Dungeness: Black and White

Back in April I met up with a couple of fellow camera nerds, comrades from the 365 Project, for a trip down to the south coast. We were going to Dungeness, somewhere I had long wanted to photograph. I had looked into going there before but without a car it is prohibitively difficult; public transport doesn't best serve such areas. And they can't really be blamed, its own promotional website describes Dungeness as 'bleak and desolate'. This wasn't what was on our mind, however, as we headed progressively south. The weather was wonderful, one of the first truly beautiful days of the year. Sadly, it didn't last. By the time we had arrived the cloud had solidly set in and the exposed nature of the area left us open to a biting wind that soon left my ears stinging. Undeterred we set off to explore.

Anyone vaguely into landscape photography in the UK will be aware of Dungeness as a location unlike any other in the country. Basically it is an enormous bank of shingle, the largest on the continent. At a glance it is as bleak and desolate as advertised but upon closer inspection there is actually a lot going on. It is a part of a vast nature reserve that is particularly important with regard to bird and plant life, in fact it is home to one third of all the plant species to be found in the UK. There are also two nuclear reactors, Dungeness A and Dungeness B, the first of which has been shut down and the second of which is due to be so in 2018.

Although from a comfort perspective this was not going to be the most wonderful afternoon, from a photographic perspective it was pretty much exactly what I'd hoped for. It was Dungeness at its gloomy best. What little colour there already was had been further muted by the grey clouds and so tones and textures became ever more important. There was always going to be a lot of black and white conversions in post processing after this trip. A little tip, even if you fully intend to end up with black and white pictures it is generally a good idea to originally shoot in colour and then convert to black and white. This gives you a lot more options after the event in what type of black and white you want to apply and, of course, in staying in colour if you so choose.

The main photographic focus are the numerous abandoned fishing boats that sit just above the high tide mark in every imaginable stage of decay. There are a few where it's actually difficult to tell whether the boat has been left for dead or whether it's still a living, breathing boat; and then there are others where all that is left are the ribs of the hull and a few warped planks like the skin on the corpse of a rotting whale corpse. There are also tiny little railway tracks and wheelhouses that, once upon a time, were used to haul the fleet up and down the beach. The tracks can provide leading lines to help guide the eye around a carefully composed image.

I'm going to post a second Dungeness article full of colour images, there were a couple of occasions where having a splash of vibrancy was the right path to take. Our final path led Rachel, Christin and I to a local pub where we could warm up and refresh before the long drive home. I'm very happy that I finally made it down to Dungeness, it was a photographic and social success; I highly recommend it to those with a bleak streak running through them.

Brick Lane By Night

Last Saturday night I joined up with the people from London Photo Walk to go on an all night solstice walk. We covered about 23km over 11hrs or so. It was a long but extremely rewarding night and I look forward to doing it again next year.

Given that this took place all through the night exposures were all very long, generally 15-30 seconds. It was also quite difficult to even know exactly what you were pointing your lens at as it was so dark in some of the back alleys and so composition wasn't always straightforward. This meant that over the 11hrs I only took about 100 photos; but there was a definite benefit to this. It was a bit like shooting with film, you were forced to put a lot more thought into what you were doing. If you pressed the shutter at the wrong time then you wasted half a minute of your life, which may not sound like much but it is quite the motivator when the wind is blowing at three in the morning.

As I said, we covered a lot of ground that night but the four photos in this post are all from the ever fascinating Brick Lane; one of my favourite streets in the world. Endlessly interesting and always full of life I have spent countless hours walking it's length, generally in the dead of night, but this was the first time I had ever taken my camera with me. I think it paid dividends. It isn't very difficult to make great art look good and obviously street art lends itself to street photography, something I normally struggle with.

Except for the fox, each of the pictures here have undergone quite a lot of post processing to bring out the best in them, or, rather, conceal the worst in them. These pictures were quite busy and messy to start with and mostly what I have done is to crop them down and remove colours to hopefully simplify them and make them easier on the eye. The shot below is a great example of where the original exposure wasn't up to snuff. There was different coloured crap all over the floor, the edges of other artworks to either side and and some unattractive lintels over the top. I cropped out most of all that, made it black and white to remove the distracting colours and then just allowed the reds and yellows to come through to keep it simple. Hopefully the result is a more satisfying picture that allows you to focus on the graffiti. It's a cliche but less is often more.

The Milky Way

On my first night of this particular trip to Romania last summer I got excited. As we were driving to my girlfriend's dad's house (personally I'd call it a farm), I looked out of the car window and saw stars. Not just a few like you get in London, but hundreds and hundreds of them; maybe a couple of thousand. And stretching out across the heavens, as clear as day, was the Milky Way. This wasn't the first time I'd seen it; I'd seen the galactic disc in lots of different places around the world and I've even been able to see it in the UK a few times; but this time I knew that I was going to be here for a couple of weeks and there should be plenty of opportunities to get some good pictures. I was excited.

