Experimenting with Panorama

My body of work is currently focused on the journey of the River Witham in Lincolnshire.  So far I think that my images have a leaning towards the picturesque.  At the moment I am not sure whether that is a good or a bad thing.  The picturesque has for decades been popular, a response to industrialisation and urbanisation, and people such as William Gilpin wrote guidebooks to visit 'Picturesque Britain' in the 1700s.  David Bate tells us, in Photography: The Key Concepts, that picturesque views give us an idealised view of 'nature'.  He writes that we cling to the picturesque for the pleasure that it gives despite critics finding it to be appalling, cliched, trite or senseless.  Subconsciously, he says, people like picturesque images as 'good composition' reflects the composure and organisation that they would like to see in themselves.  Again he says that picturesque beauty is despised and maligned as a 'too easy pleasure'.  In contrast the sublime is considered to be more radical and interesting.  Towards the end of his chapeter on Landscape Bate writes that panoramas show the vast magnitude of 'nature' and the miniscule details of that space that photography has the potential to record.  They create a massive spectacle, at once sublime in scale and information, yet diminishing in that spectators can feel miniscule in them  In view of this I have been keen to experiment with panoramas on the river.  I intend to take some from elevated view points such as a high bridge, the top of Tattershall Castle and the top of Boston Church Tower (Boston Stump) all of which overlook the river and the countryside surrounding it.  Boston Stump also has the interest in that it features in another poem about Lincolshire, this time a narrative one: The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire by Jean Ingelow.

I took the two panoramas below whilst walking along the river to Bardney Lock.  I took a single image to start as I liked the fact that I could see to Lincoln Cathedral on the skyline, but then thought that it would make a good panorama.  I made the first, but then after some consideration restitched the images cropped in from the left and with slightly more sky and foreground so that it is slightly less letterbox like.  I'm not sure which I prefer; possible the first as it reflects the ribbon-like nature of the river.

Another Experiment with ICM

When I was out yesterday photographing the River Witham, I made some more experiments with ICM.  I rather like this one, although I am not sure that that means it is a viable image for my Body of Work.  I am doing this partly in an attempt to be different, experimental and more creative, but also because I am using the river as a metaphor for life and am inspired, here, by the Lincolnshire poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and his poem The Brook.  If I use any ICM images it will be to try and evoke feelings of memory reaching hazily into the past.

David Bate: Photography; The Key Concepts. Chapter 5: In The Landscape

Bullet points for the main points in the chapter, highlighting for my thoughts.

·         There are many uses of landscape photography, eg tourism, urban planning, military reconnaissance, Google Maps, architectural planning, reportage, gardening books etc

·         The point of view of the camera organises what is there in a landscape

·         Landscape pictures pervade everyday culture

·         Across all the inventions for picturing space, the main question about landscape remains the same: what view are we given of that space. (Refer back to the picture of the cottage next to Dungeness Power Station in Photography and Reality.)

·         The environment, now dominated by the presence of humans, as well as by any putative 'nature' itself is what is always re-presented in landscape pictures. (see references to wilderness.)

·         The way something is pictured is as critical as what is shown

·         The invention of photography created a problem of truth and fidelity.  Nature became laid bare.  Photographs could show too much.

·         Painters and art critics were concerned with notions of pleasure, sight and aesthetic views of nature in the landscape.  These dominated their attitudes to photography.

·         Photography was seen as crude and lacking in subtlety.  Industrial, mechanical and chemical. (P.90)

·         Beauty and landscape as a philosophy of art became important in the development of photographic landscape.

·         Early photographers interested in art readily pursued pictorial values derived from the genres of painting

·         The picturesque is of Italian origin, meaning from the point of view of a painter.

·         Early landscape painters such as Poussin and Claude Lorrain (Claude Gelle from Lorraine) sketched, but then combined their sketches into idealized landscape compositions - arcadia.

·         At the time of the invention of photography the paintings of John Constable developed this tradition in English rural scenes and this was quickly adapted by photographers such as Henry Peach Robinson.

·         By contrast J.M.W Turner painted 'The Sublime'

·         Page 93 - end of section Landscape here can be seen.....

·         In 1857 Edmund Burke differentiated between beauty and the sublime landscape. (Could an industrial landscape be described as sublime?)

·         Picturesque - a landscape scene in nature suitable for 'picturing'.

·         Nature became the 'beautiful' to be consumed by an increasingly urban public.

·         Gilpin et al wrote guidebooks for people to visit 'Picturesque Britain!'

