Where East meets West – Part 12 – Spalding

I’m nearing the edge of Lincolnshire now – and was thinking that Spalding would be the furthest point on my journey South down the Meridian Line.

I still have to re-shoot some of the places I’ve visited already, as I’d like to get some more sunshine into the pictures.  Also, I want to visit Greenwich, as this seems to be the place where it should end……

However….. yesterday we visited Spalding…. for the first time ever… so what is Spalding – what does the place name mean?

It’s both English and Scottish: a habitational name from a place in Lincolnshire, so called from the Old English tribal name Spaldingas ‘people of the district called Spald’. The district name probably means ‘ditches’, referring to the drainage channels in the fenland.

The river Welland runs through the middle of the town, and it was at one time, the town was well known for the annual Spalding Flower Parade, held from 1959 to 2013. The parade celebrated the region’s vast tulip production and the cultural links between the Fens and the landscape and people of South Holland (the clue is in the name)…

Archeological excavations at Wygate Park in Spalding have shown that there has been occupation in this area from at least the Roman period, when this part of Lincolnshire was used for the production of salt. It was a coastal siltland.   At Wygate Park salt making seems to have come to an end by the mid-3rd century AD; climatic change and flooding may have made such activities difficult, causing the practice to die out.

The river was well used, and boats carrying all kinds of produce was moved up and down and out to the sea.  You can see the merchants houses still, though some have had major conversions on them.

We didn’t have a lot of time to spend, so we moved a little further north to visit a memorial we had seen signed on a previous visit.  This was to the Pilgrim Fathers, just outside Boston.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Protestant non-conformist religious beliefs flourished in England. One such belief was that of the Separatists, a group of Puritans with strong Lincolnshire links – Gainsborough was at the heart of the Lincolnshire Separatist movement, and another group was based just over the border at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire.

Separatists wanted the freedom to worship God away from the constraints of the Church of England. When Elizabeth was succeeded by King James I, there was a clampdown on such groups, it became illegal not to attend church and the Separatist Movement was banned in 1604.

Wanting to escape persecution, The Separatists decided to flee to The Netherlands, a far more tolerant Protestant country. In 1607, both the Gainsborough Separatists and the Scrooby Separatists travelled to Boston where boats were waiting to take them to Holland.

The Gainsborough Separatists successfully completed their journey and joined other English Separatists known as the Ancient Brethren in Leiden.

Unfortunately, The Scrooby Separatists were betrayed by their boat’s captain. Shortly after setting sail, they were intercepted at Scotia Creek (where this memorial stands),  a few miles down river from Boston.  They were arrested and all their goods seized.

The Scrooby Separatists were brought to Boston Guildhall where they remained in the cells whilst awaiting trial at Lincoln. After several months in prison, they were released and returned home to Scrooby penniless. Sympathisers eventually raised enough money to fund a second escape attempt, which this time was successful.

After living peacefully in Leiden for several years, the Ancient Brethren decided to sail for America in search of a better life in 1620. They hired two ships, the Speedwell, which was to transport passengers, and the larger Mayflower, which was to carry supplies, for this very hazardous journey across the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, the Speedwell started to take in water off the coast of Devon and it became obvious that the ship would be incapable of crossing the Atlantic. The passengers transferred to the Mayflower, which set sail from Plymouth on 6th September 1620 and landed in Massachusetts after an arduous two month voyage.

This small group of people became known as The Pilgrim Fathers, the founding fathers of America.

In the 1630s, another group of Lincolnshire Puritans left Boston for America. They founded a new settlement in Massachusetts and named it after their home town – Boston.

One of the most important of these settlers was The Reverend John Cotton, who was the very controversial Vicar of St. Botolphs’ Church in Boston. The Reverend Cotton made many enemies by preaching his non-conformist views and regularly found himself prosecuted at Lincoln’s Law Courts. In 1633, he sailed across the Atlantic to Boston, Massachusetts, and soon became spiritual leader of this church-dominated state.  His influence increased further when he helped to draft the fundamental laws for the colony that are still applicable today.

You are able to walk further along – past the memorial, and views of the Boston Stump can be seen on the horizon…

A pillbox from WW2 still marks part of the estuary

For the time being, this is where my Lincolnshire journey will end, but I think there will be a further post about Spalding.  We visited the parish church which is beautiful, and also the Alms houses there.