One night when I had a spare hour or two I took the camera out onto the road beside the farm, I knew there wouldn't be traffic any time soon, and started taking a few tester pictures. First of all I decided to try and get a shot of stars with the landscape included for perspective. There were trees and a few farm buildings across the way. It wasn't easy as there was the odd streetlight here and there that made the exposure difficult to get right. The results weren't great but I wasn't too bothered as I knew this was just the preamble to the Milky Way shots I was going to get later.

Having got a fairly mediocre picture I moved round to the side of the farm where it was even darker and there were fewer lampposts. Now I was aiming almost directly up in the air to try and get a picture of just the Milky Way with nothing terrestrial in frame. The first few attempts were promising and not too long later I had the shot I had been waiting for. It looked great. The galaxy was clearly defined arcing right through the middle of the frame, the stars were bright and pin sharp and I knew I had a keeper. I was excited to think how it would look once I'd processed it a little to make it even clearer once I got back to Blighty. You can see the finished result below.

Pardon? What's that you say? You can't see anything? Am I sure I uploaded the right picture? Yes, I'm sure. Hmmmmm.... The problem seems to be that what I saw on the back of my camera that night was not representative of the data the camera captured. I can't really explain what went wrong but it goes without saying that once I got home I was very disappointed to see the result as, as you can see, it's rubbish. There is basically nothing there. I tried to process it every way I knew how but it seemed beyond rescue. I was gutted. I have posted it here anyway mostly just as a warning, I suppose. You can't always trust exactly what you see in camera. My advice would be to make sure you always check the histogram, especially if you're working in extreme light conditions, as this should give an unbiased account of the data you've captured; and keep taking pictures, even if you think you've got 'the one'. I hope you have more luck than I did.

The View From St. Paul's

A few months ago my mother came to visit. She wanted to visit St. Paul's cathedral and climb to the summit, and so we went. On that occasion I just took a few snaps on my phone but I returned a few weeks later, awesome annual pass in hand, to try and get some decent clicks with my proper camera. Unfortunately the weather was against me. The photo above has been quite heavily processed to try and make the best of the sky; I've gotten quite lazy and you can see halos (no pun intended) around the buildings on the horizon. I also need to clean my lens and sensor. Below, I've deliberately gone for a silhouette type effect to mask the fact that otherwise it would be quite an underwhelming picture.

Still, I've learnt a lot about the location; I know what sort of shots I want to get, what time of day I need to be there to have the sun at the best angle and, like I said, I have an awesome annual pass and so I'm going to keep going back until the weather is in my favour. God willing.

The Orton Effect

In the 1980s a man by the name of Michael Orton wrote an article on photography. In it he presented images of a kind that no one had ever seen the like of before. Today, these types of images are a mainstay of any photographer who wants to give a painterly or ethereal look to their photos; the technique has become known as the Orton Effect and below you can see an example of one of my pictures that has been given the Michael Orton treatment.

Back then he was doing this using film and, frankly, I have no idea how you would go about doing that because I have never worked with film. I can say that it is very easy to create digitally. I won't give a detailed step by step guide here but basically the steps are these: take your original image, slightly overexpose it, duplicate it, apply a Gaussian blur to the duplicate and then overlay the sharp image with the blurred one. It won't work for every picture, some work better than others and I haven't figured out yet what the formula for a good result is. I tried a few that didn't really do anything for me before I got to this one; which happens to be of possibly my favourite photo I have ever taken.

The Orton Effect, then, is a strange one; it seems to increase and decrease the level of detail all at the same time. It is difficult to describe what it does to an image but people tend to use words like romantic and emotional when trying to do so. My preference is painterly. 

Quintessentially English

Atop the Captsone

A few weeks ago I had the absolute pleasure of giving a friend away. No, not at some sort of charity car boot sale; it was at her wedding. She had had the good judgement to get married at Tunnels Beaches in Ilfracombe, Devon. Not only is it a fantastic venue in which to get married with views out to the Irish Sea and your very own private beach to explore, but the town of Ilfracombe itself is a very picturesque one. Having spent 6 hours on a coach getting there after work I was keen to get out and about the next morning. As luck would have it my hotel was just opposite the Capstone, as locals call it, or as you and I might, the big cliff thing.

Freshly fueled with eggs and bacon I charged up to the top as fast as my little legs could carry me where, at the summit, I was rewarded by fantastic views in all directions. To east and west were views of the coast and cliffs, and to the south all of Ilfracombe was laid out before me. The terrain is hilly and the bulk of the older part of town nestles in a valley running parallel with the coastline; some newer developments have followed the valley as it kinks south. Very little land is wasted, the hills are steep and so many streets are terraced, clinging to the sides of the slopes as the terrain permits. The result is lots of little blind corners, narrow alleys and sudden inclines that frequently put me in mind of the time I spent in south Wales as a child; which shouldn't be so surprising given the two are only separated by 30km or so of water. Indeed, the hotel played Welsh radio in the dining room, which rather threw me as I hadn't undergone the normal mental preparation I would customarily go through before returning there. Also at the peak was the statue in my photo at the top of this post, although I'm afraid I must confess that I have no memory of why it is there or what it represents. I can say that it does a good job of conveying the energy and movement that is so evident atop the cliffs there.

