Formula on Notice Board in Warren Cottage, Bird Observatory
I’m spending a week on Spurn Head as part of the OnSpurn project. We’re staying at the Bird Observatory cottage, which has a fantastic collection of scrapbooks with photos and news paper clippings dating back to 1981, It also has lots of useful information for bird spotters, of which I am not one, but I found an interesting formula on the notice board on how to calculate the distance to the horizon (see picture above). Having spent some time sitting on the beach watching the tankers and ferry’s go past, I’ve started to think about the way we perceive speed from afar and how we know the distance travelled.
If you have a shot of something moving across the horizon, projected on a screen, then you have three related measurements; A: the width of the projection screen B: the width of the actual horizon in shot and C: the distance between the camera and the horizon line. Effectively what your doing is fitting B into A through C, although I suppose you also have to take the type of camera lens into consideration. Either way I like thinking about the relationship between the edge of the frame and the perceived edge of the land and the edge of the frame as the edge of the land.
Extra Information:
Link to Google Maps Image of Spurn
Link to OnSpurn project website
Link to Yorkshire Wildlife Trust
Link to Spurn Bird Observatory Website
