Windows On The World

It’s a story as old as time itself. You wait and you wait for a bunch of scans to drop from your (extremely busy) preferred developer, then 82 arrive at once! An embarrassment of images to play with then, from what will be forever known as 'The FED-less Days', aka fun in the sun with a Baldessa.

And it was fun too. This year's unseasonably hot month of May, when Summer seemed a very real possibility, and interesting, photographable things started appearing all over the place. It was also a time when the grey skies of Spring turned a fetching shade of blue and billowy white. A time for those hitherto unexplored tight apertures and fast shutter speeds, and all the vibrant colours I long suspected were in my film finally started to express themselves.

I seem to have been looking through windows a lot recently. Mostly out of them, occasionally in. Nothing creepy though, I won't be looking through your window anytime soon.

At the risk of stating the obvious, windows have a tendency to frame things, which is something the human mind seems predisposed to. Perhaps it's simply a matter of aesthetics, images just look nicer presented in a well-judged frame. Artists will often use framing as an important part of their overall composition, to the point where an unframed work can often appear unfinished. The physical frame itself can be an attractive thing, at its best a work of art that adds a certain something to the overall image in addition to smoothing off the rougher edges.

Framing can also be an act of visual reduction, imposing an artificial boundary on the subject that restricts the information on view, making it easier for our puny human minds to make sense of what we’re seeing... well it does for me at least.

Of course framing is one of the four primary considerations when taking a photograph, in fact for most of us it's a wholly unavoidable discipline of photography, a more often than not useful, perhaps even essential restriction. So windows and other apertures present us with a secondary opportunity to positively contextualise our image within a frame (within a frame)!

Through cast iron apertures to the interior of an unused warehouse at the former Ordnance Depot, Weedon Bec.

Looking out from the bar of the Malt Shovel in Northampton. I love a bit of stained glass, modern ecclesiastical interpretations and commercial examples like this in particular.

The unfinished Lodge at Lyveden near Oundle (above & right) is a good subject for architectural study on a bright day, though the interior is currently closed for structural repairs.

I spent quite a while photographing this surviving WWII Pill Box and Bunker in an arable field near Market Harborough (below), a striking contrast to the wide horizon and rain-heavy clouds that day. I chose not to investigate the interior, usually a disappointing experience I find, but I managed to get a good shot through the Loopholes of the distant horizon, giving something of the effect of gazing out I guess.

A 'window' of sorts at the boundary of a field, looking toward Lyddington in Rutland. Leaving one field for another, usually via a Stile,  presents an opportunity to pause, look back, and assess progress.

A confusing image into the interior of one of the buildings at the former Ordnance Depot, Weedon Bec, with reflections of the exterior on the glass.