I’ll post a bit of history in the next post, but in this one I want to talk about the photographic aspects of this photograph.

As this was going to be part of my ongoing colliery headgear project, I needed a featureless sky. Didn’t matter whether it was a clear blue sky or an overcast one, it just needed to be devoid of variation.

The weather forecast promised sunny day with some cloud, and a moderate breeze. That will do, I thought. So I was disappointed when I arrived to find the aforementioned moderate breeze blowing broken cloud across a blue sky more or less constantly. This meant that the sky behind the headgear was never consistently blue or consistently white – exactly what I didn’t want. I hung round for nearly an hour, constantly watching the sky, until i noticed a small, but fairly solid bank of cloud heading past.

I composed, waited and then took about 6 shots with the long awaited white canvas behind, before the cloud started to break up and blue sky emerged yet again. Didn’t matter, the photograph was in the bag.