The Landmark Theatre, at bottom left, tends to polarise locals; they either love it or hate it.

My time in Ilfracombe was short but very pleasant. I have been to that part of Devon before and will happily return again in the fullness of time. I don't get to the coast as half as much as I would like which is a shame because the UK is blessed with hundreds of miles of beautiful coastline. I must make sure I don't neglect it so in the future.

Holy Microscopy, Batman!!

I remember one of the best presents I ever got as a kid was a microscope. I have no recollection whatever of who it was that got it for me but I remain grateful for it to this day. Unfortunately my successes at imaging the smallest structures in biology were few, in fact they were non-existent. I don't remember managing to get a single sample to work. I didn't know that just looking at pond water or peeling an onion could yield such impressive results so easily. Mainly, then, my microscope remained in its box looking at nothing more interesting than the back of the instruction manual; but it wasn't as fruitless a situation as it sounds. Even though I couldn't use it properly I loved having it. It inspired me. I liked that someone would entrust me with this highly sophisticated piece of scientific machinery, which is what I assumed it was. The fact is, though, that microscopes aren't especially sophisticated, at least not your standard compound microscope that most of us would be familiar with from high school biology classes. It isn't entirely clear who invented it, or when, but if we said 400 years ago we wouldn't be far off the mark, though it wasn't until the 1670s that microscopy became recognised as a way of seriously studying nature as opposed to merely a gentleman's hobby.

"...green Weeds growing in Water and some Animalcula found about them" by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.

Native of Delft Antonie van Leeuwenhoek became the stand out practitioner of the field. He was a slightly odd man who never actually published scientifically or shared the details of how he achieved his progress; he nevertheless came to dominate the field to such an extent that Robert Hooke commented he had a virtual monopoly on microscopic study and discovery. Leeuwenhoek was the very first person to see images that we now commonly take for granted. Bacteria, the cell vacuole and, ahem, sperm were all amongst his discoveries. He also coined one of my all time favourite words: animalcule. He used this to refer to the bacteria and other microorganisms he was discovering. It is only through his correspondence with the Royal Society in London, who subsequently published both his letters and accompanying diagrams, that we can see the incredibly detailed work he was able to carry out.

As we learned more about the nature of light itself it became clear that we would never be able to see anything smaller than about 200-250nm; it's just not possible. There is an equation that Ernst Abbe (a contemporary of Carl Zeiss, camera fans!) came up with in 1873 which I don't fully understand but the result happens to be approximately half the distance of the wavelength of light. For a century this remained unchanged and unchallenged but then some clever people decided to take a different tack which would improve resolution ten fold. And make some pretty pictures too.

Super high resolution image of an E. coli cell by Eric Betzig

Two methods were independently developed both of which have pretty cool acronyms (actual acronyms, not just initialisms): photo activated localisation microscopy (PALM); and the closely related stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM). It was Eric Betzig, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, that developed the PALM technique, so to speak. I don't fully understand how the technique works but it starts out similarly to standard fluorescent microscopy. A fluorescent molecule is tagged to the molecule of interest either using an immunohistochemical approach (antibodies) or genetically. Then the trick is to repeatedly switch the fluorescence on and off such that you obtain a high contrast between your illuminated molecule of choice and the background; subsequently you need to apply some cunning Gaussian functions to help localise the actual centre of the diffraction blur. This is made much easier if you have a small number of areas being activated at any one time and if these points are giving off a large number of photons.

Above you can see an image of a cell from a fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. On the right is the traditional image you could expect to get using normal microscopic techniques. On the left is the same cell using the PALM technique. You don't need to be a cellular biologist to see that there is a lot more detail to be seen using the new technique. Indeed, the image is actually 3d as the different colours represent different depths within the cell. The spaghetti like structures are the microtubules of the cell which are a sort of scaffolding that holds the whole thing together and is also very important during cell division.

In this remarkable image the same cell has been represented 3 times. In it, the mitochondria, the energy producing organelles, have been made to glow. In the left panel is the image you would expect to see using standard techniques. The right hand panel is a single cross section through the cell using the STORM technique and in the central panel is a super resolution 3d image using STORM where colour once again represents depth.  One of the differences between PALM and STORM is how they label the molecules of interest. PALM uses the genetic method and STORM uses the immunohistochemical approach. There are a couple of differences to do with the actual imaging but frankly I don't understand them well enough to be able to explain them.

So asides from creating beautiful images and winning Nobel prizes, what are these new methods actually good for? Well, one exciting example was announced on the same day as the Nobels. Researchers were able to show how HIV changes its shape as it invades a T-cell thereby opening up another new avenue to explore for possible treatments or vaccine developments. This is very important work and shows science at its most creative and beautiful.

