Boring

I try to take interesting pictures with some impact. Don't we all? However from time to time I aim the camera at an everyday subject: Many of these boring images get deleted and are gone forever, but I wonder if perhaps we should be photographing the nondescript and recording it. 

The following examples are boring images that time has made special.

Let me explain:

Here is a view of Christ Church College meadow, off St Aldate's in Oxford. 

I took this picture forty years ago, and it must have been one of my earliest slide films.  It is poor quality and I should have done a better job, however what makes this boring picture special is that this view doesn't exist any more. One by one these splendid great trees died or were blown down. Eventually they were all felled and they started again. The overhanging branches and shade are gone, and it will be 2070 before you will get a picture like this again..

Here's another example. This is Dorchester Cresent, North Abingdon, and it was also taken in 1971. The building where I lived and the garages have all gone, replaced by nice houses, so this view doesn't exist either. Note the old cars. If you drove an old MGA you weren't making a statement - it's just that you couldn't afford a decent up to date car like an Austin Allegro.  Now, if you  ever see an MGA it will be some priceless restored example.

Lets move forward a decade. This is thirty years ago, a view down Marlborough High Street. We lived near there at the time, and I can't imagine why I took the picture - but once again time has changed the cars, the fashions and even the shops.

I rather wish I had photographed the old style petrol station that used to be there. You remember the sort? The fuel pumps had a giant metal swinging pipe that allowed the attendant to walk around your car, into the traffic with a pipe full of petrol. There used to be one in the High Street at Burford. I didn't take a picture of that either, because it was boring. That's vanished as well.

Finally, (while we are considering petrol stations in towns) here are a set of splendid roadside petrol pumps in Stockbridge, Hampshire. These were long disused when I photographed them in 2008. They are gone now, and the ailing garage has been turned into a nice restaurant or coffee house. OK, they are not exactly pretty, but I am glad I took the picture before they vanished.

By the way, I have donated some of my older boring pictures to this web site that is building images of places before they vanish.

There you go. Sorry about the pictures, but I did say they would be boring :-)