Values, land and the future

click photo to enlarge
What price can be put on a piece of farmland? All land has a market value which equates with as much as someone is prepared to pay. But market value is only one measure of value: agricultural land has values that exceed that narrow measure.

Today's photograph shows a field of pasture on the Lincolnshire Fens. When I took my photograph it was looking a bit the worse for wear after a wet winter and a cold spring. But the sheep and their lambs were finding sustenance in the grass. Farther out in the field lapwings were feeding and occasionally flinging themselves through the air in their courtship flight. A buzzard was surveying the scene from one of the hedgerow trees, and through the bushes were flitting a family group of long-tailed tits. Barn owls frequently fly along the drainage ditches that border the field hoping to surprise an unsuspecting mouse or shrew, and the distinctive song of the yellowhammer can often be heard competing with that of its near relative, the reed bunting. Pasture fields are not common in the Fens where vegetable production prevails, so the value to wildlife of this piece of land is locally immense.

As it happens this land (and three nearby sites) have been shortlisted for a 49 acre substation that is to service the giant Triton Knoll wind farm that is being planned for the North Sea off the east coast. If you thought offshore turbines preferable because they didn't spoil the countryside then think again. The company that needs the substation concludes that this site and the three others it has short-listed can be built with the least environmental and socio-economic cost. The land here is categorised as Grade 2. The other sites are either Grade 1 or Grade 2. In 2011the Government published the Natural Environment White Paper "The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature" which, amongst many other things, sought to halt the decline in natural habitats, promote natural diversity and "protect our best and most versatile agricultural land" (a phrase used to describe land classified as Grade 1, Grade 2 or Grade 3a. Clearly concreting over fields such as this is completely contrary to those stated aims.

Our world of markets, money, profit and growth needs to factor into its calculations the idea of "natural capital": the land that as well as providing food, a commodity that is going to be ever more costly and in shorter supply in the future, also provides habitats for the wildlife without which our world is a dull, impoverished and arid place. The value of natural capital is enormous, eclipsing many of the more routine costs and values that are involved in everyday calculations. A proper valuation of the area of land in this photograph would result in a rethink about its suitability as a place build on.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19.3mm (52mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On  

In the bleak midwinter

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"In the bleak midwinter,
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;"
from "In the Bleak Midwinter" by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), English poet

My current reading is "Between Earth and Sky: Poetry and prose of English rural life and work between the Enclosures and the Great War." This book, by Neil Philip, was published in 1984, and is an interesting anthology about the lives of the rural population during that significant period in our country's history.

The range of the selections is quite broad - traditional rhymes and songs, quotations from novelists, poems by "rural" poets and the more exalted, snippets from official and unofficial surveys of country people, and, most importantly, the voices of the rural workers themselves. Some of the writers, such as Hardy, Cobbet, Flora Thompson, John Clare, and Richard Jefferies will be familiar to anyone who has an interest in this period. However, two sources were new to me, and provide extracts that make the reader want to weep. The first is a publication called "How the Labourer Lives" by Rowntree and Kendall (Nelson, London, 1913). One of the chosen pieces describes the cottage economy of a North Yorkshire farm labourer's family. The father worked 12 hours a day, ate reasonable food at his place of work (valued at 7 shillings weekly), and took home wages of 9 shillings a week to feed, clothe, house, and warm his wife and five daughters. He drank tea at home, ate no food there, and watched helplessly as his family subsisted on mainly turnips and potatoes, with tea, milk, bread, butter and "sad-cakes". During the week of the survey the only "meat" to reach the lips of the wife and children was a cod's head that they had been given. An equally heart-rending extract comes from "The Whistler at the Plough" by Alexander Somerville (James Ainsworth, Manchester, 1852). This is based on a survey of agricultural labour originally undertaken for the Anti-Corn-Law League. In an interview a youth who describes himself as "sixteen a'most", tells the author how he works from 4 in the morning until eight in the evening for three shillings a week; how he lives in the stable loft with other lads with no heat of any sort; has a change of bedding once a year; and eats bread and lard for every meal, except once a week when he buys potatoes that the "master" allows them to boil.

Reading the extracts reminded me that, whilst living conditions in this country have moved on considerably for everyone since those times, there still remain people - politicians and employers - who think that it is right to pay less than a living wage for a week's work. And by living wage I mean enough to feed, clothe, house and keep yourself warm, with sufficient left over to spend in a way that makes you feel you are part of the society in which you live.