·         This is important as it anticipates modern conventions of the tourist industry, where tourists with cameras follow in the footsteps of earlier travellers, repeating the same picturesque scenes within their own picturesque images. (eg Landscape Photography workshops where people are handed a view on a plate. 'Put your tripod in the marks left by others' and articles such as Locations Guide and View Point of the Month in Outdoor Photography.)

·         The picturesque landscape was a calculated response to industrialisation: to escape it. (eg The Peak District as an escape from Manchester and Sheffield.  I remember in the late 60s the area around Hathersage being heaving with day trippers from the cities.)

·         Spawned a new industry: Tourism, which itself threatens to ruin the picturesque quality of those views.

·         What these views give is idealised scenes of the countryside as 'nature' or 'natural views'. (Reference Wilderness American definition as land untramelled by man and the fact that animist cultures have no word for nature as they are part of it.)

·         Beauty Spot!!!

·         In contrast the sublime or 'Black Spot' is a space associated with danger, a place that is threatening, fearful and given an aura of menace. (Industry?)

·         Turner's sublime is often represented by scenes of the sea. (David Baker.)  Nature in all of its fury and force. (see P94/5)

·         The sublime is something that threatens to overwhelm and causes fear, but as a spectator the threat is at a level that can be tolerated.

·         Horror films.

·         The city is the contemporary sublime and the city as a threatening place is probably one of the most common attributes given to cities now.

·         Victorian photographers photographed dark alleys and slums; today burnt out cars, trashed buildings and dark passages are used to invoke fear and anxiety. (Grimsby Docks? Old derelict buildings, Ice House etc.  Even Bardney Beat Factory is now empty and disused and a subject for a 'type' of photographer. Urban Exploration of Urbex.)

·         Within tourism cities are likely to be picturesque.

·         Could Boston with its sluice gates and River Witham opening to The Was be portrayed as sublime.  Need to look for weirs, licks and sluices on the river.  Stormy skies, floods!  

·         Nature can be shown as' gentle' (Picturesque) or full of 'brooding anger' (sublime)

·         Potential for developing my BOW in contrasting the River Witham and/or industry as both picturesque and sublime.  A series of pairs of images.

·         A new category of image emerged in the 19th century with the advent of photography: Photographic Vision.  The idea of pure fact; a visual description devoid of any human soul.

·         In straight photography it was possible to reveal visual facts in a photographic Vision.

·         New Topographics (Top P.98) turned away from aesthetic pleasure in photographs of the land and aimed for tonal neutrality.

·         Early photographic expeditions by Europeans to their colonies and Americans to the 'unknown' interior of their continent were primarily justified in terms of a topographic visual knowledge as surveys of the land.  Surveys were not aesthetic expeditions.  An art of pure description, the 'record' of a space, a 'document' (not documentary) that would provide a topographic description.

·         19th century exploratory expeditions had many aims and, photographs taken on them, many motives.

·         Topographic photography

·         The neutrality of topographic photography was difficult. (Mikkel McAlinden - an image has many secrets.)

·         Topographic photographers found it difficult to avoid the categories of picturesque and the sublime that is achieved in the non-aesthetic description of the land.

·         There is something about picturesque images that cannot be waved away or dispelled: their pleasure

·         People cling to the pleasure (beauty?) of images despite others finding them to be appalling, clichéd, trite or senseless

·         Even if the critique is about a photograph serving up rural myths or a romanticised view that negates the pollution or human destruction of natural land, a spectator can appear as in the grip of some emotional effect of pleasure, which no amount of deconstruction or rational criticism can touch or stop. (are my images guilty of this?  Am I still making picturesque images?  Does it matter? Ought I to be trying for non-aesthetic topographic images.  Not sure!!!  I think I would certainly be happier trying for the sublime.  A thought though.  In order to develop the project could I portray the River Witham three ways: picturesquely, sublimely and topographically.  I first need to identify what they are at the moment!) (Look up Burgin: Looking at Photographs) 

·         The picturesque is a form in which everything is supposed to be 'in the right place', organised as precisely 'composed' and controlled.

·         Good composition is about keeping the eye within the frame. (Picturesque?)

·         Subconsciously people 'like' picturesque images as the 'good composition' reflects the composure and organisation that they would like to see in themselves.

·         Picturesque beauty is despised and maligned as a 'too easy pleasure' by critics.

·         In contrast with the sublime, it is rare to find contemporary cultural critics advocating the picturesque as a radical or interesting form.

