December morning light

click photo to enlarge
The flat, Fenland landscape that extends across parts of Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk is well known for its fertile soils that comprise about half of England's Grade 1 agricultural land.What is less well-known is the wide range of light that the Fens exhibit, a feature that is particularly noticeable in autumn and winter. This is partly to do with the "big skies" that all flat areas experience, but the low-lying nature of the land and the managed drainage systems that criss-cross the area must also play their part. Mists, strong and slight, are common. Rain squalls can be seen from miles away. Cloud types proliferate. And these effects, and more, are food for the hungry photographer.

Today's photograph shows a typical Fenland scene on a cool but not cold December morning. The shadows of trees and houses behind the photographer darken the field of winter wheat that is showing through the manicured soil. Pantiles and bricks of houses at the village edge glow a deeper orange in the yellow-tinted light. A church tower peeps over the graveyard trees that surround it.Poplars and a walnut that is past its best thrust up into a blue sky that looks like a painter has wiped his white brush clean on it. And in the distance the slight mist almost, but not quite, obscures the sheep that have been tuned onto the remains of a field of cabbages. It's the kind of unremarkable scene I often see but don't often photograph.And each time I do I wonder why I don't do it more often.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: December Morning Light, Lincolnshire
Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.6mm (34mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/2000 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rain, King's Cross Square

click photo to enlarge
It has been an unusual summer with rain actual, and rain metaphorical being unleashed upon our islands. I could say so much about "Brexit" rain but will restrict my remarks to the collective national folly of allowing the person who has been quite the worst prime minister of my lifetime to put party unity before country and leave us, through his ill-advised referendum, in a place not of our collective choosing. That is the polite version!

Now for the the wet stuff. It hasn't actually rained every day this summer, but it feels like it has because we've had more wet days than usual. Moreover, I say this as someone who for the past nine years has lived in the drier east of England. But here too rain has followed more rain. As we've travelled about the country we've experienced rain wherever we've gone, with one exception. Very unusually our week in Settle in the Yorkshire Dales was dry. However, as we left - we were five minutes down the A65 on the way to Skipton - when a phone call told us that the town was experiencing a torrential downpour! All we saw of it was a beautiful rainbow over the Ribble valley.

A couple of recent London visits have coincided with rain, mainly showers, though some very heavy. As we waited at King's Cross for our train recently the heavens opened and people ill-prepared for precipitation had to sprint for cover. Today's photograph shows the equipped and the unequipped making bee-lines for the cover of the concourse. I took my photograph from under a large canopy!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Rain, King's Cross Square, London
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 80mm (160mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5.5
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO:640
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Newly painted old buoys

click photo to enlarge
The day I took this photograph, in early June, was the first day of this year when I felt that I risked sunburn by staying outside for a couple of hours. So, on went the sun lotion and the cap. We have had bright, warm days earlier in the year, but generally speaking the weather has been cooler and cloudier than usual - at least that's my perception.

This reduction in the amount of sun and heat may well be the reason why recently I've selected bright coloured objects for my photography, such as these newly painted buoys on the riverside at King's Lynn in Norfolk. They had been placed there at the end of their useful lives as objects of visual and local interest, and the town council, with an eye to tourists and tidiness, had applied generous coats of appropriately coloured paint. In the morning light they positively glowed, and each colour picked up a slight reflection of its neighbour's hue. Buoys, fair and foul, are a feature of the riverside in King's Lynn. The buoy maintenance ship, "St Edmund" is based there by a location that specialises in buoy repair and painting.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm (56mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Pine trees and weather forecasting

click photo to enlarge
I think that if retirement ever becomes boring - an unlikely eventuality - then I will become a weather forecaster. On the basis of the accuracy (or should I say inaccuracy) of recent forecasts for my part of the world I think my efforts have every chance of reaching the current high (or should I say low) standard on offer.

