Bosley Locks - the perfect spot for a boat portrait

I remember when I paid nearly £5,000 to have Granny Buttons painted, seven years ago, and for months afterwards strangers would ask "Oh, is it new?", and I felt so proud. 

At the time I thought I should have a professional 'portrait' taken of the boat's new livery, but the desire foundered on indecision about where to take the boat.

I've often thought, in the years since, that the bottom lock at the Bosley Locks flight, near Congleton, would be the perfect place.  (Google Maps location here, with the view looking almost directly south.)

December's Waterways World cover has a photo by Robin Smithett with the ideal vantage point for such a photograph. 

The disused railway bridge just above the lock allows you an elevated position showing the whole lock and your boat nested within.  A winding hole just out of sight of the camera allows you to turn the boat to present either end to the camera - very handy if you arrive from the wrong direction or want to photograph both ends.

And then there's a splendid vista with the mountainous Mow Cop Bosley Cloud looming in the background. 

The photo here is tweaked a bit to show an artificially darkened sky.  That's fine - a little artifice works fine in portraits.

If I was a professional photographer I'd be approaching all boatbuilders and painters offering my services to their customers.  Two or three hundred quid for a portrait session would be small beer compared to the pride it would bring the boat owner in later years.   I don't know why no one's yet done this.

But, but, but ...  the scene here really needs landscape management.  There's simply too much vegetation; I think trees here should be cut down and undergrowth cleared away to improve the vista.

Landscape management in this style is a forgotten art.  Trees are now seen as a good thing in themselves, with no thought of placing them in a landscape.  In short, estate managers now can't see the view for the trees.  That's not always their fault.  Often it's the dunce-eyed environmentalists who are to blame, with no sense of landscape aesthetic. 

To quote Lancelot Brown, perhaps the greatest of natural landscape designers, Bosley Bottom Lock has capability. 

You can just let trees grow up where the seeds fall, and you'll get a luxuriant and lovely scene - as in my photo below, taken from the lockside itself in 2007 - but as often as not it'll actually HIDE the vista that deserves to be seen.

Comments

[richard smith]

But Andrew, don't you call yourself a professional photographer? I know I do, even though the sort of stuff I do is minimal! Sounds a lot' better to be a 'professional photographer than 'Oh, I run a printing business' Season's Greetings.

[Andrew Denny]

Martin,

Ooops!  Sorry, I'll correct it, thanks.

[Martin Clark]

That's not Mow Cop in the background, Andrew, but Bosley Cloud (or just "The Cloud").

[chas]

yes a grand part of the world, thanks for the reminder

seasons greetings and , best wishes

chas