It’s a few months since I posted about this place, and my attention has been elsewhere this year, so I’d forgotten that I’d started to write this! As I mentioned in the initial post, the catalyst for this visit was seeing this post on Instagram, and although I’d seen the mill when driving in the area, it had never been on my list of places to see.

I posted this photograph in the first post, but I’ll post it again because I like it, but also to comment on the fact that this seemingly bucolic seeming scene with it’s dry stone wall, babbling brook and country lane isn’t what it looks. The mill is on a main road only a mile or two outside Oldham town centre and more or less surrounded by houses. Such is photography’s ability to tell any story you want it to I guess. I chose to compose it from this perspective showing the elements I wanted, rather than from the housing estate behind the mill which would have told a different story.

On the main road, I decided to get the obligatory full length record photograph that shows it in the context of it’s immediate local surroundings. It’s hard to photograph from the other directions due to it being set back from the road on a bend, at the bottom of a hill. And behind it, there’s a wall of trees which make it almost impossible to photograph from anywhere other than the front. But anyway, this is the view which you would see when traveling along the road.

As I was composing the photograph and waiting for a lull in the traffic, a man walked past, well wrapped up against the bitter cold. I don’t know why, but he had the air of a man going somewhere, to work maybe, with his clothing and the bag he was carrying. I decided to add a different element to the record photograph by including him in the composition. His presence in the frame adds something different to the image, maybe it’s scale as the mill is unusually long but his all black attire makes him featureless and thus less of a distraction. And yet his presence on the pavement is a distraction, the photograph is no longer just about the mill. Questions are asked – where is he going – is he going to work in the mill? What’s he carrying a large bag for? Why is there no other sign of life on a main road? Why is he dressed all in black?

I decided to crop the image to bring more emphasis to him. The ‘SLOW’ road marking is now more of a feature in the frame – it was a bit lost before.

As he walked on, I followed at a distance and then composed one more vertically to show some scale in a different direction as by now, we were closer to the tower and chimney.