A couple of days ago, on the promise of sunshine and cloud with long spells of unbroken sun, we went walking at Woodhall Spa hoping to get some well-lit, autumn-themed, landscape and tree photographs. However, the forecast sun made a couple of fleeting appearances and then remained hidden by a blanket of cloud for the rest of our time there. On the day I write this we went shopping, me without a coat because no rain was forecast all day, and I was precipitated upon! These are only two of the many mis-forecasts of recent weeks. However, today's papers tell me all will soon be well because the Meteorological Office has ordered a new £97 million super computer. This will have a prodigious number-crunching capacity enabling previously unimagined quantities of data to be processed. The technological behemoth will spit out forecasts of undreamed of accuracy. Or so they say. We'll see.

On my Woodhall Spa walk I managed to get a couple of shots of passing interest. The stack of tree trunks appealed for the unexpected colours on display. They'd clearly been there a while so hints of green are not to be unexpected. But what about the blue?  Is it natural or was it applied in the cutting? I think it's the former. It seemed a good photograph to pair with the shot of some trees before they succumb to the woodsman's saw.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 75mm (112mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec
ISO:11250
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Park life

click photo to enlarge
It was a changeable day when we spent a recent hour or two in Greenwich Park, London. The sort of day when you can't decide whether to take a jacket - so you do. Then you can't decide whether or not to wear it - so you do. And, having done so you decide it's too hot to wear it - so you take it off. Finally, the clouds thicken, the temperature drops, and you conclude that you were right to bring a jacket - so you put it on again. Only to find the clouds departing, the sun re-asserting itself, and your jacket becoming, once more, a bulky encumbrance.

Today's photograph was taken as a bank of dark, threatening clouds started to make an appearance. They brought increased wind speeds and the threat of rain. But, fortunately for the majority of people enjoying the park who had no warm or wet weather clothing, they were transitory and moved on after a quarter of an hour or so leaving us to enjoy a pleasantly warm day in one of London's most interesting public spaces, somewhere that I always enjoy taking photographs.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Rainy days

click photo to enlarge
There are a number of reasons why I moved to eastern England. One of them is to experience the drier weather. I was born and raised in north-west England, a part of the country known for its regular and relatively high rainfall. I lived in Hull for a number of years and experienced there something of the drier weather that side of the country offers. But then I moved back to west Lancashire for about twenty years, once again subjecting myself to the wetness of the west. Now, however, living in Lincolnshire, I find that my love of the great outdoors is more easily sated and need not incur the drenchings that accompanied more than a few forays in the west. Moreover, I can usually plan to do something outdoors without needing to calculate whether or not it will be rained off - because it usually isn't.

Consequently, the recent days, most of which seem to have included a spell of rain at some point or another, have been something of a let-down. I've come to expect better! Or at least, different. It even poured down for much of our regular monthly trip north, over the Humber Bridge, into Yorkshire. So, with the expectation that I couldn't insert any photography based detours into our itinerary, we decided to do the weekly shopping a little earlier than was required, thereby making the most of the day that way instead. Today's photograph was taken after we'd parked in the supermarket car park, just before we scurried into the dry in search of groceries. The darkness of the afternoon, the rain-spattered windscreen,the glistening cars and tarmac, and the early lights necessitated by the murk of the day, offered one of only three photographs I took on the whole outing. Not my greatest shot, but not without some interest I think.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 15.3mm (41mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/50 sec
ISO:800
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

The allure of dark skies

click photo to enlarge
After the coldest spring for a few decades the summer of 2013 eventually turned out to be one of the warmest and sunniest of recent years. There were blue skies and white clouds a-plenty, enough to satisfy the requirements of the lover of warmth and the photographer of sunny, congenial scenes. Even the farmers were happy because precipitation arrived reasonably regularly in ample but not excessive quantities. Early October proved to be significantly milder than usual too, with temperatures daily above 20° Celsius. However, much as I enjoy mild weather and the feel of the sun on my back, the photographer in me does eventually yearn for more dramatic weather, the sort that the British Isles is known for, with fronts moving across the land bringing cloud, rain, sun, breezes and the rest: what the forecasters describe as "changeable" weather. Well, as the previous post rather suggests, with a dip in temperatures, a rise in wind speeds and increased cloud cover, change is now upon us.