I shall revisit some of the places, and research some more, before finally completing the talk that will go with this exploration.

In the meantime… enjoy…

 

The Golden Ratio

What is the Golden Ratio?  Putting it as simply as we can, the Golden Ratio (also known as the Golden Section, Golden Mean, Divine Proportion or Greek letter Phi) exists when a line is divided into two parts and the longer part (a) divided by the smaller part (b) is equal to the sum of (a) + (b) divided by (a), which both equal 1.618.  Whew !!!

The Greeks discovered that there was a ratio of length to height that they considered to be aesthetically pleasing. This is the 1.618 : 1, and this makes a print that is roughly 13 x 8.   What’s magical about this?  Well, it has unusual mathematical properties, which the Greeks claimed were divinely inspired, and therefore the best…. and this particular rectangle is the basic shape of all Greek architecture – including the Parthenon.

If you take the Golden Rectangle, and cut off a square, the shape that is left, is also a Golden Rectangle.  Cut off another square, and you are again left with the Golden Rectangle… ad infinitum.  If you do this repeatedly, you will end up with a spiral of rectangles, and if you then draw a line through these, you will end up with a perfect logarithmic spiral.

The Golden mean was studied at length by the mathematician Fibonacci, who discovered the set of numbers called the Fibonacci sequence. The series of numbers: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, … The next number is found by adding up the two before it.

As a photographer we need to understand the simplicity of this, and how it can affect our images.  What makes something look ‘good’ without you always being aware of the why…..

In my last post, I showed a portrait, and I’ll show this again with the Golden Triangle superimposed on top.

There is some magic in the Golden Mean – it’s worthy of study, if you are so inclined, and fascinated by such things (as I am)…

You can find these crop overlays by the way, in Lightroom.  Click on the crop tool, and then repeatedly press the ‘O’ key and different crop layouts will cycle round.  From the 1/3 grid, to the Golden Spiral, and through to the Golden Rectangle…..

Enjoy…..

Paper

Until fairly recently I didn’t print a lot.  Most of my work was created digitally, and rendered digitally.  Then I realised that I needed prints for competitions I was entering, talks I was giving, and more recently for qualifications I was working towards.

I rediscovered my love of paper…  I remember when I was at school, my fascination with reams of paper – the different textures and colours – and different shades of white.  Later, when studying photography at college, we were encouraged to print on different paper types – since then though, I’d almost forgotten about the exercise we did – and it was whilst looking for something else in a cupboard, that I came across the project – with all the different papers.

The images I made for my ARPS, were all printed on Hahnemühle Photo Rag, and they were lovely (if I may say so myself…….).

Since then, I’ve used a variety of papers, and find myself using high gloss less and less.  I really like the lustres, and satin mat for certain images.

Paper is sensual.  The texture, the colour, the weave.  In fact it’s a bit confusing to decide which to choose, and which will work best with each image.

My printer, which has been on its last legs for some time, finally ran out of one of the ink colours, and the way it is designed means that I can’t even print a text document in black (even though there’s plenty of that)… so I think that it will have to go to the great printer heaven at the tip.

I’ve been unable to make photographic prints at home for a long while because the fault in the printer heads meant that everything came out with a green cast – which looks pretty unpleasant – so everything has been outsourced to One Vision Imaging since last October, and it was whilst using them that I tried a number of different papers.

I kept using my old printer for documents, and drafts of things, but now it sits on my desk like an out of work dinosaur.

It’s going to take me a while to sort this out, but hopefully, when I do, it’ll be a smaller printer (everything used to be A3+).  The last set of prints I made were 12 x 8 (a ratio I like a lot), and I’m convinced that for the most part this is big enough.

When I’m judging at clubs – I try to find time to say that sometimes bigger means more margin for error.  With smaller prints, it’s harder to find some of  the mistakes.

For the moment though, it is outsourced printing, till I can get a new printer.

 

 

Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters……….

“And after many days, it will come back buttered” – This is a quote from Louisa May Alcott – author of Little Women….

My father used to quote this to me all the time, and to be honest I didn’t always get what he was saying.  As I’ve got older though, I’ve come to appreciate that it’s true…

For the last two months, and for one more (at least) – I said that I would give away 5 prints of anything on my website, to which the public have access, to the first five people that ask for them.