·         Discussion of the picturesque is mostly in negative terms, but this underestimates the extent to which it can be valued positively. (P104 para1)

·         Fay Godwin quote in Jesse's book P64: I am wary of picturesque pictures.........they are a very soft warm blanket of sentiment, which covers everybody's idea about the countryside.  It idealises the country in a very unreal way.

·         In times of national stress (wear, disorder etc) picturesque images are important for constructing an idealised community.

·         According to Edmund Burke, the category of the beautiful is linked with notions of 'society'.

·         For Burke the picturesque suggests the harmonising of individual passions to the whole (society), whereas the sublime is linked with the anti-social and invokes passions.

·         Avant-garde art has often been associated with the aesthetics of the sublime, precisely to invoke the unthinkable in society.

·         It would be wrong to categorise the picturesque and the sublime by polarising them as bad or good.

·         Panoramas ideally show the vast magnitude of 'nature' and the miniscule details of that space that photography has the potential to record.  They create a massive spectacle, at once sublime in scale and information, yet diminishing in that spectators can feel miniscule in them (How about panoramas from Kirkstead Bridge, Tattershall Castle or Boston Stump.)

Feedback on Presentation of Body of Work to the Level 3 Hangout Group.

Having presented my Body of Work to a group of Level 3 students in the fortnightly 'Hangout' session, one or two themes cropped up.  Firstly it was felt that my contextual writing was overlong and wordy and varied between personal, autobiographical writing and more scientific/geographical description.  This suggested to the group that my own thinking was still not clear and led to some confusion in the images.  It was felt that a) there were too many images and, b) there was no clear narrative.  I think that both of these points are valid, as, although I have narrowed my projects down following assignment 1, I am still experimenting with, perhaps, too many themes: personal memory and autobiography with the Water Rail Way project, a geographical journey and metaphor for life with the River Witham, perhaps linked to Tennyson's The Brook and the coexistence of nature and industry.  I think that I have attempted to tie these together too much and I would have been better keeping them totally separate.

For Assignment 2, however, I think I shall now concentrate on the river theme, looking at the geographical journey of the river and linking it with Tennyson's poem, The Brook, and an allegory for life.  With these images, though, it was felt by some that the intrusion of people/car/boats interrupted the narrative.  I'm not sure on this one as, since prehistoric times, the River Witham has been used by people and treasured artefacts include a Bronze Age log boat in Lincoln's Usher Gallery and the Bronze Age Witham Shield in the British Museum.

Looking at my photographs I feel that they have a leaning towards the picturesque.  I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing.  I think that like many people, trying to take well composed pictures in interesting lighting (picturesque) is ingrained in me.  I have been reading a great deal lately about the picturesque, the sublime and non-aesthetic topographic images.  My inclination for Assignment 2 is to complete the photography for the journey of the Witham to the sea and then submit a picturesque selection editing down to about 20 images.  I would then like to aim for a set of sublime images of the river and, perhaps, a set of topographic ones.

The what is easy, now I have to concentrate on the how.

Body of Work: Looking towards Assignment 2 and Level 3 Student Google Hangout

This work follows my tutor feedback for Assignment 1 and is looking towards Assignment 2.  I am also using it as a presentation for other L3 students at out fortnightly Google Hangout.  I have reflected on my work for assignment 1 and the report from my tutor and have now narrowed my body of work down from five areas of interest to two as shown below.

What I hope to gain from the Hangout is:-

• Does the work hang together contextually/conceptually
• Does it work without captions
• Could I link the two or should I present them as two separate projects, thinking that the canalized river, railway line and Brayford Pool were once very industrial and the railway line has to a large extent reverted to 'nature'
• Colour or black and white for the industrial images or a mixture
• The two images where I have overlaid old black and white shots over the modern colour ones are meant to evoke feelings of memory and the passing of time, but do they work
• For my last module with my current tutor (PWDP) and for Assignment 1 of L3, I presented all of my work digitally.  I am considering different methods of presentation now and wondering whether to send in a set of prints or a photobook or two photobooks.  Any suggestions would be appreciated
• I am conscious of not bombarding the viewer with too many images, but, at the same time, feel that it is necessary to tell a story, especially in the case of the river project.  Do people have views on this?
• I think that these images, even the industrial ones, have a tendency for the picturesque, largely because of the weather I have been out in.  Thinking further ahead, maybe to assignment 3, I wondered about trying to rephotograph both projects as sublime images?  Perhaps pair them picturesque against sublime?  A thought?

Images can be viewed full screen by clicking on an image.  They can then be viewed as a slide show.