Lest We Forget....

Pretty much everyone in London must be aware of the various commemorative public art installations that have been happening over the past few weeks to mark the centenary of the First World War beginning. With the passing of Harry Patch in 2009 this conflict did truly become history; he was the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of western Europe. It is now only through books, documentaries, films and other second hand sources that we can learn about what is sometimes called The Great War.

I'm not sure a war should ever be called great. Whilst there are certainly circumstances where it is worthwhile to take up arms to defend an ideal or way of life I don't think that we should necessarily glory in it. War should be a last resort, a terrible necessity carried out only to the extent necessary and only when no other option remains. Was the First World War one of these occasions? I honestly don't know. I've read conflicting views on this and am not qualified to make a judgement. I'm not sure that anyone is. I am sure that we must make sure nothing like that ever happens again and that is why installations like this are welcome. Each ceramic poppy in the pictures here, and I have by no means covered them all, represents a fallen soldier. I don't know how many there are, many hundreds of thousands. Too many.

The same as the first picture but original colour

The Lomo Effect

Well it's been a few weeks so I thought I'd better come up with something for the blog and, so, I've investigated the Lomo style of photography and come up with a little guide on how to take a bog standard snap and give it a bit of the old Lomo magic. 

For those of you that haven't heard of it I should probably describe what the Lomo style, or Lomography, actually is. I guess it's actually two things; one of which is easy to define, the other of which isn't. The easy one is the physical look of the photos; there tends to be a vignette (darkening at the corners), the colours are very rich (due to the use of slide film and the common practice of cross processing the negatives) and the quality is generally low with blurriness, poor exposure and even light leaks frequently featuring. Most of these properties, normally avoided at all costs by most photographers but sought out by the lomographer, are down to the very low build quality of the lomo camera. Think 1980s, Russia, plastic.

The element that is more difficult to pin down is the style and composition. Perhaps a good place to start would be with the motto of the movement: Don't Think, Just Shoot. Although it could easily be confused with the motto of the American military it is actually a style encompassed by The Ten Golden Rules of Lomography as laid out on their website. These include such adages as Take Your Camera With You Everywhere You Go, and, Lomography Is Not An Interference In Your Life But A Part Of It. Basically, they try to encourage you to break every traditional rule of photography that ever existed. The Rule of Thirds would be anathema to a lomographer. I highly recommend a look at their site to get more of a feel for this unusual brand of photography; you'll probably either like it or you wont.

The question is: how did such an odd, counter-intuitive and niche movement even get started, nevermind become an international phenomenon? It all started as recently as 1992 when a group of Viennese art students came across an old Lomo camera whilst on a tour in Prague. They found it in an old camera shop and used it in a very casual kind of way, often not aiming, shooting from the hip and generally just mucking about. Upon returning home and developing the film they were charmed by the "unique, colourful and sometimes blurry images" that were produced. Interest amongst friends and family rapidly grew and the following year they founded a society in honour of the strange new camera. The camera in question was a Lomo LC-A Compact Automat, produced some ten years previous in the USSR. The build quality of the device was.... well, there was no build quality; but this leant itself perfectly to the students shooting style.

There was a problem, however; with the fall if the USSR also came the end of the production of the camera and the prospect of a ready supply of the student's new favourite toy. Undaunted, the students flew to St. Petersburg, where the Lomo factory was located, to make a deal for tax breaks so as to make it economically viable to continue production. They successfully got the special permission required from the mayor of the city, a very amiable and friendly chap, one V. Putin. The rest, as they say, is Lomography. Production has since shifted to China and production continues to this day; the future of Lomography seems secure and Lomo cameras remain cheap and affordable for all to try. The film is now the increasingly expensive part.

But what if you don't want to faff about with film and developing and such like and just want to create the same effect using your existing DSLR and a bit of canny processing? Well, I'll show you how - so long as you intend to use Adobe Elements, although many applications are broadly similar these days. Those of you not interested in the technical parts can just skip to the pretty picture at the bottom.

The picture we're going to start with is no great shakes. The exposure isn't great, I should have got my neutral density filters out, the sky is overexposed and there's some lens flare; but as we're aiming for the Lomo style none of this should matter, if anything it'll help. So there are two main things we need to do here; create a vignette and achieve a cross-processing effect by increasing saturation and contrast. There is more than one way to do each of these steps including just clicking through the guided Lomo Camera Effect wizard, but where would the fun be in that?

There are two easy ways to create a vignette. The first is to simply go to Filter>Correct Camera Distortion and use the sliders in the vignette tool, which are normally used to remove a vignette, not to create one. I'd normally go for somewhere around -40 to -50 but it's totally up to you.

The second way is a little more involved but gives you more control. Take the Lasso tool and, having selected a feathering level of, shall we say, between 100-200 pixels, draw a vaguely circular shape in the middle of the photo. Again, we're not aiming for perfection here. We want to alter the outside of this circle not the inside and so you need to click Select>Inverse. Now create a Levels layer and slide both the shadows and the midpoint markers to the right a little, this will add to the vignette effect. I actually prefer to use a combination of these two methods to make my vignettes.