Today's photograph was taken as that change arrived. It shows the decorative roof of a building on the corner of New Road and Hall Place in Spalding, Lincolnshire. Across its ashlar face, between the ground and first floors, stone lettering proclaims that it was built for S & G Kingston, Land Agents and Surveyors. It was erected in 1907, the work of J.B.Corby & Sons, and is in a free style, a sort of modified Jacobean. The windows have mullions and transoms, decorative oriels sit over the main entrance and at each end of the curved facade, and above are turrets, a strapwork balustrade, tall chimneys and a weather vane. It was this cluster of verticals that caught my eye when I saw them sunlit against deeply dark clouds that threatened rain. The contrast of the glowing stonework against the black sky appealed to me and so I took my photograph.

The drama of a sunlit subject against an uncharacteristic dark sky has always appealed to me. Unfortunately photographs with these qualities aren't easily acquired because a suitable subject doesn't always present itself  in the right place and sometimes a camera isn't to hand. I did, however, catch an old walnut tree in these circumstances last year.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 37.1mm (100mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.9
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Dull weather photography

click photo to enlarge
Britain's geographical location - an island influenced by the Gulf Stream in shallow seas off the north-western edge of the Eurasian landmass - means that we are rarely subjected to the extremes of temperature experienced by places further north or south, or those well inland from the warming effect of the sea. So, we get regular rainfall, clouds are common, and our weather is best described as "changeable". We get plenty of bright and breezy days, but we also get quite a few that are dull and damp. Like most British people I relish those days when the sun is in the sky, the shadows are deep and sharp, and the colours of the landscape glow. It lifts my spirits just as it does for most other Britons (note: not "Brits" - it sounds like a disease!) However, being a photographer, I like to think that every day offers a quality that is worth recording or interpreting.

I've spoken elsewhere about my liking for photography in foggy and snowy weather, how I like the changeable skies of showery days and the flat light of blanket stratus clouds over the sea. On a recent trip that involved crossing the River Humber I stopped off on the south bank - the Lincolnshire side - and indulged in a little dull weather photography of the Humber Bridge. If you do a search for photographs of this large suspension bridge you'll find that the great majority are taken on sunny days or at sunrise or sunset. There are only a few taken on days that some would describe as "dreary". And yet, there is not only a challenge to be found in making such photographs, there is a satisfaction too in stepping away from the commonplace image and making one that offers a different quality and a different mood.

On the dismal day of my photograph the sky had sufficient interest that I wanted to include it. The challenge was to find some foreground interest in this flat, estuary landscape. It came in the form of an open gate that was by the footpath that runs along the top of the riverside bank. Its silhouette against the reed beds was just what I needed for my composition.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Yorkshire Dales mist

click photo to enlarge
A few days in the Yorkshire Dales market town of Settle, the place where I was raised, held the prospect of not only seeing members of my family but also walking the hills and doing some photography. With that in mind I hoped for some calm weather with sun and cloud. However, I knew from long experience that Settle in October (or any other month!) frequently delivers rain. Being on the west side of England's main mountain range, receiving the full force of the moisture-laden prevailing south-westerlies how could it do otherwise? And, true to form, it rained. Often it was heavy and sustained; at other times heavy shower followed heavy shower with the briefest of interludes between. But, on one day it relented and a day of mainly sun and clouds was interrupted by only a single downpour. So we got a longish walk on "the tops" as the hills are known locally and I got some photographs.

In fact, the day we spent walking started with thick mist in the valley - a temperature inversion mist - and the summits above bathed in sunshine from a clear sky. The dramatic mist proved to be perfect for photography and produced some of my best shots, including today's. In fact, as we walked and snapped and talked and hauled ourselves up out of the Ribble valley onto the limestone and millstone grit heights it occurred to me that, as far as photography goes, the weather you get is often better than the weather you wish for. Perhaps that phrase will join my list of self-penned photographic aphorisms. It has so often been true for me that my best shots have been taken in weather that is "extreme" in one way or another, or is quite different from what is usually thought of as good photographic weather. I reflected further on this when we passed a bookshop in Settle. In the window were a few different volumes of photographs of the Yorkshire Dales. All had a cover that showed a well-known location photographed in sunshine with blue sky and white clouds. I took a few shots of that kind myself during our time in Settle, but the ones taken in the unanticipated and unwanted mist please me more.

