Fog, sun and silhouettes, Ross on Wye

There's a lot to be said for photographing in fog, not least the way that type of weather renders familiar scenes unfamiliar. In recent years I've posted quite a few photographs of the spire of Saint Mary's church in Ross. I've also included a few with the crenelated Gazebo Tower (here decorated with birds) and the crowded chimney stacks of the Royal Hotel. However, I've never made them, collectively, the sole subject of a composition. It was seeing them through the filter of the thick morning fog that prompted this shot.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Chimneys and pigeons

You have to really like pigeons to welcome them on your roof and chimneys in numbers of this order: the potential for mess is considerable. The group, of which these are two thirds, were flying around looking for somewhere they could all land. The chimneys were the favoured site but they couldn't accommodate them all and apparently the roof gables just weren't good enough. The symmetry of this shot appealed to me when I saw it through the viewfinder, and felt it might look better in black and white - but it doesn't.

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

Old roofs, Stamford, Lincolnshire

There is something pleasing about the aged, worn materials that form these roofs in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Just as there is something attractive about the way they all differ, all cluster together, and collectively make a jumble that the eye finds fascinating. Collyweston stone tiles, slates from Wales and Westmoreland, bricks from locally dug pits and Peterborough, stone from nearby Barnack and elsewhere, and clay chimney pots from who knows where, can all be seen and all make a contribution. The constituent parts of the buildings look timeless but few, if any, date from before the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and quite a bit is nineteenth century.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100