A little more frozen canal at night

Bottom Side Lock, near Berkhamsted, 12:30am, Feb 7th 2008.

I'll never make a good picture editor.  You don't only need an eye for a good picture (wot I have got), you also need to see into the mind of other people (wot I ain't got), to be able to decide what they would like to see.

On my frosty midnight stroll from Berko to Apsley a couple of weeks ago I came across Little More, the boat of Deborah Newbold, Story Teller, Folk Singer, Crowd-Tamer (it says here).  

I photographed just the bow, so that the house was visible (above) and I also photographed the whole name of the boat and shifted the focus to the foreground (below, a more vivid moonlight scene), while at the same time obscuring the house and marring the composition.

But which one to show you?  These are the decisions a picture editor must make, and they are ones I just can't make.

The focus thus shifts from the picture (either one would have been enough) to my own dithering.  So I'm showing both, which makes for a duller post.

Of course, had I been obsessive enough I would have moved the boat forward a bit to suit the composition.   But that's not a picture editor's job, and besides, my hands were getting very cold.

This is the second time I've passed Little More, and again she wasn't in.  The last time was on the Aylesbury Arm, nearly five months ago. 

I leave my calling cards when I pass boats I recognise.  They are all different, like cigarette cards. You could collect them all, but at this rate Deborah will be almost 200 years old before she completes the set.

Comments

[Halfie]

What I should have said was, in this instance, less is more.

[LittleMore]

Hello all. Ah, my trusty old blog. I'm actually tickled all kinds of pink that someone was reading it! I am - sadly - on land at the moment. Love has dragged me kicking and screaming back into a house...for now. But if Love thinks his days of bending low to the weed hatch or trying to avoid spilling poo on his sandals in a sanitary station are well and truly over, then Love has Another Thing Coming! Has Love forgotten the pubs, the tangerine-sunsets, the jolly lock-based conversations with tipsy gongoozlers? The joy of the stove, the rumble of the engine and the magic of eating toast at the tiller in the rain while a hungry swan tries to bite your arse? Well fear not, I will endeavour to remind Love by moving him back onto Little More - as soon as the pennies are saved (I have to continually cruise you see. Can't do the stay-in-one-place-and-go-to-work-thing. But a travelling storyteller with gigs all up and down the cut...now, that's the big, floaty, 38ft, 13 horsepower dream!

Meantime I am that most controversial of things: a holiday boater. Come spring I will be bunking off city life as much as I can to dance on my deck boards. And I have put aside the whole of August to bugger off up to the Oxford canal and the Thames. Give me a toot if you see me. Failing that I will be aboard on Sunday for a few precious hours - the Berkhamsted half marathon is on you know. I'm not running it, mind, I'd rather stick my head in a pig.

As for my blogging, I have loads still to write, but I worry that my Mojo resides on Little More herself. Certainly my heart is safely stored in an old Jacobs tin in the top cupboard. I am actually in the process of trying to collate some of my 2007 gabblings into a book about my journey round Britain. It gives me untold joyings, to now know that there's three people who might actually read it!

But maybe I should look for the old Bloggers Mojo while I am aboard this Sunday. It must be somewhere...I'll try the gas locker.

It'd be for the best, wouldn't it? I mean, look at the size of this comment.....

[Iain smithi]

reference Glue ear post.Sounded rather final to me.

[Iain smithi]

I kind of got the impression from her blog that she had moved back onto the land but that might be a misreading of the last blog entries.I like the first picture myself.

[Dave Baynham]

The two photo's are wonderful Andrew, the one with the signwriting "Little More" would make a great Christmas Card for "Little More" as long as you are happy with the finished product that is all that matters.

[Adam]

Something I was taught in the early days of my radio training, is that the audience doesn't know what's been cut out and languishes on the floor (we were still using tape in those days!). So as long as the finished programme (or blog post) contains good material, the audience will be happy. They won't be disappointed about the bits that were left out, because they don't know about them.

On another matter, I wish Deborah would start blogging again. Her posts were always like proper short stories, and some of the best writing you'll ever read on a blog.

[Captain Ahab]

Halfie is right - the first photo ably denomstrated the benefits of a better composition.
Captain Ahab

[Halfie]

Go with your instinct. You were right (in my humble opinion) to prefer the first photo. In the second, the name of the boat is so prominent as to suggest "Little More" is what the viewer should be thinking when looking at the picture; or is there something in the scene such as a visual pun to be grasped? Fine as a record of having encountered the boat, but little more than that (sorry). In the first picture the bow on the bottom left and the foliage on the top right frame the frozen canal without being distracting. Also, the above-mentioned foliage and the tree top left are better lit.

But fear not: you have made the post more interesting, not duller, by giving us the two photos to compare. My photos, by the way, are almost always of the second type: taken as a visual record of where I've been, and end up being dull snapshots. Especially when compared with your photography.