The photograph above was taken near the start of our walk at a point when it looked like the mist would rapidly lift. In those circumstances an eye for any available images and rapid composition is needed. Here the two gates  in the drystone walls, the short lane, and the trees offered the best possibilities.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Southwold and the weather

click photo to enlarge

"The English winter - ending in July, to recommence in August"
Lord Byron (1788-1824), English poet

Given that he devoted so much of his life to his poetry, his love affairs, travel in the Mediterranean region and revolutionary activities, it's a wonder that Byron noticed the English weather. Perhaps the poet in him drew his attention to it and his experience of hot, sunny climes caused him to lament its relative coolness. As a summary of England's weather, however, he was woefully inaccurate, though today's photograph might seem to suggest otherwise.

It shows the Suffolk coastal town of Southwold, renowned as a watering hole of the English middle classes. I took the shot on August 2nd on a day that was dull, cool, windy, showery, warm (in spells) and sunny. English days often involve multiple kinds of weather and this early August day was one such. What it wasn't was wintry. In fact, I don't imagine that Byron's words were meant to be taken literally. Rather, the intention would have been humorous, making a joke of England's weather as so many do. It reminds me of the remark by Michael Flanders, the late English actor and singer: "It's spring in England. I missed it last year. I was in the bathroom."Many have seen the weather as an influence on the character of the English. The Victorian writer, Charles Kingsley, said in his poem "Ode to the North-East Wind" (1858), " 'Tis the hard grey weather breeds hard English men." Whether that be true or not, shortly after I'd taken this photograph I noted several men and women swimming in the dark grey sea, to be joined by quite a few more as the clouds were whisked away on the wind to be be replaced by more prolonged sun.

I took my shot from Southwold's pier. This is one of the few around our coast that are not Victorian or Edwardian constructions. Consequently it has less of the ornate, decorative metal work characteristic of the older structures, little by way of brash colour, and is altogether a more tasteful, sedate sort of pier, eminently suitable for its location. Some of the town's beach huts can be seen lining the promenade. The uniformly white and blue row to the right are available for hire: The multicoloured collection nearer the centre are some of the many privately owned examples, each loudly (though sometimes subtly) asserting its individuality

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1000 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Ruskin, weather and contre jour

click photo to enlarge

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." John Ruskin (1819-1900) English art critic and author


Though an active supporter of the Pre-Raphaelites and a firm believer in the primacy of painting over all other visual arts, John Ruskin took a keen interest in photography and used a camera. He was one of the subscribers to Eadweard Muybridge's 1887 publication, "Animal Locomotion, an Electro-Photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements." In 1856 he made daguerrotypes of the towers of the Swiss Fribourg, also drawing them freehand, then comparing the results. His view was that the photograph was "more right" but that the sketch "nevertheless conveys, in some respects, a truer idea of Fribourg than the other, and has, therefore, a certain use." Though he was thinking in artistic terms I am sure Ruskin would not have been slow to spot the continuing use today of technical drawing rather than photographs to illustrate car, camera and many other instruction manuals, and to use this as further proof of the value of drawing over photography.


His views on weather are ones I share, particularly from a photographic point of view, though our recent extended wet spell is testing me. Extremes of weather offer "different" kinds of images to the photographer. Snow, fog, rain and the rest, though presenting certain difficulties that fair weather doesn't, nonetheless give the opportunity for photographic drama, simplicity, contrast and much else. The recent wall-to-wall rain that has beset the British spring and summer briefly cleared one recent afternoon and we took the opportunity to venture out for a walk. The roads were lined with deep puddles that hadn't drained away, the tarmac glistened, reflecting the sun, and the ragged clouds offered every shade of grey. I caught my wife with this contre jour shot as she wended her way between the pools of water. When I looked at it on the computer screen I liked the deep contrast and almost moonlight feel to the image that appeared when I converted it to black and white. It was, I reflected, a photograph that could only have been taken in this kind of Ruskinian good weather.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 7.9mm (37mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1600
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Raindrops on the window

