The mysterious case of the five red telephone boxes…
The iconic British lipstick red telephone box - Nutt’s Corner, Moira Road, Belfast.
Now, you don’t see this everyday!
On my way to Belfast International Airport at the weekend, a journey I am not unfamiliar with, I passed through Nutt’s Corner along the Moira Road when I saw these five bright red telephone boxes standing proudly on the roadside at the entrance to the Nutt’s Corner Enterprise Park. Had they always been there and had I not noticed them before? I doubted that, these must be a new addition to Belfast’s street art surely?
My initial reaction was a wry smile in tribute to the originality and humour of whoever had placed these iconic symbols of Britishness on the roadside, closely followed by, this is a great picture!
I vowed that on my way back from the airport I would stop and see if I could grab a convincing composition without killing myself - it’s a busy road!
For the geeks amongst you these are almost certainly K6 red British telephone boxes. The red phone box was designed in 1924 by the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, whose other creations include Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral and Battersea and Bankside power stations. After 1926 the iconic boxes were emblazoned with a prominent crown to represent the British government. There have been many series of the boxes namely the K1, K2, K3, K4, K5 and K6, known as the Jubilee Kiosk because it was designed in honour of the Silver Jubilee of King George V.
With the relentless march of technology, even the ubiquity of landlines has given way to the inexorable rise of the mobile phone and email, and so phone boxes, those lipstick-red, semi-private structures dotted around towns, villages and rural areas, have all but gone from our towns and cities. At their peak, there were 73,000 red kiosks across the UK; figures from 2018 suggest there are fewer than 200 in Northern Ireland, and I suspect that number is very considerably smaller today.
As you will know if you follow this blog, I keep my trusty Fuji X100V close, just for occasions such as this.
I parked up and angled the car in the entrance to the business park and opened the door and lowered the window, resting the camera on the open window sill. I knew I wanted a longer shutter speed to capture the motion of the traffic so a steady base, in the absence of a tripod, was the order of the day. So far so good.
Using a duster as a damper on the window sill I shot off circa 60 frames all at ISO 160 (the base ISO on the X100V) at f5.6 & 1/7s (main image), f11 & 1/3s (truck image) and f2.8 & 1/420s (wing mirror image).
To give me the longer exposures I wanted I invoked the X100V’s inbuilt 4 stop ND filter which did the job beautifully. Using the X100V in the field it doesn’t take you long to see why this camera is such a legendary piece of kit.
Editing was handled with DXO PhotoLab and I kept the colours fairly natural with a Fuji classic chrome grading. I hope you enjoy the images.
Comment below or reach out if you have any questions.
Thank you for reading. David.