I took the photograph above on a walk through the Fenland lanes and fields. The small Victorian cottage sheltered behind the wind-bent trees and ramshackle old sheds made me think of those extracts. For much of the year a smallholding such as this is growing vegetables and flowers, and its fruit trees are flourishing. But in the colder, darker months, with the wind whipping across the open ground, the roads iced over and snow drifting against the side of the buildings it is much less idyllic, and a century or a century and a half ago might have known the conditions described above. With that in mind I prepared this sepia-tone version of my almost monochrome colour image.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 55mm (110mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Snowy fields and contre jour

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For the past two days we have had snow. Not an unusual occurrence in winter, but these falls come at the end of a particularly mild and rather wet autumn, are heavier than is usual in this part of the world, and are accompanied by temperatures that are at or below freezing by day and night.

Snow is like manna from heaven for photographers, and so I've been making the most of it. One of its virtues, photographically speaking, is that it so changes the subjects that you've photographed before that you feel motivated to snap them again. Furthermore, contre jour shots take on a special quality when snow is on the ground, so I feel driven to take rather more of these than usual.

Today's shot was taken during a morning walk around fields near our village. The snow was criss-crossed with hare tracks, the sky above with the vapour trails of airliners, and the snow had long shadows thrown by the low sun. I chose this piece of relatively smooth snow for the foreground because you are never quite sure what kind of flare you're going to get when you shoot into the sun - it varies with the camera/lens combination - and a smooth surface allows any lens artefacts to show up properly. On this one I got a a small "rainbow" towards the bottom of the frame. This shot is just what came from the camera, with no filter or post processing, except for a little noise suppression in the sky.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Google Street View bad for photographers?

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Today, after I'd rolled into a parking bay whilst out shopping a Google "Street View" car, complete with mast-mounted cameras came and parked next to me. The heavy rain showers had forced the driver to put covers over the cameras, so there's no chance (I think) of me featuring on Google Maps!

Until today I've watched the debate around Street View with a fairly detached interest. Individuals who don't want to be featured, or people who don't want their property to be shown, have kicked up a fuss, and some have succeeded in having their image or that of their house blurred. It seemed to me that the ability to navigate through a town I've never visited, with an all-round view available is a very nice extension of the excellent mapping that is currently available from Google on the web. Until today.

As I walked off to do my shopping a thought came to me about Street View - it's bad news for photographers! Why? Well, anti-terror legislation and fears of paedophiles have led to some photographers having their right to photograph freely in public places restricted, in some cases legally, but often illegally. My concern is that Google Street View cameras posting millions of images of people and places on the web will drive people to assert their right to privacy over such activity regardless of who is taking the photograph. The harmless amateur taking snaps in a town centre will be seen as someone infringing someone else's privacy and liberty, just like Google. It's a wrong conclusion, I think, but unfortunately that may be the turn that the debate takes. I can see that politicians seeking to be "responsive" to the electorate might well choose the route of least resistance and bring in legislation to restrict what is currently a valuable freedom.

If that happens we'll be restricted to taking shots like today's of the Fenland landscape of Lincolnshire. Not a person or house in sight for someone to object about! Which will be fine if you like to photograph empty landscapes with clouds, but is more than a little limiting in the long term.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Potatoes and salt

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The coastline of The Wash on England's east coast has moved over the centuries. And, as the sea level rose and fell, so the salt-makers who worked the salt-marshes around this great bay moved to ply their trade.

The earliest remains suggest that Iron Age man gathered sea salt from this region, and that subsequent Roman invaders carried on the extraction of this valuable commodity. Remains in the areas around Ingoldmells, Helpringham and Billingborough show that clay troughs and fire were used to extract the salt. The later Saxon and medieval "salterns" followed the retreating sea, and are closer to the present-day coast. Bicker Haven was lined with these sites. Here the salt was extracted from the mud of the salt-marsh since it had a higher saline content than the sea water. This involved moving and washing great quantities of mud which were then piled up in "spoil heaps" before the resulting brine was boiled. By the 1600s this activity and the exports it generated had stopped, superseded by sun-evaporated salt. As the sea retreated further, the salt-marshes of Bicker Haven and the surrounding Fens were drained and turned into productive farmland. However, the mounds left by the salt-makers remain today, shallow bumps in this dead flat landscape, clearly visible by their contour lines on today's 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map.

Today's photograph isn't part of a Japanese karesansui garden, but shows a field of newly-planted potatoes near Bicker, the mounds of each row undulating over the ancient man-made hills of the medieval salt-industry. I was attracted by the intersecting patterns that the mechanical planter had made.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On