Scamblesby 18.04.2016

Scamblesby, my second home for seven (going on eight) years. It’s a funny old village, the hall was built in the second world war and is help up at this point by bracing and if there’s a strong gust it’s entirely possible it will fall down, the council aren’t going to replace it because why would they? There’s no-one using it so why should they bother? Totally ignoring the fact that the reason no-one uses it is that it is falling down and damn near dangerous still, total aside. Scam is typical of a village in the county, there’s no such as a ‘local vernacular’ there’s just a bunch of very different houses all built by different people with different ideas of home, different backgrounds and different needs. As such you end up with this smorgasbord of architecture ranging from the pub built a good couple hundred years ago through to the house in IMG_3465 with it’s fake roman pillars and yellow brick.

Also, despite being a tiny village 7 miles from anything resembling a town. Not having a shop and only kind of having a pub (sadly it’s no-longer a particularly friendly place) there is a large livery stable and more than one person in the village owns horses and keeps them on pieces of land (that they own). Our next door neighbour’s for one keep a couple. As for final images, I got an awful lot out of this days shooting, unlike the other places that I visited I know Scamblesby well and I used the advantage of being local (enough) to be able to get onto things (like the salvage yard) with no issues as people either knew me or knew my dad and by proxy that meant I was okay. These images were shot from between about 11am through to the mid afternoon with a break in the middle for lunch. once I had got up to the church and out the back into the field of rape I may or may not have spent a while there taking pictures of not much and just using the excuse of being in the middle of no-where to belt out a few songs… Zero chance that happened.

Horncastle, Old (and New) Bolingbroke, Woodall Spa & Heckington Windmill

These first selection of contacts come from a couple of days worth of shooting. I did end up using a couple of these images in a couple of edits and there are a couple of the final edits from this. I’m glad I did a shoot in Horncastle purely for the fact that it made me consider what I was trying to say and what exactly I was doing with my camera. The short version of this is that I quickly realised I wanted to focus solely on the Rural side of the county and some of the oddities (the Kinema in the Woods for one). It is also a project I have no qualms in admitting I am heavily biased and invested in.

For this to make much sense I need to give you a brief lesson in my upbringing, my parents split up when I was 2 and ever since I’ve spent my time split between down south with my mum (and her parents prior to her getting her own place) during school term time and then during holidays (or long weekends when I was younger) up at my dads in Wickenby (he moved to Scamblesby seven years back). So I have always seen Lincolnshire as a big open county with lots of space for activities. Whereas down south there isn’t that kind of space to allow the freedom that comes with it. Obviously the flip-side is that you are much more reliant on cars up there and if I had ended up living with my dad instead of my mum I would have got my licence as soon as I could to be able to get around. Downside to the south is that there’s good rail links and I live within a 20 minute ride of swinley forest (Mountain biking).

Anyway, back to the point. I’ve come to love Lincolnshire and should I end up staying in the UK I feel I would be drawn north to either Lincolnshire or Yorkshire as I’m not one for the rat race in and around London. It just doesn’t suit me and as such I’ve been looking for an excuse to write my photographic love letter to Lincolnshire for a while and this just let me get it all out… Well, some.

To Lincolnshire!

Frankly, it seems only natural that I use this module as an excuse to initiate work in Lincolnshire. The root of this idea came from a conversation during a car journey… In Lincolnshire, seems only natural that it comes full circle and becomes a project about the place.

The reason why Lincolnshire is simple, it’s a big county with lots of stuff and not many people. When the idea first came up I was thinking it would a portrait project with some landscapes interspersed to break it up. That has now changed to be a purely Landscape based project. With as few people and vehicles in it as possible for the simple fact that Lincolnshire is big and there aren’t many people so it feels right that there aren’t that many cars or people in frame. Although if the opportunity arises and there’s an interesting subject to be had, I’ll happily point my lens at people. I just need to feel drawn to them as a subject though I doubt they would end up in the final edit as that isn’t the intention of the project.

Test Shoot

After taking a small break over Easter after putting inordinate amounts of stress on myself for no good reason in the run-up to Landscape and Dissertation hand-in’s. I decided it was about time I got out and did a test shoot for my FMP idea. I already knew the idea would work, it was just a matter of taking some pictures to force myself into some action. At this point I was still under the ‘B roads of Britain’ title and it wasn’t until after I had shot these gone home, looked at them and had a think did I realise that I didn’t want to do a project as a comparison of areas. Rather I wanted to shoot it about rural Lincolnshire.

What this also showed me was that no-matter where you are in the UK there’s always plenty of weird little things hidden along the back roads which tickles my fancy perfectly.

Initial Idea

This idea came from a conversation I had with my dad during a journey, along a back-road. We were just chatting away and ideas for projects came up and he said why not do something on people on B-roads. I sat on this idea throughout most of the year, though it wasn’t until after I had started shooting Greenham Common for Landscape that the penny dropped. B Roads of Britain was a landscape project, also Landscapes are actually my strong suit, (not my weakness) so from there I got to thinking about areas in the country that are rife with B roads. My first thought was the west-country. Though after some basic research it became apparent that Berkshire is also pretty well filled with them.

So, the basic premise of the idea is to capture some of the sights and people along the B Roads, and seeing if there is any difference in the people (south-west vs north-east).