Use that Camera

Photography, along with angling, is rated as one of the two most popular hobbies in the world. With this in mind, Rye’s Own presents this article on the popular pastime.

Easter is a good time to start recording the events of the year, although a real enthusiast may use his camera all the year round. The town of Rye offers an unlimited range of photographic subjects from the more popular ones such as the Church, the Landgate and the Ypres Tower, to the less obvious but equally interesting shots that can be taken on many walks in the surrounding country-side.

The fishing and boat building industries of the old Cinque Port offer opportunities to the photographer with an eye to the more difficult task of capturing the atmosphere of traditional crafts that have been performed here since before the first recorded history of the town. Pottery is another example in this field, there, are no less than five potteries in Rye all producing fine work with their own individual styles that have become famous all over the world.

The cobbled streets and the old Inns of Rye have been much photographed but with careful thought on the part of the photographer a unique picture can be made of most things.

The town of Rye is one of the best examples of traditional England, the many colourful civic ceremonies that take place throughout the year reflect the past glories and achievements of the Island Race. Even the buildings and the streets have a story to tell, some of the great oak beams built into the dwellings in the old part of the town came from Spanish ships destroyed on this coast after Drake’s great conquest of the Armada. The cobbles that pave the streets were originally collected to be used as shot in the many cannons that protected the town from invasion and armed the ships of the Cinque Ports Fleet. Great piles of cobbles were accumulated for this purpose and when they were made obsolete by the introduction of iron cannon-balls the ingenious townsfolk put them to the use in which they are still today employed. The successful photograph will capture some of the feeling of the greatness of Old England that oozes out of the half timbered houses in this Ancient Town.

A camera, used with ingenuity, can not only capture a moment in time but also the mood of the time and the colour of the occasion. It can stop action at its peak or even bring a ‘still life’ subject alive.

Award 1966

Rye’s Own gives you a chance to test your photographic capabilities and perhaps get a picture published. To stimulate more interest a £5 award is offered for the best photograph, excluding work by our staff photographers, printed in this publication in 1966.

The pictures will be judged at the end of the year by a well known local photographer and the winning photograph will be reprinted in the January 1967 issue.

These four pictures, taken in Rye, demonstrate the variety of subjects for the man with a camera – i.e. horses, boats, water, snow, cobbled streets, hounds, all these things are to be found, on occasion, in this corner of England.

Use That Camera

From the April 1966 Issue of “Rye’s Own”