Prince Street, Hull

click photo to enlarge
On a recent dull and very windy day I spent a few hours in and around Hull's "old town", the original core of the city that is built around the medieval street plan. It's an area that holds a fascinating variety of buildings dating from the medieval period through to the present day. When I lived in the city during the 1970s and 1980s I enjoyed many a happy day walking the winding streets, decoding buildings that had been overlaid with the hopes and aspirations of successive centuries, photographing the worn streets, dark alley ways (called staithes in this part of England), and enjoying the reflected light from Hull and Humber. At that time the old town was barely holding its own, venerable buildings were being pulled down and the interesting road surfaces made of pitch-impregnated timber blocks were patched with tarmac and concrete. However, the 1980s and 1990s saw a more enlightened attitude to the area take hold, its visual, historic and tourist value began to be appreciated, and things took an upward turn, mainly for the better. Today, the effects of the depression of recent years are starting to take a toll on the old town and a certain shabbiness is becoming evident once more.

Today's photograph shows the arch that leads from the Market Place into Prince Street, a curving cobbled road of three-storey houses dating from the 1770s. This row has kept the good looks of the most recent restoration. However, even here a dissonant note enters the view in the form of objects that weren't part of the street scene when I lived in the city. I mean, of course, those awful wheely bins. These wretched, multi-coloured, plastic rubbish containers too frequently blight our streets. A recent newspaper article illustrated one of the worst examples. One can only hope that such pieces open people's eyes to the degradation of our environment that follows from the insensitive siting of these bins.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 58mm
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation:  0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Wheelie bin bother

click photo to enlarge

As far as wheelie bins (the colloquial  name for Britain's refuse and recycling bins) go, there are three kinds of people to be found: those who do, those who don't and those who can't. I'm not talking about the inability of some people to properly sort their refuse for recycling; that's perhaps the subject for a different post. No, on this occasion we are back in the realms of blots on the landscape and visual blight and, more specifically, the willingness, unwillingness or lack of facility to hide these ugly bins from view when they are in daily use.

If your house is in a terrace with little or no front garden and no easy access to the back then it's hard to hide your bins away. Your property wasn't designed with such things in mind and they need to be accessible for emptying. Consequently they very often have to be in plain sight of passers-by: there's not much you can do about it. Many properties, however, have space out of sight where bins can be placed for daily use and where they are not an eyesore to the locals and passers-by. Most people with this facility make use of it. But some don't, and the wretched bins stick out like spots and scabs on the face of the village, town or city. It may be due to indolence, it could be a lack of aesthetic sensibilities, or perhaps there are reasons too deep for me to fathom. Some local authorities, including the one responsible for my refuse and recycling collections don't help matters by choosing colours that have no place in a street scene. In my case it's a garish blue, but I have seen purple elsewhere. Sober green or brown, and even dismal grey - all colours in widespread use - have a chance of blending with the background. Every screaming blue and mad purple wheelie bin shouts its presence. At times they are collectively cacophonous.

Today's photograph shows the frosty recycling logo on the top of one of my wheelie bins. It sits with its partners out of sight at the back of my house. It could never be seen from the road. However, when I moved in it was visible from much of the rear and side of the house so I built a section of fence behind which they are now hidden. Such are my feelings about these eyesores!

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 160 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Refuse, renovations and clutter

click photo to enlarge
The steps that have been taken in recent years to reduce the amount of rubbish that we throw away, and to recycle much of that which is collected, is both laudable and necessary. We owe it to ourselves, the planet and our descendants to do more in this regard. However, the collection and sorting of refuse has created an unintended problem: the armies of unsightly "wheely bins" that clutter our towns, cities and villages. Many buildings are sufficiently adaptable to manage them discreetly. But, terraced houses that were not built with such things in mind are now often disfigured by green, blue, black, grey and brown bins that are sometimes permanently parked in front of them. And everywhere experiences at least one day a week of disagreeable clutter when they are placed on the pavement or the edge of properties for emptying by the refuse disposal workers. They are not objects that in any way enhance the appearance of the streets of our country.

Last week I was looking at some decorative scaffold sheeting in South Kensington, London. A building that was being renovated had been surrounded by a light grey (nylon?) material on which were outlines of chimneys, roofs, windows etc. among which were details such as cats, vases of flowers, birds and so on. The material had been carefully fixed so that it was tautly drawn around the structure. It did its work of hiding and protecting the work that was taking place behind admirably, but also offered something of interest and fun to the streetscape. So much better, I thought, than projecting scaffolding poles and flapping sheets of shiny plastic. Why, I mused, couldn't that sort of thinking be applied to the unsightly wheely bins? Surely with a concerted effort we could make them less visible.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 150mm (300mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On