Morning market place, Boston

The market place at Boston in Lincolnshire was refurbished a couple of years ago.The outcome was a mixture of the good (the much better surface across the square, the new street lights), the bad (the continuing conflict between motor vehicles and pedestrians) and the missed opportunity (to include some trees to soften the space). This shot shows it early one January morning as a mist was lifting, early shoppers silhouetted against the harsh light of the low sun.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Where the Hull meets the Humber

Today's photograph was taken very near where the River Hull flows into the River Humber. The water on the left below the pointed building (The Deep aquarium) is the Hull, and the distant water on the right is the Humber. In the foreground is one of the ends of the pier where ferries tied up before the Humber Bridge made them redundant. In the middle distance is the Sea Challenger "jack-up" wind turbine installation vessel being loaded with columns, blades etc. In the far distance is one of the ferries that links Hull with continental Europe, and to its right the cooling towers and machinery of Saltend chemicals park.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

The disappearing River Slea

The River Slea has been a geographical feature of Lincolnshire since time immemorial. But near the area shown in today's photograph it periodically, usually in summer, dries up completely. There is speculation that this might be due to the extraction of water through nearby boreholes, or because of the permeability of the river bed at this point. It would be interesting to know if it dried up in the nineteenth century or in medieval times. That might help us to determine whether the reason was natural or man-made.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Ice and gravel puddle

Shallow puddles in hard frost seem to freeze from the surface right down to the ground below the water. As they do so they often form attractive, translucent, curvilinear patches in the ice that contrast with narrow areas of clear ice. At least that's what seems to happen -  a physicist would be able to describe the process better and come up with the reason for it. I've photographed these kinds of frozen puddles before and recent cold weather allowed me to do so again.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

The organist at the Kinema in the Woods

We recently went to see the film, "La La Land", at the Kinema in the Woods in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire. This timber building was re-modelled as a cinema in 1922 and has been showing films ever since. In 1984 an old Compton Kinestra organ was installed. When the intermission came along it rose up through the stage in front of the curtains with the organist playing. During his performance he made use, from the keyboard, of the glockenspiels and xylophones (and perhaps other instruments) on a wooden form out of shot at the right of the stage. A great musical performance, a great film, and a great little cinema well worth visiting.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Inanimate faces

It's said that people's ability to notice faces, even where a whole person cannot be seen, harks back to man's prehistory when this skill helped an individual to stay alive. Today that skill exists in us still and it has transferred to inanimate objects - we can see faces in wallpaper patterns, clouds, domestic appliances, the fronts of cars and even in buildings. The gable end of the building called Peterscourt in Peterborough has a "face" that I cannot help looking at each time I walk by. Look at my photograph and you'll see the the small windows as two eyes, a chimney flue nose and even part of a further small window as one of the nostrils. The open porch and doorway, of course, form the gaping mouth.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

The value of blur

Many photographers aspire to the sharpest photograph that they can achieve, seeking lenses and bodies that deliver the most minute details. There is a place for sharpness and detail, but there is also a place for blur. There are situations and subjects where his can deliver interest whether it is deliberately sought by de-focus, caused by an obscuring layer or is induced by movement. This shot, taken through the slightly smeared windscreen of a moving car on City Road, London, has qualities I like that a sharp exposure of the subject would lack.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Design classics

Among the first displays of the newly re-located Design Museum are some that show the evolution of everyday objects such as cameras and TVs. There is also the example shown in the photograph that groups household and other objects, that many would call design classics, from the past fifty or so years. It was interesting hearing visitors looking at the objects and identifying those that they possessed now or had owned in the past. We did the same and came up with a longer list than we had imagined.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

AllSaints store, London

I have little time for fashion in clothing. It seems to me to be a way to encourage people to buy often impractical items before the clothes they own have reached the end of their life. But style and design, in clothing do interest me. I know nothing about the clothing store called ALLSAINTS and the only branch I've ever seen is the one on Commercial Road in London that I came across recently. The illuminated advert looking down on the shoppers passing and entering the premises appealed to the photographer in me.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Design Museum, London

London's Design Museum has transferred from near the river in Southwark to the bottom end of Holland Park in Kensington. This involved moving from one "re-purposed" building to another, the current home having formerly been the Commonwealth Institute. The exterior has been refurbished but remains essentially the same 1962 vintage, glass curtain-walled building with a hyperbolic parabaloid roof. The interior, however is pretty much new with lots of stairs and galleries featuring light coloured wood and glass panels. Children appeared to love it, and I did too. Incidentally only the curves of the roof are real, the rest are due to the fisheye lens that I used for the shot.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Another view of St Botolph, Boston

A view that takes in the whole of the medieval parish church of St Botolph in Boston, Lincolnshire, is hard to find. The great height of its lantern-topped tower combined with the size of its nave, chancel and aisles make it larger than some cathedrals. And, unlike many cathedrals it does not stand in a large "close", a space in which the building is set: here the surrounding houses, businesses and the river are close by. But this upstream location gives a reasonable idea of St Botolph's size and its setting, something that is difficult to achieve with a closer closer viewpoint.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

A view of St Botolph, Boston

A view of the medieval tower of St Botolph, Boston seen above the back of the cream-painted former Assembly Rooms (1822). To the right of this is the brick-built, pedimented, Corporation Building of 1772 erected by the town as a mixed residential and commercial development. At this point the curve of the River Witham takes it under the Town Bridge (1913). The buildings backing on to the river, making maximum use of the tight space, give the scene an interesting, jumbled appearance, the whole bringing to mind the subjects and lighting favoured by eighteenth and nineteenth century watercolourists.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100

Wreck of the steam trawler, "Sheraton"

The steam trawler, "Sheraton", was a steel-bodied ship about 50 feet long, built in 1907. During WW1 it was used in boom defence work and in WW2 it was a patrol vessel. In 1945 it became a target ship and in 1947, while being towed for use as a target hulk, it was blown ashore in a gale at Hunstanton, Norfolk. Some of the superstructure was cut away and the rest was left to the sea. With each passing year it becomes less and less.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10