That's the vignette sorted but now we need to work on the distinctive colour palette of lomography; again, there are a couple of ways to go about this and I like to use a combination of each. First up: colour curves. Click on Enhance>Adjust Colour>Adjust Colour Curves... (yes, it really does have the three little dots after it). Here you are presented with a straight diagonal line on a grid. The left hand side of the grid represents dark colours, the left hand side highlights, and the middle is the midtones. There are several preset options available but you can also drag the points on the line to warp it. Moving any given point on the line either up or down will make the corresponding band of colour more or less intense. We want to make the curve look like an S; this will have the effect of making the highlights brighter and the dark parts darker, i.e. increasing contrast. If your line looks something like the one in my example below then you're on the right track. Press okay when you're happy with the effect achieved.

I would also recommend increasing the saturation, this will help to achieve the cross processing effect that is so synonymous with the Lomo style. To do this you can either click on Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation... or simply click on the button with the diagonally divided circle on it on the right hand side and select Hue/Saturation... Use the slider for Saturation to give your colours a bit of a boost. For a 'normal' photo I wouldn't want to push this much past the mid teens, but for the Lomo style you can probably get away with numbers in the 30s, 40s or even higher depending on the photo.

In the same way that you got your Hue/Saturation... layer you can now select a new Brightness/Contrast... layer. Here, I wouldn't say that the Brightness has to go one way or the other, this really depends on what look you want to achieve with any given individual photo, but I would recommend increasing the contrast a little.

Lastly, I would say it's worth while putting a Fill layer in. To do this, select Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Colour... Call the new layer whatever you like or leave it as the default and click Ok. This should default to a layer of pure black and you will completely lose the picture you have so carefully created. Fortunately it is only hiding behind the black layer and we now have to blend the two together to reveal the finished product. Click Ok again. At the top right in the Layers panel you will have a drop down box with various different blending options; I would recommend Soft Light or Hue or Saturation and an Opacity of something like 30-50%. This should really help bring about that cross processing look. Cross processing, by the way, is where you develop film using non-standard chemicals. There are two main film types; standard 35mm and Colour Slide film. Each of these sets has their own chemicals used in their development, C41 for 35mm and E6 for Colour Slide film; however, lomographers noticed that you can get some really cool results if you swap these up. As I understand it the more common option is to use Colour Slide film and process it with 35mm chemicals.

That's about it. With any luck you should now have a photo worthy of the annals of Lomography, or at least something that looks a little old timey; you can see my effort below. None of the techniques I have mentioned here are set in stone; indeed, that would go against the whole freestyle notion that made Lomo popular in the first place. The idea is not to be constricted by the traditional norms, to break the rules and not to worry about the consequences. As Rule #10 of Lomography says: Don't worry about any rules.

The Thames Barrier

Ahhhh, this feels good. Today I did something I haven't done in a long time: I went out with my camera, in the sun, to take photos just for fun. I wasn't doing it because the stupid 365 Project was making its daily demand; nor because I was at some event where tradition demands that a few badly shot pictures of blurry revellers be taken for posterity; nor because I happened to be visiting somewhere that, theoretically, I should be taking photos of. No, today it was just me, the camera, good weather, London and science podcasts. Bliss.

So it was I decided to head down to the Thames Barrier. It's only a few miles from where I live but I had never gone down there before; I soon realised I had been remiss, there were ample opportunities for some interesting photography. 

The Thames Barrier, then. Why is it there? How long has it been there? How does it work? And why does it look so weird? Some of these questions are easier to answer than others. The reason it is in that specific location is quite straightforward; the Thames, if you look at it on a map, is wrigglier than a three year old with ants in their pants but in this little section, between Silvertown in Newham and New Charlton in the borough of Greenwich, the banks are quite straight and parallel to one another; this makes it much easier to build a massive, water tight, movable barrier - the second largest in the world. Also, the underlying chalk bedrock in the area happens to be a little harder than the chalk and clay on which most of London sits and so could support the structure. As an aside, London is steadily sinking into the ground much as Venice is now, but that's a problem for another century. The other interpretation of the question Why is it there? - as in Why do we need it at all? - is also simple enough, if not a little tragic.

In 1953 a spring tide coincided with a severe storm over the North Sea, this led to a surge in sea level of over 5 metres. The first area to be affected was Scotland where 19 fatalities were reported, but conditions only got worse as the surge travelled south into the progressively more shallow waters of the southern North Sea. Approximately 1000km2 of eastern England were flooded with the sea encroaching as much as 2 miles inland in Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Over 1600km of coastline was flooded along with severe floods in Silvertown and Canning Town in East London; just a mile down the road from me. The result was tens of thousands being made homeless and 307 deaths. At sea, many trawlers and other boats were lost producing another 224 deaths.

