A Stake in the Ground

A Stake in the Ground: Barton Farm

For years there have been discussions, protests, public meetings and local news articles about the fate of Barton Farm, the first area of green space north of Winchester. But it's a done deal now. The approvals have been given, the diggers have arrived and the ground has been cut. Over the next few years, this unremarkable but cherished area will turn into a new housing estate with over 2500 homes. The plans have been made, the first stakes in the ground have been placed. Topsoil in which crops once grew has now been removed, presumably for purposes of landscaping. Will this project provide rich profits for the developers selling housing at a premium and over burdening the city's infrastructure, or will it provide affordable housing and give stability to the city centre and its key services like the hospital? I don't know but I hope it's the latter.

Let's hope that the name stays as Barton Farm to remember what was here, rather than giving some stupid name such as Cameron Fields or Thatcher Heights. That wouldn't surprise me.

Experiments in Art

Experiments in Art

When working with materials artists routinely experiment to find interesting and inspiring textures, patterns and shapes. With photos, we can keep an eye open for similar experiments that have occurred by nature or wear. This is a picture of corrugated sheet found on the side of a compost heap up at the allotment. Something has made the paint craze and shrink, revealing the zinc plating below, but it is hard to imagine just what the mechanism was to create such nice soft ellipses.

Frost on the Allotment

We don't get much snow down these parts. I think that in the thirty years that I've lived in Winchester we have only had about five significant falls of snow in which the snow lasted for more than two days. This, of course, is hardly surprising given our location. However, we do get frosts and once or twice each winter and if we are lucky we get to see good hoar frost. Such a frost occurred just before New Year. With a spare hour before the arrival of friends, I took off to our nearby allotment to see if I could make some worthwhile pictures.

I have been photographing allotments for many years now and find them endlessly interesting. There is always the juxtaposition of growth and decay, built and natural, creation and abandon that is interesting in its own right, or as metaphors for other concerns. As photographers we are able to find a wide palette of colours and textures, and a myriad of small details that can be contrasted with the larger environment.

The flat soft light of winter can be very appealing, but I find that a small additional amount of lighting really helps to lift the picture, so in these conditions I often use fill-flash. Our eyes and minds see and interpret all the interesting details in front of us, balancing and emphasising in many different ways. Our cameras, on the other hand, are dispassionate and so render the scene without interpretation. I feel it is our purpose as photographers to modify the image on a way that helps guide the viewer, and so I enjoy using the flash to help build the image. The trick, of course, is to make the image both special and believable.