The motivation behind this was from a book I’d read, called ‘The Gift’,  and it talked about the art of giving.  I’d hesitated for quite a long time before I went ahead and made this offer – partly because I wasn’t sure that anyone would actually WANT anything (or that it could be seen as arrogance), and partly because I was afraid that they wouldn’t…. I wasn’t sure which was the worst….

So, for better, or for worse – I made the offer.  What really astounded me was the number of requests – and not just the requests, but the responses afterwards.

The images have been sent entirely to people I have had some contact with – people from camera clubs as far afield as the North West, and others (including individuals), more locally in Derbyshire, Leeds and Lincolnshire.  There has been no contact at all from complete strangers which is interesting in itself.

It was fascinating to see what people picked to have, and more fascinating still that three people said they wanted a particular sort of image, but left me to choose which one of that set to send them.  One person said that if I picked my favourite, then he would know that when he hung it on the wall….

Another talked of being a little ‘down’, and how much receiving something nice in the post cheered them up – and yet another sent me a photo of the image already in a frame, hanging on the wall, within a couple of hours of delivery.

All this has left me feeling cheered too – there are good things happening all around us, which maybe we don’t take enough notice of.   It’s not just about the giving (though I have to say I have enjoyed it very much), it’s about the response to an unconditional gift.

I realise that this is not something for everyone, but honestly I can recommend that everyone should try this – at least once.

I will do the ‘give-away’ again at the start of June, and then see how it goes from there.

In conclusion I also want to say a massive THANK YOU to all the people who have requested images – to those who have sent such lovely messages back afterwards – and to those who have sent me pictures of the pictures…..

To those who asked for images who were not in the first 5 – you have one more chance…. at the start of June….

Get your fingers ready…..

Thank you………

 

 

Make a Picture, Take a Picture

It’s been chucking it down with rain today – so what better to do than work through a few images taken over the last week.

I’ve been away visiting a friend just outside Liverpool.  I’ve not been there for ages, and my friend is not a photographer.  She came out with me for a couple of walks, but was obviously not interested in what I was doing.  “Let’s go for a coffee…” she said.

Now, I did go to visit her, so the invitation to coffee, was not really that; it was translated loosely as “stop ignoring me, and lets go sit down and talk”…  we sat down and talked.

The next day, we travelled into Liverpool centre to visit the Walker Art Gallery, where there was a Charles Rennie Mackintosh exibition.  He’s a Scottish artist I’d not heard of, but I was assured it was worth the visit, and it was.  It was very much reminicent of the Art Nouveau / deco style.  I loved it.

What interested me too,  was the fact that the gallery welcomed, and in fact encouraged, photography.  Even in the paid exhibit section.  They were asking photographers to share their images on social media, though having looked at their Facebook Page, there doesn’t seem to be any way to do so.

It was an experience to be able to sit still and gather images together – I’d had a shot like this in mind for some time, but needed the space to do it.

People watching is one of my favourite pastimes too.  I think the bloke at the back might have spotted what I was up to though.

Lost in their own worlds.  Totally absorbed in the drawings in the Leonardo Da Vinci section of the gallery.

In the few days of my visit, I was able to take quite a few pictures, and on my return home, make a few as well.

Here’s a final one of a windsurfer on the lake at West Kirby.

Normal service will be resumed ASAP…..  Enjoy your week…

It’s a Giveaway – part deux

At the start of April, I said that I would give away 5 prints to the first five people who asked for them, and I said I’d do this for three months.

Well, here we are, one month later, and the offer stands good.

I will give away 5 prints once again to the first five people that ask.

Last month, the offer went live at around 9am, and all the prints were gone by 4pm.  I posted some out, and delivered some by hand.  I did give away an extra couple to personal friends as well.

So, if you feel you would like a print – then all you  have to do is visit my website – http://www.dseddonphoto.co.uk, and let me know what you would like.

Prints will be no bigger than A4, and may be smaller depending on the image.  Let me have your address when you order, (and you can do this through the contact page on the website), and I’ll get them off to you as soon as I can.

The print that went the furthest last month was to Scotland.

All this came about following the reading of a book called ‘The Gift’ which encouraged people to share what they had, and gift things. It seemed a good idea so this is what I’m doing.

I don’t expect any recompense, but I’d encourage other photographers to follow suit.  As my old dad used to say “Cast thy bread upon the waters, and it may come back buttered”…….

I’ll do this again for the final time at the start of June.

Happy photography…………