click photo to enlarge

It has rained at some point on most days for the past three months. You might be wondering what's so unusual about that - after all it is the British Isles. But the fact is, the eastern side of England is relatively dry. Spring is often so, and summer too. Consequently I expect to be able to go about my business without wondering what to wear on my body and feet. This year, thus far, that hasn't proved possible. Most of the rain has been steady, regular and not too heavy, but in sufficent quantity for the water companies to lift the drought restrictions that resulted from particularly low rainfall over the past couple of years. Yesterday, however, we had torrential summer downpours accompanied by crashing thunder and jagged lightning. The rain couldn't easily penetrate the saturated ground and formed large puddles and pools on the roads and on the gravel of my drive.

As it happens I'd been waiting for a heavy downpour accompanied by wind because we'd recently cleaned our windows and wiped them over with a liquid that is part detergent, part anti-static agent. I believe it used to be advertised as incorporating "nano-technology"! The advantage of this addition to the traditional clean is that water beads and runs off the glass very readily, grime doesn't build up as easily, and window-cleaning can be infrequent without any detriment to the clarity of the glass. A further advantage is that it causes the raindrops to collect in a very photogenic way, and I'm not one to pass up a photographic subject with those qualities.

So, as the rain lashed down you could find me with the macro lens on my camera, examining the raindrops on the windows from inside each room, looking for good collections to photograph. Here are the best two. The varying sizes of the water drops gives the shots a three dimensional character. They remind me of an asteroid belt comprised of shards and blobs of glass.

photographs and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 320
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Garden photography in dull weather

click photo to enlarge

It's well known that in the UK the main topic of conversation isn't the state of the economy, the royal family, politics, the achievements of a football team or the goings on in whatever happens to be the favourite soap opera of the day. Not one of these matters of great importance do people dwell on overly long, rather it's the everyday subject of - the weather. In a country such as ours where latitude, the Gulf Stream, the surrounding sea and the proximity of a large land mass - "the continent" - produce a temperate climate with plentiful cloud and, often though not always, several kinds of weather in a single day, the weather is always going to be more of a talking point than it would be in a Mediterranean region, the centre of a continent, or almost anywhere else. And when the changeable weather pattern departs from its normal fluctuations and produces a period of unseasonally low temperatures, persistent cloud cover and very regular precipitation, as it has this spring, then you can be sure that the regular chatter about the weather becomes a grumbling storm of comment, cogitation and complaint.

I've found that this spring's weather has definitely impinged on my photography. Dull days, with little shadow and low contrast give what is often called "flat lighting", something that is often difficult to work with. I say "often" because it seems that this kind of weather also affects your memory. I know full well that there are circumstances and subjects that respond well to overcast skies, but occasionally I forget, and fail to search them out and take advantage of them. I described some of the positives of this kind of light a couple of years ago when I posted a photograph of boats on the shingle beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk. On my recent trip to Herefordshire I came upon another such subject that worked well on a dull day. It was in Hampton Court Gardens near Leominster. The bright splash of red of the tulips in front of the attractive, timber and brick pavilion, provided the burst of colour that was needed for this overcast scene of greens, greys, brick and dark water. The saturated colours, the absence of contrasting highlights and shadows, and the lack of modelling that the latter two qualities confer, lend a character and mood to the subject that I like.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 65mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 160
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Dark skies and photography

click photo to enlarge

After a very dry, sunny spring and early summer, with plenty of warm weather - at least in my part of the world - things have changed and we've had quite a bit of welcome rain. At the time of writing this blog post thunder is booming around us and heavy showers are queuing up to drench the fields and gardens. All this is very welcome to someone who likes to cultivate his patch, and the result of the precipitation can be seen in the increased growth rate of the grass on the lawns, the blooming of the annual and perennial flowers, the heavy crops of strawberries and raspberries that we've gathered in, and the bountiful lushness of the vegetable garden. But it's not just the gardener in me that has been pleased by the rain and changeable skies, my photographic side has welcomed them too.

