River view

 

The Peterborough office of the organisation I work for has done rather a peregrination around the city over the years.  Mind you, that's true of some of their other offices as well...  Many public bodies do that as Government priorities and policies change and Departments (and Arms-Length Bodies) are repurposed and reorganised accordingly.  

At the start of this year, we relocated to a newly-built Government Hub office on the far side of the river, on some land that, truthfully, had desperately needed regeneration.  It's a really nice office, and for me one of the great things about it is its proximity to the river, meaning that on office days I can still walk along by the river.  

I took this photo on the way to the office one morning not long ago when it warmer and drier than it has been over the last few days (I'm writing this in the aftermath of Storm Babet).  River views are always (well, sometimes) a Good Thing, and I loved the way the new development is sitting in the landscape.

#100Photos #34

Broken symmetry

Before Covid 19 and a change in role within the organisation I work for, I used to travel across the Fens by rail to Cambridge quite often; I miss that journey!  I do like the open landscapes and the big skies of that part of the country.  I was actually born in a Fenland town in Lincolnshire (long story, I wasn’t supposed to be…), so I guess there’s an inbuilt sense of home for me in the Fens.

My favourite part of the journey to Cambridge is the couple of minutes that it takes to cross the Ouse Washes, especially on the outbound journey as you look northwards into Norfolk.  The hydrology of the Washes is interesting; in the summer water is pumped off them and cattle graze there, unlike the surrounding areas where they’re pumping water onto the land for irrigation, and in winter water is pumped onto them while they’re pumping water away from the farmland.  The cattle are replaced by wintering birds – the Washes are famous for the thousands of Whooper swans that arrive from Iceland to overwinter, and in recent years there have even been cranes on the surrounding land!  I was absolutely thrilled when I saw them for the first time (and still really pleased every time since)!  It’s always fun to see the astonishment of fellow passengers who don’t know the area when they see the miles and miles of water either side of the train.

One of the things I love about the Ouse Washes is that in winter, particularly, the light changes every time you see them.  On a still day, the surface is a mirror, and on a windy day you could be looking at a seascape.  When I took this photo, you can almost see the cloudscape reflected; it’s a broken symmetry.  I’ve learned enough physics for that to amuse me even if the photo does break the rules of composition!

Speaking of the photo, one thing I’ve learned through this project is that my palette tends to silvers, blues and golds, largely because those are our local colours.  This was a phone photo, by the way; my phone (currently a Samsung A23) tends to be my main camera simply because it’s always with me. At photo 33 I’m a third of the way through the 100 photos, looking at what works from the ones I’ve taken previously and looking to improve my photography in the time the project takes.

#100Photos #33

A modern icon

 

There are not many modern buildings in the UK that are instantly recognisable.  It's not that we're short of great architecture but apart from, say, the London O2 and Belfast's Titanic Museum, there just aren't many modern icons.  The Selfridges building, though, clad in metal discs, is iconic in a way that very few other buildings could hope to be. It is the highlight of the remodelled Birmingham Bullring.

This day, under a glowering sky, was the first time I had ever seen it close-up.  It has the wow factor in spades.

#100Photos #32 

The lamp

A few months ago, I found myself staying in Bristol overnight after a rare face-to-face meeting. 

From what I've seen of Bristol in the two or three short visits I've had there, it's an intriguing city.  I had (and took) the opportunity to look around the Cathedral and my colleagues and I had the bonus of a working visit to a city farm the next morning before we returned to our scattered homes.

For this visit, I stayed in a hotel in the city centre. The reception area was very modern, with an ‘Instagram wall’ that I couldn't resist standing in front of and asking one of my colleagues to take a photo of me.  I don't normally do that!

The room I was in was very different from the Reception area and I loved it from the moment I walked in, but it took me a few seconds to realise that it was really steampunk. The safe and the coffee fixings were in an alcove with wire grill doors. And take this wall lamp - it had a really ancient-looking style of bulb which was exposed by the wire-frame ‘shade’ and an industrial cable duct from its power source. It was artfully bright enough to light the room but not bright enough to hurt your eyes. I'd never seen anything like it!  The room had a really comfy bed as well, which is always a bonus.

#100Photos #31

Marston Marble

 

This photogenic, fossil-rich, limestone hails from Somerset in England's West Country. It's not often that a polished slab of stone photographs decently with just a smartphone, but I was really pleased with this photo.  The main issues I find with this sort of shot are (i) holding the phone rock steady (genuinely no pun intended), and (ii) the fact that cameras tend to focus straight through polished surfaces onto something – often the photographer! – being reflected.  This slab is inside a glass case, which tends to add an additional complication in terms of reflections, but I was lucky here and this photo didn’t need to have a filter used or to have any adjustments made.

Incidentally, this variety of stone (which dates back to the Lower Jurassic) is not actually a 'true' marble in the sense that geologists use the term - limestone metamorphosed by heat and pressure - but stonemasons use the term to describe any limestone that takes a good polish. This one certainly does that! Stonemasons were using some 'geological' terms long before geologists were. 

This beautiful specimen is in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge, UK - do go and see it for yourself!

 

#100Photos #30

Norwich - leading lights

Everybody has favourite places. For me, there’s Edinburgh; partly because of its history and partly – mainly - because of the story told by the exposed geology of Holyrood Park, Castle Rock and Calton Hill.  If a certain brewery did geology trails, Edinburgh would be the showcase one.  At the other end of the size scale I have lovely memories of a village called Uley in Gloucestershire, where my great aunt lived and where I rode a horse for the very first time.

Then there's the county of Norfolk on England's East Coast.  My grandmother came from Castle Acre; it's a beautiful village with a ruined castle and the remains of a Cistercian Priory.  My father was twice stationed in Norfolk with the RAF, and I went to boarding school near Norwich when he was posted from Norfolk to Germany.  Add in visits since then to the Broads and to North West Norfolk and the North Norfolk coast and you've got a bucket full of memories.  I've been back to Norwich a number of times with my partner and it's very definitely my favourite English city.

We were walking through the Royal Arcade one day and I took a truly mundane photo as we did. I've cropped that photo since then and it's almost what I would take now if I were trying to take a photo of the lights. I could have done with standing slightly further to my right, which is what I hope I would do now, but I do quite like this as it stands.

#100Photos #29

The coming storm

One Saturday morning, I was on my way from Exeter to spend some quality time with the red cliffs just along the coast at Dawlish when the train went past the Warren, and I took this atmospheric photo through the train window. Dawlish Warren is really important for its coastal geomorphology, so it has a good Earth science interest in its own right.

Looks idyllic, doesn't it?  It’s what the photo doesn’t show that comes to mind when I look at it.  Out of the window on the other side of the carriage, the sky was black.  Not just grey, but black-with-menaces.  The sort of black that a daytime sky has no business being. 

As we rounded toward the small town and seafront station of Dawlish (which is now famous for the railway line being washed away there in a later, rather more massive storm and equally famous for the Herculean work of the 'Orange Army' who repaired it), the heavens opened.  As those of us who were getting off the train there did just that, and those who weren’t getting off looked smug, we were lashed by horizontal rain, salt spray and rather stiff winds.  The passengers who had a particular destination in Dawlish made a run for it, but I just took shelter in the station, wondering whether my trip was in vain.  

Luckily, the storm was reasonably short-lived although I did watch several more squalls going past out to sea during the morning. I did get my quality time with the cliffs (Permian sandstone, as you ask) - and a long journey back to the Flatlands of the East, tired but happy, afterwards. That said, it will be a long time before I forget that storm!

#100Photos #28