A few years ago I’d seen a photo on Flickr taken from a street in the Margam district, that depicted a blast furnace towering over the terraced housing. This was exactly the kind of scene which fascinates me and I resolved to make my own version of the photo.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised that there was a cooling plant adjacent to the furnaces and these were spewing out steam, meaning I could barely even see the blast furnaces, although the noise and smells from the works were quite clear from half a mile away – you can’t capture these in still photographs though. I made a few frames and went to get a bit closer to the blast furnaces to see if i could do any better close up.

Nope. The steam just seemed to engulf the furnaces, more or less obscuring them from sight. As Harbour Road runs alongside the site, it is possible to get a very good view of the furnaces – you don’t get as close as you did at Redcar but it’s still close enough to get a good view. I wandered round and managed to get one or two clear photos, but they just weren’t very interesting. But as I moved around to try and get a different composition, I noticed one of the furnaces coming into and out of view. What’s the expression – when life gives you lemons, make lemonade? So I gave up on the clear photo idea and decided to make a feature of the steam instead. I think this captures the scene better than my other attempts.

I returned to the street scene on my last day, a quiet Sunday morning as I headed home. The steam continued to billow form the coolers, making me raise that the only chance of a clear view would be on a hot day, and that wasn’t going to happen in march. So I retreated further up the street to get both furnaces into the scene, made a few photos and headed home. It’s not the photograph I had in mind, and I’ll probably never get it unless I make the long journey south just for that. The furnaces will be shut down by September this year (2024) – maybe I need to go back when they’ve closed to get a steam-free view, but there again, this captures the reality of the scene in 2024 so is perhaps more of a documentary image of a scene that will not be there much longer.