Category: Black and White
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#231 – Huncoat Power Station
East Lancashire is a pretty grim place, and I’m saying that from the bitter experience as I used to live and work there. Most of the large private employers have moved out, and with the current swingeing public sector cuts, it ain’t getting any better. If it wasn’t for the aerospace sector, there would be very…
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#230 – Grove Rake Fluorite Mine
Britain is a pretty compact nation, and you’re ultimately never that far from civilisation. Compared to say America, where you can drive all day and still not get across a state, in Britain, you’d run out of road before running out of day. So to go somewhere by road that is truly in the ‘middle…
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#229 – Robert Fletchers Paper Mill – Part 3
The ‘Top Mill’ that we explored is in the background. Here, Azubi is enquiring if it would be at all possible to come in and have a look round. The light was fading fast now, and we made our way down the footpath down the side of the site, to the driveway back to the…
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#228 – Robert Fletchers Paper Mill – Part 2
Employees Handbook para (d) Long Service Benefits It is hoped that your association with the Company will be a long one, and that you will qualify for a Long Service Award. After 42 years’ service, men receive a gold watch, and after 37 years’ service, women receive a silver teapot. Big, bad Beloit from Bolton. The room…
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#227 – Robert Fletchers Paper Mill – Part 1
Employees Handbook para (b) Employees’ Transport For the convenience of shift workers arriving and leaving at 6.00a.m., 20.. p..m and 10.00 p.pm. daily, a bus service is operated between Oldham and the Mill, via Lees and Mossley. Employees wishing to avail themselves of this service may obtain from the Time Office particulars of fares charged and the necessary…
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#219 – Derelict Mills – Part 7 Ivy Bank Mill
The diversity of places that I’ve explored has ranged from completely intact places like Pyestock and Fletchers Paper Mill, to stripped out hulks such as Old Lane Mill. But this would suggest that some kind of spectrum of dereliction exists with fully intact at one end and empty shells at the other, when in actual…
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#218 – Derelict Mills – Part 6 – Westwood Mill
Sometimes I feel compelled to go and visit places, even if I’m not in the right frame of mind. I’d had my eye on this place for a while, and I needed to visit somewhere to photograph for a nightschool project. Reports on the internet showed it to be pretty stripped out, but with one…
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#208 – Roy Chadwicks* Finest Hour
Back in the 1980’s I was a teenage air cadet and mildly obsessed with anything aeronautical, and particularly obsessed with anything Vulcan related. On my bedroom wall was a large poster of XH558, the last surviving flying Vulcan, which was at the time the RAF’s Vulcan Display Team The highlight of my visits to the…
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#169 – Attack Of The Giant Egg Cups – Thorpe Marsh Part 3
Ever take a photo that is deeply satisfying? This one does it for me. OK, there was a bit of post processing involved and cropping involved to get the image as I wanted it, but the simplicity of this is something I really enjoy. No fancy compositions, no foreground interest, just three towers from a few…
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#168 – Attack Of The Giant Egg Cups – Thorpe Marsh Part 2
A few years back, I spent some time working on secondment in the east of the country, and on my drive home, I’d pass various different sets of cooling towers, some abandoned, some active, and yet they all fascinated me. These huge egg cups can be seen from miles around in the flat countryside that…
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#167 – Attack Of The Giant Egg Cups – Thorpe Marsh Part 1
Thorpe Marsh near Doncaster. Dust blowing everywhere, high winds nearly blowing me out of my size 10 work boots, and a post apolcalyptic landscape. Need to go back for another look.
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#166 – pre-visualising an image
In the words of one of my personal heroes, don’t you just love it when a plan comes together? I’d been planning to go and have a look at the Duke Of Lancaster for ages as I had an image in my mind. And it was exactly like the one at the top of the post that you’ve…
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#165 – Square Format
While I’ve never shot a square format camera, I’ve found myself on a number of occasions recently, cropping to a square format. While of course this is retrospective re-composition, as opposed to deliberate in-camera composition, the square format is an interesting one that for some reason is difficult to use. Maybe it’s to do with…
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#155 – The Duke Of Lancaster 3
OK, final bunch of snaps from the Duke Of Lancaster for the meantime. There is a public footpath that runs along the west side of the dock where the ship is moored. Between the path and the ship is a bramble hedge and a fence with razor wire on top, but I wasn’t interested in getting…
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#154 – The Duke Of Lancaster 2
A few more from Mostyn of the Duke Of Lancaster. The ship has been here since 1979, which means that it’s been at Mostyn longer than it was in revenue earning passenger service. Wikipedia states that the original plans were for her to be used as a static leisure centre and market. Marketed as the…
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#153 – The Duke Of Lancaster 1
I’ve never really got excited about mobile phones, only replacing mine when they were worn out or broken. However, now that they’ve become mobile computers that can also make phone calls, they’ve started to interest me a bit more. not so much the technology itself, but what that technology allows me to do. I’d started…
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#146 – Ribble Steam Railway on Film
A few from the Ribble Steam Railway charter in January 2010. I’d forgotten that I’d taken my F100 loaded with some Kodak BW400CN, until I got the film processed the other week. To be honest they’re broadly similar to the digital ones, but what the heck, you can’t beat a bit of real grain.
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#145 – Book Review – Shadows Of Change – Leigh Preston
I’ve been in and out of my local photographic society (or camera club as some call it) for several years. Unsurprisingly, the photos I enter into competitions are unlike anything anyone else puts in, and generally do quite well, although some judges just don’t get them. Fair enough, you either love or hate what I…
Mechanical Landscapes 