The River Witham and The Water Rail Way

I continue to be interested in the Water Rail Way and the River Witham, which runs alongside it. This project is a personal journey as it takes me back to my childhood and youth.  I was born and brought up in the small Lincolnshire town of Woodhall Spa close to Woodhall Junction on the Lincolnshire Loop railway line which followed the line of the River Witham from Lincoln to Boston and on to the East Coast main line at Peterborough.  In my childhood it was possible to catch the train at Woodhall Junction and get off at Kings Cross.  As a young boy and teenager I would often travel to Lincoln on the train and until the early 1960s it was steam hauled.  The line was affected by the cuts brought about by Dr Beeching, closed in 1971 and dismantled.  Dr Beeching was chairman of British Railways and he became a household name in the 1960s for his report, The Reshaping of British Railways, commonly known as The Beeching Report, which resulted in the closure of over 4000 miles of line. The Lincolnshire Loop Line now has a new lease of life as a traffic free cycle and walking route from Lincoln to Boston and forms part of Sustrans Route 1 cycle route and The Viking Way long distance footpath, which runs from the Humber to Oakham in Rutland and follows the path of the upper as wel as the lower Witham.  The line ran adjacent to the river, which has long been well known for angling, especially match fishing and special angling trains ran from Sheffield until 1969.  At the weekends several trains would be waiting in the sidings at Woodhall Junction to take them all home.   In my younger years I was a keen angler and a regular on the Witham.  One of my fondest childhood memories is of being taken to the signal box at nearby Stixwould Station to have my haircut and, on one occasion, my finger 'put back into joint' by the signal man, who doubled as barber and bone setter.   Several of the old stations have recently been converted to quirky homes.   I have cycled much of this route and photographed the journey, along with the old stations and the black and white photographs of days gone by on the many information boards along the line.  The cycle route has been named the Water Rail Way to encompass railway, river and wildlife.

The upper River Witham rises in the limestone hills of the Lincoln Edge and is a fast flowing chalk stream, whereas the lower river has been canalized for transport and is slower and more turgid.  Interestingly, the fact that the river cuts through the limestone at the Lincoln Gap, enabled Lincoln to develop as a communications hub with river, rail and road transport.  In the centre of Lincoln it opens up to become The Brayford Pool, once a busy industrial waterfront with excellent views to Lincoln's stunning cathedral.  All of this is tied in with my childhood memories of the area.  It rises just west of the A1 between Stamford and Grantham, flows north to Lincoln and then south east to Boston where it flows out into the sea into The Wash.  Coming from Lincolnshire, I am also fascinated by The Brook by Lincolnshire Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which as well as describing the course of a river is also an allegory of Life.  In the last stanza the brook curves and finally joins the brimming river.  Tennyson concludes with the words For men may come and men may go but I go on for ever. which shows the transient life of human beings in contrast to the eternal life of the river.  Even though the brook ends, it becomes part of the river, which flows out to sea and so it continues to flow endlessly.

Although I have photographed much of the course of the river, I still need to take pictures as it flows through Boston and out to sea.

I see these photographs presented in a linear fashion in order to portray the idea of a personal journey and the journey of a river.

Although I gave the industry aspect in Assignment 1 the two  titles Flowers in an Industrial Setting and Industry within the Landscape, I am planning to combine these two.  At this time of year the flowering season is past us and most images of flowers within an industrial setting will need to wait now until next spring.  Having said that I have changed my focus.  I am still interested in industrial landscapes, but am becoming fascinated by how industry and nature coexist, in some cases industrial companies provide space for nature within their environs; for example  Novartis  on the Humber Bank has developed an area adjacent to its plant specifically as a high tide roost for shore birds to rest until they can return to the mudflats to feed.  As much as we may hark back to and wish for a bygone rural idyll, wilderness is a thing of the past, if it ever existed.  We only have to look at Scotland, Wales and the Lake District with the preponderance of nuclear power stations and latterly wind farms within their boundaries.  And people in these places need to have employment, which is often provided by industry.  John Davies' image of Trawsfynydd Power Station in Snowdonia is a prime example.  We all desire the commodities of modern life (food, fuel for our cars, electricity, gas) however 'green' we are.  I am interested in portraying this industry within our rural landscape and also in the coexistence of nature alongside it and of the rewilding of post industrial sites and how nature reclaims its own.  The work being done in Pripyat and Chernobyl by photographers such as Christofer Bennett testifies to this. Having said that, I am interested in the view that nature and landscapes are concepts of western culture and that some animist cultures do not have a word for nature or wilderness as they feel that they are part of it.

These pictures do not need to viewed linearly and would, perhaps be better seen in groups.