Sadly, by comparison, we had it easy. The Netherlands, where a fifth of the country is below mean sea level and half of it is at less than 1m above sea level, over 1800 people were drowned as a quarter of the country was lost to the sea. There were also long term effects as being flooded by sea water is not like being flooded by fresh water. Having that much salt dumped onto the land devastates farm land or, indeed, any land where you might want vegetation to thrive.

As a result of this natural disaster, the second worst in British recorded history, the Government began planning how to protect us from such 1 in 1000 year catastrophes. Sea defences around the country were built/bolstered and a plan for some kind of barrier to protect central London was commissioned.

The design was first drawn up in the 1950s by Charles Draper but construction didn't begin until 1974; it was opened by Her Majesty The Queen on my 1st birthday in 1984 and, in today's money, it cost nearly £2b. There are five large piers and two smaller ones creating four 60m navigable spans and two 30m navigable spans. The 60m spans were specifically that size so as to be the same as Tower Bridge, i.e. anything that could get through Tower Bridge had to be able to get through the barrier too. I think my photos struggle to convey the scale of this area adequately; the river is over half a kilometre wide here, and you could fit Tower Bridge onto it four times just in the central section. It's huge.

Used with permission

So how does the damn thing work? Hopefully the diagram to the right will help explain. Between each pier there is a hollow gate with a circular cross section; when the gates are closed this rests in a depression cut into the riverbed  allowing the free flow of water. To stop the fluvial flow these can be rotated such that nothing pass. To close the barrier isn't a simple task, though, it requires coordination with many other flood defences in the region and costs about £16000 per go.

The Barrier can protect London in two different ways depending on which direction the flooding is expected: from the North Sea or from the river itself. It's easy enough to imagine how it might protect London from the type of disaster experienced in 1953, you simply close the gate and, with any luck, nothing will get passed it and the areas down stream won't be too badly damaged either. But it can also help if there has been a lot of rain and the flooding is coming from upriver in the Thames basin. It does this by closing the gates during a low tide, this means that once the tide starts rising again it can't get back up river and this creates a basin of low level water that the flood water can run into allowing it to drain out of the city more quickly.

As it approaches it's 30th birthday the Thames Barrier continues to provide protection for Londoners; disconcertingly, though, this protection is having to be deployed more and more frequently. In it's first 6 years of use it was only closed 4 times, in the last decade it has averaged 7 times per year. Is this a possible measure of global warming? Are flood events occurring more often? In the fantastically complex science of climate change it isn't possible to draw a conclusion from one measure of anything, but it would seem to support that. The barrier was only designed to protect against a surge in sea level of 4.67 metres. If sea levels raise by a metre this century, as seems likely, then the capacity of the barrier to protect the capital would be greatly reduced. Add to that the slightly odd fact that Britain is tilting (the south and east are sinking and the north and west are rising at about 5cm/century) and the future looks ever more precarious. The original design was supposed to provide solid protection up until the year 2030 followed by a period of ever diminishing returns after that. The Environment Agency, however, who now runs the barrier, has said that it has no intention of replacing it before the year 2070. I do wonder if this is based on good scientific advice or on Governments that are not willing to spend money on insurance policies. Hopefully it won't take another disaster of the kind seen in 1953 to force their hand.

The view to the west, Docklands and the O2 can be seen in the distance

After three hours I had only covered about 200 yards of the riverbank but I had had a great time. The weather and light were fantastic and it was good to be there knowing that I could write it up at my leisure in the style that I used to before the 365 Project consumed my hobby. I knew I would have the time to look into the history of this impressive structure and do it some justice in words as well as in pictures. Basically, I have my blog back and I love it. I hope you enjoy it too.

Mystic River

About a year ago I went on a little expedition to photograph the deer in Richmond Park, one of my favourite parks in all of London. Depending on your viewpoint the weather was awful. It was bitterly cold and and a heavy fog hung over the entire area throughout the day. This made the deer more difficult to spot, as visibility was below 50 yards, and any chance of nice bright landscapes non-existant. On the upside, it gave the Thames an ethereal quality that was quite magical. Another positive was the way that the branches of trees were highlighted due to the contrast with the overcast sky. I have always been fascinated by the intricacies of how branches grow; the journey, both physical and temporal, from green bud to mighty trunk. I did a module at uni on plant developmental genetics and it was one of the most interesting courses I've ever had the pleasure to do. For those interested, it's all to do with shoot apical meristems.

It was a touch on the foggy side

As you can see, the fog was substantial.

Richmond Bridge

Richmond bridge is rapidly approaching a quarter of a millennium in age and is still going strong. Thanks in part to a solid original design and partly to a sensitive widening project carried out in the 1930s so that it could cope with the increase in traffic. The upstream half of the bridge was completely dismantled, each brick being saved and labelled, the centre portion extended and then the original facing rebuilt. A single lane on the downstream side was kept open throughout the project.

