Hythe Trip

As the weather was nice and a sunny day was forecasted I decided to take a trip to the local town of Hythe, which is on the Kent coast. As with the Sandwich trip I decided to go when it was sunny as it would promote the pictorial aesthetic and help produce photographers that are bright and sunny.

So I started at a small village called Frogholt that has a historic thatched cottage that is picturesque but unfortunately I didn’t seem to get the best from it, the photographs were a bit dull and lifeless. This is partly due to the positioning of the cottage and the time of day as it was in a shadow of trees and a bank which stopped the light hitting the cottage itself. Might be worth another visit, but when the sun is in a better position, which would probably be in the spring or summer at dawn as the position of the sun changes.

However I did photograph some autumn leaves which looked quite picturesque due to their autumn colours and also got some of them being backlit, which helped the picturesque aesthetic.

From there I went into Hythe and started doing some street photography. From there I wandered to the old church, which was built in the 11th century and photographed the exterior and the interior. The church and the church yard both seem to fit the picturesque aesthetic because of their sense of tradition and is the light was of a warmer tone, such as early morning or evening, then the scene could become quite heavily romanticised.

The images I eventually chose were just four, all for their sense of warmth or romanticism or sense of tradition. The leaves I included because they are nice warm colours that appear to be inviting, the flag because it is backlit and has a romantic feel to it and the church interior because of the sense of tradition religion offers. Just as a point of interest the flag photograph is a composite, the flag actually came from an earlier shot, _DSC5461, but was better than the flag that was on this image originally. I changed the flags over because this appears more evocative, more romantic and has a stronger sense of patriotism.

Overall I am pleased with the results, I feel that this has supported my notion of visiting local villages and towns that exhibit strong traditional architecture or themes to construct a narrative which can be used to suggest a romanticised view of England.

I do feel though that now I need to start researching into pictorialism, the traditional looking photographs that have been heavily influenced by the composition used in oil painting and was predominant when photography was first emerging. It might be worth looking at Constable as he seems to epitomise the notion of pictorial and romantic imagery…