On a recent day in the East Yorkshire countryside sunshine fought for supremacy with fleeting showers and dark skies. The result of the conflict was a draw, but for me personally it was, as they say these days, a "win-win" situation, with the sky with sun and clouds lending itself to photographic compositions just as much as as the dark, glowering skies. The main photograph, showing the beach at Hornsea with a groyne and the high water groyne marker, would have been less of an image without the black clouds that were above my head and heading out over the sea. They change the tonal values and the mood of the photograph. Interestingly no rain fell from them onto our heads, but rain was around, and distant showers can be seen on the horizon.

On one of the days of my recent visit to London the sky was behaving in a similar way, and it gave me an opportunity to get a different kind of shot of Canary Wharf. The grey blanket above subdued the colours and brightness of the gleaming towers, and perhaps more clearly reflected the mood that much of the financial community has experienced over the past few years. By the way, on this occasion we did get caught in a light shower and had to beat a hasty retreat for cover.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1000
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Weather forecasting and entertainment

click photo to enlarge
In an ideal world the mission of any television station is to entertain and to inform. Pretty much every channel thinks it does this, but we know that many are ditching the "inform" bit, and many more are failing with the "entertain" bit even though that, nominally, constitutes most of their output. The BBC has a reputation for achieving this dual focus as well as any broadcaster does, but there are times when I think it simply loses the plot through trying too hard.

Take weather forecasting. You'd think that here the main aim would be to inform the public what the weather was likely to be, both where they lived and elsewhere in the country. I imagine the BBC fondly thinks it does just that. Well, I'm here to tell you and them that it fails miserably in this simple task. Firstly, its presenters not only talk too much so that people stop listening, they also talk gibberish. I swear that my wife will put a plant pot through the screen the next time a presenter talks about "treacherous roads", and I'm likely to burst my lungs screaming at the next mention of "an organised band of showers approaching from the west." Organised by whom? God? The Meteorological Office? And how can a road assume human attributes? Then there's the ridiculous graphics that involves us lurching drunkenly over the British Isles as if in a wayward satellite as the presenter hurriedly tries to make what they are saying correspond with the region in view. In spring they punctuate bulletins with "Spring Watch" and invite viewers to call in with their sightings of the first primroses or swallows. What's that got to do with informing us about the weather? It would make as much sense - maybe more, and could be more entertaining - to invite first viewings of T-shirts, short sleeves, or bikini tops. But what irritates the most is the persistent attempts to make the weather forecasts entertaining. Instead of accepting that weather just is what it is, they seek to magnify it and make it appear a malevolent force. So, we have alerts and warnings about wind, rain, sun, fog and snow, exhortations not to travel unless absolutely necessary, furrowed brows, grimaces and anthropomorphising. They don't appear to be trying to alert us to inclement weather, so much as scare us stiff with their cataclysmic visions of what might be. In recent days the weather forecasters have not only got it wrong, saying that the snow will get worse before it gets better: they've also fomented a clearing of supermarket shelves by viewers who have been panicked into stocking up for the next spell of "white hell". In the event a thaw has started!

My suggestion for remedying this state of affairs is to do away with the Jeremiah forecasters, and replace them with a screen divided into four. This would show the country's weather at the time of the forecast, then six hours later, then 12 hours later and finally 24 hours later. Will such a thing happen? No chance.

Today's shot - my last church image for a while you'll be glad to hear - shows St Swithin* at Bicker after the most recent heavy snow fall. I'm aiming for the definitive snowy photograph of this building, and I'm confident I'm getting closer to it. This one was taken about half an hour after the snow had ceased, and there's nothing nicer than getting out in it before too many footprints have marked the perfect whiteness.

St Swithin*/St Swithun: this church styles itself using both spellings, so I follow its example!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wells next the Sea and Wilde

click photo to enlarge
"I don't desire to change anything in England except the weather."
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish playwright, poet and author

The quotation above is one of the less memorable of the many quotations by Oscar Wilde. It repeats a feeling about England's weather that many English people and visitors to these islands share, but with which I strongly disagree. Elsewhere in this blog I've written about the pleasures of living with weather that is rarely settled, particularly if you're a photographer. Today's photograph was taken in early May, when these 10 beach huts at Wells next the Sea, Norfolk, along with most of the other 190 stretched along the North Sea coast, were uninhabited, the strong wind and scurrying clouds making the sea's edge a place for cagoules, hats, and brisk walking. During my April visit they were busy, and a few days after I took this shot they were, doubtless, thronged with owners soaking up the sun and making the most of the location.