I could edit these photos to make them clearer, increase saturation and contrast and remove some of the smothering effects of the fog but I've decided to leave them as is. As they are they do a much better job of conveying the scene as I saw it that day; cold, dank and quite beautiful.

An artist I met on the riverbank

This is a chap who will be known to anyone that regularly walks along this portion of the river. Say hello if you see him, he's very friendly and an excellent painter.

The war memorial had recently been adorned with its sombre wreaths of remembrance and I took the opportunity to emphasise the colour of the iconic poppies. To be honest, this didn't take much in the way of editing, it was a dark day indeed.

365 Project

Okay, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do one of those 365 photo projects I've heard so much about in recent years. On a basic level it involves taking at least one photo every day and sharing it online. On a less prosaic level it means forcing yourself to try and get creative every day, to look for something interesting in the mundane, to come up with something different than the last even when the characters have remained the same. From what I understand, until you get into a decent pattern it's actually quite a difficult thing to do and, so, with that in mind I'm going to be realistic about this:

• Not every photo will be great, or even good. Some will be blurry, some will be under exposed.
• Although I intend to take a photo every day I won't necessarily post it here every day; I'll probably batch them a bit.
• There are lots of lists online that can provide guidance and inspiration for days when the creative juices just aren't flowing. I'll probably have a look through several of these for hints and tips.
• I'll likely take duplicate photos that are very similar to each other. Expect to get very well acquainted with my living room and commute to work.
• At some point I will probably want to quit. I'll try not to.

So, starting today, I am going to come up with 365 posts each with its own little photo of something from my day. You'll be pleased to hear that I won't bother tweeting and facebooking about it every single day, we'd all get pretty tired of that pretty quickly; I'll maybe just do a weekly or monthly round up. I shall still be doing my usual photography posts and, hopefully, as I heal up and get more mobile as the year progresses I'll be able to take more higher quality pictures again. I'll also be carrying on with the more scientific and sceptical posts that I started recently, in fact yesterday I started work on what will either be a series of posts or one very long post on one of my absolute, all time, most infuriating topics: chiropractic. But that's for another time.

Here, then, is photo 001 of my 365 Project. I went for a walk today to blast away the cobwebs from last night's celebrations and Primrose Hill in north London was the place to do it. I took this photo on my phone and Instagramed it up a bit so this isn't going to score highly on quality or looking natural, but hey ho.

1 down, 364 to go. Wish me luck.

The City of Arts and Science: A New Beginning

I have a confession, and a grave one at that.

There was a time, not all that many years ago, when I used to believe in conspiracy theories. You know, like the JFK assassination and that the moon landings were hoaxes, I also thought there might be something to astrology, bigfoot and alien abductions; there was even a brief period when I was a 9/11 Truther.

It's all very embarrassing for me to admit to this. Just thinking back to those times makes me physically cringe. It's mortifying. I mean, each one of those things on its own would be bad enough but to go in for them all? What was I thinking? Well; I wasn't thinking. I now think that the various beliefs I held stemmed from a combination of factors: a lack of confidence, lack of critical thinking skills, misplaced faith in charismatic people I admired, a hefty dose of anti-American sentiment, reluctance to take responsibility - it's so much easier to blame the universe if your life isn't working out how you want it to, so much easier than working hard and applying yourself. But the truth is that the universe doesn't give a shit about me and my life. It was getting along just fine before I turned up and it will continue to do so long after I'm gone.

The DNA molecules I analyse at work are somewhat smaller than this

Looking back, one of the things I find most curious about it is how I was able to compartmentalise my thoughts. I was an intelligent person with a degree in genetics and yet still I spouted all sorts of rubbish in my spare time. I wasn't a complete fool, though; there were areas of lazy, illogical thought processes that I managed to shrug off quite easily. Despite pressure to fit into the Catholic mould I found that religion never made any sense to me. The first time I read the bible was as a child, religion never made any sense to me. I would read about a miracle and just think: well, how could that have happened? Omnipotence isn't a good enough answer; if nothing else it's just plain intellectually lazy. The second time I read it through I just found myself getting increasingly disgusted with the level of self-contradiction and hypocrisy crammed onto every page. And it's not like it's even original, it's just a collection of poorly told myths and rip offs as brazen as the Bronze Age that spawned them.

L'Hemisferic

For the life of me I can't remember what it was that made me finally shake off these mental shackles; it wasn't any one thing, I think I must have just finally started using my brain. Of the myriad benefits of my awakening I think my favourite is that all the space in my brain that was taken up by the obscene mental gymnastics required for fallacious thought, such as thinking that the US government could conspire to blow up the twin towers when they couldn't even keep a Presidential blow job a secret, is now free to be filled with something altogether more exciting and useful: science.

