Red Crane, Portland Bill, Dorset

Red Crane is a hoist on a disused stone loading quay on Portland Bill, Dorset. The quay was used to serve the nearby Bill Quarries. This was active in the nineteenth century and the last loads of stone were hoisted onto ships by Red Crane in 1893. Fishermen took over the crane as a convenient means of launching and recovering their boats on the rocky shore. Steel cranes replaced the wooden structures in the late 1970s. On the day of our visit the only visible fisherman was using a rod and didn't seem to be having much luck.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Weymouth beach huts

There was a time, in the second half of the twentieth century, that beach huts seemed to have had their day. A place to base yourself by the shore for a day or a week, either owned outright or rented from the local council, some fitted out with electricity and water, ceased to chime with people's ideas about what constituted a holiday. But then they had a renaissance and became sought after adjuncts to time by the sea, and their colourful presence was something to celebrate rather than dismiss. This short row at Weymouth is only a small fraction of the total number in the town. The repeating colours with a limited palette suggests corporate ownership as opposed to the highly individualised paint jobs of the privately owned huts.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Sunbeams and showers, Lytham

For twenty years of my life I lived within two miles of the Lancashire coast. It was a time when I relished photographing the shoreline, the sea and the skies above it, and appreciated how the weather could transform very familiar photographic scenes. The beach at Lytham always had inshore fishing boats, tractors and buoys, and the view always had something of both the sea and an estuary about it. In this photograph I had my camera turned seawards, away from where the River Ribble enters the Irish Sea, because the sunbeams and showers off the coast made such compelling subjects.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus E-300     2005

Boats, Weston-super-Mare

The Bristol Channel at Weston-super-Mare is wide enough to feel like the sea rather than an estuary. This feeling is enhanced by the presence of two islands, piers, a fine promenade and a scattering of boats. The fact that the beach is very shallow and hence the water is distant at low tide means that most boats are small and the larger vessels are presumably in nearby marinas. This colourful trio caught my eye at both low and high tide but looked better, photographically speaking, without the sea.

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