Black and White – Mechanical Landscapes

#609 – Lancashire Rural Industry 3 – Bridge Clough Mill Chimneys

On a walk round Bacup, I noticed these chimneys in a valley, so I went for a closer look. I know of a few isolated chimney’s around the north west as they were often placed away from the mill on a hillside to increase the draught, but these were literally off the beaten track. There’s…

#608 – Lancashire Rural Industry 2 – Hill Top Colliery

I’ve written before about Lancashire’s coalfield so my few regular readers will have to excuse the brief recap. While not as big or as long lasting as Yorkshire’s or Nottinghamshire’s, it was certainly one of the main mining areas earlier in the 20th century and extraction was concentrated around south Lancashire in a belt that…

#607 – Lancashire Rural Industry 1 – Cheesden Lumb Mill

This mill had been on my list of places to look at for many years, but it’s one of those places that is not going to be demolished (although it could just fall down of it’s own volition, I suppose) so has never been a priority to visit. This is another one of those long…

#606 – An updated typology

My last update to the typology was a 3×3 grid as can be seen in this post back in April, or if you can’t be bothered reading that, see below for just the picture. I’ve decided to go with a three row format which means that the total number of images must be divisible by…

#605 – Woodhorn Colliery

One of my current long term projects is photographing the remaining mining headgear / headstocks in the UK, and displaying these in a ‘typlogy’ format à la Bernd and Hilla Becher. I’d only managed to visit two sites this year – the unusual clad structure at Meadowbank Mine in Winsford, and the two at Snibston…

#603 – Meadowbank Salt Mine – Part 3

In comparison to the rest of the headstocks I’ve photographed, Meadowbank mine is frankly weird looking. Of course, these are functional structures designed by an engineer to fulfil a purpose and without a thought to aesthetics. But this one…….it looks like someone is trying to hide or disguise it with all that cladding, like the…

#600 – The Art of the Panorama Part 4 – Scunthorpe

A panorama crop is ideal here – the scale of the place lends itself well to a wider aspect ratio, but join up panoramas are impossible due to being on a moving train! I must admit that I didn’t take many of these with a panorama in mind, but some just suited a panoramic crop….

#599 – The Art of the Panorama Part 3 – Mills and Mining

Unlike the steel industry with its vast landscapes, the mills and mines I’ve photographed are for the most part more compact, more upright. At one time when the cotton mills were the dominant features of the urban landscape of the northern mill town, it was possible to make panoramas of these dozens of mills and…

#598 – The Art of the Panorama Part 2 – Teesside

While there doesn’t appear to be a codified, internationally recognized ratio for what constitutes ratios for panoramic photographs, 2:1 or greater seems to be generally agreed. Personally, I go with whatever looks right and I’ve no idea what the ratios of the images in this post are, but if you don’t agree that they are…

#597 – The Art of the Panorama Part 1 – Joseph Koudelka’s Industries

I’ve recently purchased ‘Industries’ a most impressive book featuring monochrome industrial landscapes by the legendary Magnum photographer Josef Koudelka. Aside from the large format of the book and the unusual, calendar style wire binding, what is notable is that all the photos are in the panoramic format, having been shot on either a Fuji 617…