I was always a science geek, even as a young child but, embarrassingly far into my twenties, I had allowed it to cohabit with too much groundless nonsense and ideology. In the years since I have consciously learnt as much as I can about the fallibility of human reasoning, about the ways our brain can fool us, the way confirmation bias influences us, logical fallacies and the importance of the scientific method as the only tool we have to actually know anything for certain. All through my childhood, and even in the depths of my youthful intellectual transgressions, science has always been the topic that has got me most excited. Any and all science, I'll read anything I can get my hands on; not just the stuff I'm really into like genetics, astronomy and particle physics. The other day I lost an entire evening reading about the geology of spherules. I'd never even seen the word spherule before but as soon as I did I had to know as much as I could about it.

The opera house; a cross between the heads of Megatron and the Stig

When I first set up this blog, nearly two years ago now, I had to come up with a name for it. Travel, Photos and Thoughts is what I came up with. I deliberately left the word thoughts in there knowing that there may well come a time when I wanted to talk about more than the places I have gone to with my camera. To an extent, that time may be arriving. Due to a damaged foot I'm not currently able to get about all that much and I have taken very few photos in the last few months. As I write this I'm supposed to be going out with The London Photowalk group that I have written about previously but I am unable to do so and it could be many months before that changes. Whilst I do have a bit of an archive that I can draw on it won't last forever and so I need a strategy. My plan is two fold; to try and explore my local area more so that I can keep taking photos, but also to expand my remit, if only temporarily. I don't know exactly how it will work yet but it'll definitely still involve pictures although they may be taken by the Hubble space telescope, the Mars Curiosity rover or a fancy electron microscope instead of me. Let's just see how it goes.

Giant space alien carcass?

Everything we know about the physical world - everything - we know through science. Combine that with our culture and the joy we find in the beauty of aesthetics and we have gone some way to identifying what distinguishes us from the rest of the animals, Art and Science. Which brings me, rather circuitously I grant you, to what was supposed to be the main thrust of this article: Valencia's Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias. For nearly our entire history as a species we have been willing to move heaven and earth to move earth closer to heaven. For millennia, the pinnacle of human scientific achievement were the shrines we built to religion. The cathedrals of Europe, the pyramids of Egypt and Mexico, the temples of south east Asia; all required a massive amount time, effort, resources and scientific knowledge that was rarely applied to other fields of endeavour, excepting, perhaps, war. A century long building program would be embarked upon at a time when life expectancy was about 40 and no one would think this a strange thing to do. Although it all seems a bit mental now I, for one, am very pleased that they did because many of these structures remain to this day and are a long lasting testament to human creativity and ingenuity. But something I'm also very pleased about is that it is now not considered unusual to put a similar amount of effort and resources into the celebration of science and the arts; this is what has happened in Valencia.

For the 2,000 years that Valencia has existed the river Turia ran through it's heart, but the river was prone to frequent flooding and one particularly bad incident in 1957 left the Valencianos knowing that something had to change. They weren't messing about either, their solution was to move the river. The Turia now spills out on a flood plain to the south of the city and the long, wide, snaking riverbed was turned into a sunken 9km municipal garden filled with acres of parkland, athletics facilities, sculpture, children's play areas and fountains. At the far eastern end of this complex, just before it meets the Mediterranean Sea, is the City of Arts and Sciences. This comprises of many buildings, the highlights of which are the The Palace of Arts, which is primarily an opera house and incorporates one of the most amazing feats of architecture I have ever seen; L'Hemisferic, which is an enormous IMAX style cinema that envelops the viewers with a screen that seems to surround you; L'Oceanografic, home to the largest aquarium in Europe and some truly ridiculous fish tanks; and, my favourite, the Museum of the Sciences, an astonishing building with 40,000 square metres of space in which to demonstrate the diversity, joy and excitement of the world of science.

The building is remarkable, it looks like something between a giant, pre-historic whale skeleton and the corpse of a gargantuan, alien insect. But all in white. I did my best to get a picture of this in all its monstrous glory but the temperature was in the high 40s. I'm not kidding, this was Valencia in August, we would go out for breakfast of a morning and be grateful it was a chilly 27 Celsius. In this sort of weather I burn in ten minutes, if I'm not careful, so I would slink from shade to shade like some sort of anti-lizard desperately eking out what little protection from the onslaught of the sun my Irish heritage could afford me.

Architecture on this scale tends to lend itself to the abstract

Inside, the exhibits are heavily weighted towards the interactive end of the scale and children certainly seemed happy to conduct their own experiments like good little empiricists. One large section contains a huge forest of the chromosomes 30 feet high as if it were an altar to the gods of karyotyping; there are the obligatory sections on space exploration and electricity and even one on the science behind Marvel comic characters. One nice touch was a sawdust-filled incubator that had a ready supply of chicken eggs so that, for those willing to be patient, you could watch a chick's first efforts in life as it forces its way out of its shell-bound world. Simple, but both exciting and inspiring in equal measure.

I think I could have spent the entire holiday just exploring these buildings, they certainly need two full days to do them any sort of justice; yet this is just a small portion of the city. Valencia has a large and vibrant Old Town that, itself, needs at least another couple of days of exploration to seek out all the hidden gems on offer, something I will likely detail in a future post. Until then, enjoy the science.