Canon 5D Mk2 and its 24-105mm, 17-40mm and Tamron 70-300mm lenses. What do I conclude? The Sony does a remarkable job. The screen coped in all but the brightest conditions and I could usually compose quite satisfactorily. Having 20.2 megapixels allows for  quite a bit of cropping without the file size becoming too small, consequently the effective focal length can be easily doubled. Unfortunately its not as easy to widen beyond 28mm. I like 24mm as my standard wide focal length, but all cameras are compromises of one sort or another and this is one I'll live with. I shot JPG only rather than RAW or RAW + JPG. It's less flexible, but less work too, and I found that satisfactory. The colours are good, quite "film-like". The biggest drawback was that a couple of times I inadvertently pressed the movie record button. It's all well and good making movie recording easy, but it's a touch too easy with this camera.

On our second day I walked ten miles round the city in search of shots. I was particularly keen to see how the 20 Fenchurch Street skyscraper (nicknamed "The Walkie Talkie") is coming on, and whether its appearance is improving as it starts to approach completion. The answer to that last question is a resounding "No". It seems to me that this building is the wrong shape and the wrong size for its location which is too detached from the main group of tall City towers and too close to the river. Moreover it intrudes far too much on the view of Tower Bridge from the south.

The other thought I had as I followed the course of the River Thames through the city is that London continues to hog far too much of the nation's spending on infrastructure. I got a real sense that the effects of the depression that are felt right across the rest of the country are barely impinging on the metropolis and that this can only lead to further regional and social divisions that will have bad consequences.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18.2mm (49mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/500
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On 

A prospect of London

click photo to enlarge

Over the past eight years I've taken a number of photographs of this view of London and the River Thames seen from Rotherhithe. It's the panorama that I survey from my son's windows, and it is an ever-changing prospect. Not only does the river traffic vary considerably - liners, warships, catamaran ferries, pleasure boats, Thames sailing barges, yachts, kayaks and more can be seen - but the skyline itself has been regularly added to as well.

When I first gazed upon this view the bullet-shaped City tower at 30 St Mary Axe (affectionately known as "The Gherkin") wasn't built. At that position on the horizon was what was then London's tallest building, Tower 42 (formerly the Natwest Tower). This can still be (just) seen, its shape adding angular protrusions to the top right of The Gherkin. Nor was the tower behind the needle-spired church built, and a couple more of the nondescript blocks are also recent constructions. However, the biggest addition to the London skyline (from wherever you view it) , "The Shard", is slowly climbing towards what will be its final height of 1,017 feet (310 metres), though it is out of this particular view, to the left.

But, river traffic and skyscrapers notwithstanding, the most significant effects on this prospect are actually the weather, the time of day, and especially, the sky. Today's photographs illustrate this. The larger image was taken for the beauty of the November afternoon sky and the way the filtered sun lit up both the buildings and the clouds. The smaller image, taken with a wide angle lens, shows the clouds and the river illuminated by the city's lights. Of course, some of those clouds could be smoke because the shot was taken on Bonfire Night (November 5th)!

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photograph 1 (2)
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 70mm (17mm)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/640 (1/4)
ISO: 100 (3200)
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The web of London

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As I stood on my son's Thames-side balcony the other day, and watched the sun going down over the city of London, I reflected on the journey that I'd made down to the city that day. The final leg of my trip had been on the M11 motorway until I joined "A" roads and and minor roads and threaded the car through London itself. In his poem, The Whitsun Weddings, Philip Larkin described a journey into the capital by train from the northern city of Hull. He describes the "slow and stopping curve southwards" of the railway that takes him there and thinks of "London spread out in the sun, Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat..."

My mind's-eye view of the city was, however, different from Larkin's. I saw the lines of motorways and other major roads converging on the capital from all directions, and, encircling it, the orbital roads and the M25: in fact, the image I had was a spider's web. And, as I dwelt on that simile I considered how appropriate it was, for just as the spider entices all that it needs to the centre of its construction, so too does London attract the country's people and resources from the regions, leaving the provinces depleted and relatively impoverished. William Cobbett (1763-1835), the radical pamphleteer and author of Rural Rides (1830), called the city "the great wen": that is to say, a pathological swelling, a cyst, on the face of England.

There are not many who would be so harsh today, but the pull that the capital exerts has been recognised by government and large institutions, such as the BBC, who have made efforts to relocate London-based parts of their organisations to the regions. During my brief stay I looked for signs that the city was suffering the same slow down as the rest of the country during the current recession. But, the bustle, building, and frenetic energy seemed much the same as ever: maybe my provincial eyes couldn't see the signs. Or perhaps London is, to modify L.P.Hartley's phrase, "...a foreign country; they do things differently there."

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 42mm (84mm/44mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/3200 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -2.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On