But, since I've written about these huts alongside an image taken on my first visit, I'll return to Oscar Wilde. I have the feeling that, as with many brilliant people, he's not the sort of person you'd like to spend much time with. However, there's no denying that his brand of egotism, vanity, astuteness, insight and wit has its appeal. Here's a selection of some of my favourite quotations. Anyone who isn't familiar with the writer can easily find hundreds more on the internet.

• "I have nothing to declare but my genius." (allegedly said at Customs when entering the United States)
• "There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."
• "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
• "What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."
• "I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I'm saying."
• "Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."
• "Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered."
• "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."
• "I can resist everything but temptation."
• "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
• "Be yourself: everyone else is already taken."
  
• "Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit." (hence me quoting Wilde today!)

photographs & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 110mm (220mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Winter photography

click photo to enlarge
A spell of winter weather that is colder and duller than usual has kept people indoors recently. A quick skip round the photography forums finds many in the UK wishing for brighter skies. Like most photographers I relish bright, contrasty light. A sky with 70% broken cloud of different hues (the kind seen after rain), blue showing through here and there, and pools of sunlight reaching the ground, is probably my ideal for landscape shots.

But, different weather presents different opportunities and we must seize them. Heavy rain is pretty useless as far as I'm concerned, with only a few opportunities for images. Light rain or drizzle offers more chance of capturing glistening photographs. A leaden sky with a blanket of stratus above is lamented by many, but can be fine as long as you keep the camera pointed down, and, if it's bright enough, is particularly good for saturated colours and therefore plants and flowers. Snow is great, not only for the novelty (at least in much of England), but also because of the way it converts scenes into drawings with dark shapes and lines across a white surface, and for how it changes the light and illuminates the shadows. Fog is good too, and I often venture out in such weather to try and capture the graduated tones and simplified silhouettes it offers. That was my thinking the other day when we went for an afternoon walk near Swineshead in Lincolnshire. A weak sun was shining through wispy cloud and visibility was poor. It looked like mist and fog would start to appear as the sun went down. And so it did.

I took this photograph towards the end of the walk, balancing the faint outline of Swineshead church towering over the village houses, with the silhouettes of trees on the right, and used the curve of the road as a leading line into the shot.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 137mm (274mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Blowin' in the wind

click photo to enlarge

"It always is wretched weather according to us. The weather is like the government — always in the wrong. In summer-time we say it is stifling; in winter that it is killing; in spring and autumn we find fault with it for being neither one thing nor the other and wish it would make up its mind...We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself." from "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow", Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927), English author

The quotation above pretty much sums up the British attitude to the weather - there's always too much of it and it's always the wrong sort! I suppose that attitude (and the penchant for holidays where the sun always shines and the temperature is always high) comes from living on a damp, cloudy, windy island where three kinds of weather each day is not unusual. But will this always be our attitude? There's a good chance that global warming will lead to Britain's weather being seen as highly desirable. Increasing warmth and plentiful rainfall could well be the envy of many countries. And, in an age of rising fuel prices those regular westerlies offer the prospect of wind-generated electricity for all. But for that to happen the people of these islands must get over their NIMBY-based opposition to turbines.

Yesterday I watched a wonderful feat of skill and engineering as the blades of a wind turbine were assembled at the base of its tower and then lifted into place. Cranes, men on the end of steadying ropes, and a man standing on top of the column (can you see him?) all performed a sort of high-tech ballet to elevate and rotate the assembly and place it on its nacelle. On the flat Fenland landscape of Lincolnshire the turbines can be seen for miles. Perhaps, in time, people will see them as spinning beacons of a greener, reliable energy supply, rather than blots on the landscape, and realise that for Britain's energy needs the answer is (at least in part) "blowin' in the wind." Cue harmonica, acoustic guitar and wailing, nasal voice!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On