Placing the V&A in context

‘Dundee’s setting is probably more extraordinary than any other city in the UK. It is about as ideal – ludicrously ideal – as any setting could be.’

Those are the words of actor, comedian and writer Stephen Fry, not exactly my favourite "celebrity" but, still, he got it right on that score. Dundee sits on Scotland's longest river and the one with the largest flow of any in Britain, the Tay.

The city's waterfront was once a jumble of old docks, sheds, 19th century buildings and atmosphere - it had the last in spades. Then came the 1960s, in my opinion the worst decade of the lot. Anything old was torn down to make way for some of the ugliest architecture man has ever devised, really brutal, disgusting buildings that shame their "architects" who were so obsessed with fashion that they threw style out of the window.

This aesthetic defenestration seemed to hit Dundee harder than most cities of its size and it left the place looking a right mess for decades. This partly contributed to a reputation for being a "hard" place, something Phil Rogers likes to exaggerate out of all proportion as he plots his escape to the safer streets of downtown Mogadishu.

Slowly, however, Dundee is regaining the confidence of old, helped by a £1 billion regeneration of the aforementioned waterfront, the star of which is Kengo Kuma's V&A design museum which opened last year.

The V&A has proved to be a very popular attraction with hordes of tourists visiting it over the winter months since its opening. I didn't poke my nose around the front door until last week, though, preferring to let a bit of the fuss die down so I could have some peace and quiet to take it in.

I needn't have bothered waiting as it was still bethronged by thronging multitudes. It was nice to see the venture doing well but, to be honest, there isn't a lot to interest me within its striking walls. "Design" isn't my thing - fabrics, furniture, that sort of thing. If I want that there's always Ikea. Haha. I love the exterior of the building and the inside is nice as well but it's unfortunate that I found the people there a lot more interesting than the exhibits.

I'd have loved for part of it to have been kept as Scotland's Photography Museum along the lines of the Bradford media museum. I never get to see any famous exhibitions unless I can be bothered travelling a hundred miles or three. An international class venue on my doorstep would have been fantastic but it seems there's more demand for Charles Rennie Mackintosh than David Douglas Duncan - or at least that's what the V&A thinks. I beg to differ.

St Paul's Cathedral seen between the exit ramps from the road bridge.

A couple of tourists enjoying a riverside stroll in the winter sunshine.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I had a couple of hours to spare and decided to have a walk along the waterfront past the V&A to see if I could capture a different image of it from those I've seen online. Most of the pics I've noticed have been garish, over-saturated digital things. That's not an indictment of digital photography so much as it is a criticism of the taste of some of the people behind the pixel capturers. But then, no doubt they'd think my pics are under-saturated - and I can't argue against that!

I shot off a roll of HP5 but there weren't too many interesting images. Some looked more like straightforward record shots of the V&A, which is what they were I suppose. I've included a couple of the more interesting ones in this post along with a couple of boring ones. Your task is to figure out which is which.

The first pic on this page was a grab shot and the last exposure on the roll. I had the Contax 137 MA with me and had been checking out this view of the museum through a 100mm Sonnar lens but wasn't sufficiently moved to click the shutter.

Then, just after I'd put everything away in my bag, I saw the plane heading for the airport which lies further west along the Tay. I just managed to get the camera to my eye using the focus and exposure setting I'd been toying with earlier and take a single shot. The composition was a bit rushed as a result. That's the full frame below. It's not too bad but I prefer the more dramatic crop at the top of the post.

The second pic of the V&A places it between Dundee's two bridges. The bridge in the background is the rail bridge whilst the top half of the frame is filled with the underside of the road bridge. The rail bridge - proper name, The Tay Bridge -  fell down with great loss of life in 1879 when its central supports failed in a storm and a train heading to Dundee plunged into the icy water. Incidentally, I happened to be on a train heading in the opposite direction exactly 100 years to the day later and remember wondering what the chances were of lightening striking twice, so to speak. Fortunately, it didn't and I'm here to tell the tale. The road bridge, for the sake of completion, opened in 1966 - the same year, apparently, that England won some some small football tournament in their own backyard.

This view of the V&A shows the ship's bow profile that the architect was keen to pick up on, given Dundee's shipbuilding heritage and the fact it's right next to Captain Robert Falcon Scott's RRS Discovery, built just a few hundred yards away in the city's docks by the Dundee Shipbuilding Company. Scott's Terra Nova ship, which conveyed him to Antarctica for his final, ill-fated voyage, was also built at the yard.

I tired pretty quickly of trying to do something clever with the museum and poked a lens - the same Sonnar - at the road bridge instead. It was a lovely afternoon and the water was very calm and reflective - a bit like myself on that day. A weak sun was shining on the water but in a very subtle way - you can just see its presence around the pier of the road bridge and the supports of the rail bridge in the background in the pics below.

The first of these was the one I "timed" best. I took about 15 shots in total of various vehicles crossing the bridge but it was tricky capturing them at just the right place. That place was squarely atop the pier and the only one that was spot on was the photo featuring a single deck bus. There's a nice reflection of the sun on the top of the bus.

Now, if I could have grabbed a pic of the double deck bus in exactly the same spot I'd have been happy but, as you can see below, I was just a little too hasty with the old trigger finger. The pic doesn't appear well-balanced to me but it's not too bad I suppose. 

I should say a little bit about the film and developer here. It was HP5 done in Fotospeed's FD10. The combination is very nice in my opinion. In fact, it's the best I've managed to get HP5 to look. The negatives were tonally on the money and grain is well controlled. I've found that grain can sometimes get a little out of hand with HP5 but it's just where I'd like it to be with FD10,

I'd been meaning to try FD10 for a while as I had a hunch it might be what I was looking for. It's cheap for a start! I'd actually been put off by the experience of a FADU member who had problems with it but the more I read the more I realised those issues were peculiar to that individual and almost certainly, in my opinion, user error. I'm glad I decided to give it a whirl.