The Snapping Bishop

Hastings, a seaside town in East Sussex, UK.

Okay, I admit I’ve become obsessed, No not with Hastings although I have fallen for the place before, with its fine old town center, classic seaside house frontages and a wonderful 1930s styled promenade. Which was very special at the time with the locals, because it incorporated the first ever claim of a constructed underground car park anywhere in the world, this facility stretches underneath the whole length of the promenade in such an unobtrusive way that unless you spot the down ramps you’d be sure to miss its existence. Built in 1926 under the supervision of Sidney Little an appointed borough engineer, the massive construction was know as the ‘Concrete King’ in the 1930s and incorporated an sea viewing ally all the way down its length under the promenade, which is know now ,as it was then, as ‘Bottle Ally’ because of the bottle ends embedded into its decorated walls.

‘Bottle Ally’…

Theirs something subtly stylish, quaint and yet very old and established about this particular seaside town that I cant help but fall for, containing vast contrasting mixtures of architecture and history that can’t fail to grab your interest if you ever visit, I may even try and buy a house one day soon.

But no, it’s not about that Hastings, it’s about photographic composition, I can’t leave it alone! Not that that’s a bad thing, but I’m beginning to deny myself the pleasure of a simple snap to fulfill the urge to compose something slightly more rewarding. I do this for totally selfish reasons, I care little about grabbing every moment as a record anymore, now preferring to record just one or two, purely in an effort to see if I can make some thing more out of the scenes, … its a self chastising method I reckon, or maybe I’m just enjoying the ability to create something because I can … I feel you nodding.

I try and give my advice and thoughts on a photo forum occasionally, its a photo community thing, I recently suggested some of the reasons that makes good compositions work, and why we have guide lines labelled ‘The composition rules’. The question was, “How do the composition rules make a good photograph.” This is what I wrote…

“A composition either works or doesn’t, its not down to fitting the rules in anyway, it’s about the rules being a useful aid to make the composition.
When a composition works it’s because it satisfies fundamental natural relationships with how humans view what’s good, (beautiful) and bad, (ugly) via the natural selection characteristics in built within our DNA to aid us to populate, prosper and survive…
A good composition ‘pleases the eye’ or rather pleases your cool DNA spotting senses.
Why, one word, symmetry. …everything natural has it, designers strive to nail it, its natures blue print of what works and what doesn’t.
A beautiful human face is full of symmetry, as is a stunning human body, the female form ..From an apple to the curve of a trunk of full healthy tree on an horizon, the petals of a rose, that point at which the first leaf junctions its stem …evolution has chosen what fails and what survives, and as intelligent descendants we can naturally see what’s beautiful and what’s not … Tell me you find Girls Aloud unattractive and I’ll call you a fibber right.
We’ve learnt some of natures tricks, and the ‘composition rules’, guidelines really, are adapted from some of them.”

These are some of my shots from Hastings last Saturday afternoon. As you can see my hat wearing friend became the main subject of many of my compositions. (The first and this one below are over pushed High Dynamic Range photographs)

Under the now closed pier, can you tell why?! eek.