Assignment 4: A sense of place

For this assignment the location I picked is my home town of Bo'ness, a place that I know well and have had the opportunity to get to know even better. The assignment calls for a set of photographs to be used by an 'intelligent' travel publication and not simple tourism promotion.

One of my starting points was to see how others viewed my home town and so I checked some online guides / gazetteers. One of the best examples is perhaps Undiscovered Scotland, a guide I have used in planning many holidays and photography trips.
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/boness/boness/index.html
This provides what I might consider a somewhat unenthralling guide that provides a little history to the place and mentions obvious attractions such as the steam railway and the Antonine Wall along with some of the more historic buildings.

Looking at a specific tourist guide such as Visit Scotland again the themes of the Antonine Wall and steam railway immediately emerge.
http://guide.visitscotland.com/vs/guide/5,en,SCH1/objectId,RGN168vs,curr,GBP,season,at1,selectedEntry,home/home.html

So if I was not to follow the obvious tourist route with photos of 'Thomas the Tank Engine' and such like then what approach would I take? My approach was to look at the history of the town and to look at current visual cues to the more industrial past.

I turned my attention to so alternative sources of information. On the internet:

• Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo%27ness
• Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland - http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/search/?image_only_chk=1&keyword=bo%27ness&submit=search
• Forth Yacht Clubs Association - http://fyca.sbmyc.com/Publications/CruisingGuide/cruisingP14.htm
• Scottish Cinemas - http://www.scottishcinemas.org.uk/scotland/boness.html

And also printed material:

• Old Ordnance Survey Maps, Bo'ness 1896, The Godfrey Edition (sold at our local library)
• Bo'ness: a glimpse of the past, pub Falkirk Council, 2004, ISBN 0954045335
• Bo'ness Town Trail, pub Falkirk Council, ISBN 0906586305

This led me to some key facts, including:

• In 1900 there were fifty pits within a mile of Bo’ness town centre
• The commercial port, used for the transport of coal and pit props, closed in 1959.
• Mining in the area (Valleyfield Colliery) continued until 1983.

In compiling this set I had a number of exploratory photo sessions around the town, e.g. :

• http://ocaphotopandp.blogspot.com/2010/07/exploring-my-town-in-more-detail.html
• http://ocaphotopandp.blogspot.com/2010/07/exploring-my-town-in-more-detail-part-2.html

I also considered some of the old photos from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

Bridgeness Tower


Bo'ness Ariel View

See the set of 12 images and the individual image notes:

OCA P and P Assignment 4

From this a final set of 6 were selected:

Conclusions

This assignment has encouraged me to learn a lot more about my home town and to consider how the history can be tied in with present use from a visual perspective. One idea I had was to look at then and now pairs of photographs, drawing upon resources such as the RCAHMS for the 'then' photos and then taking my own set of 'now', this may become a personal project to follow up on.