Category: Black and White
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#143 – A Photo From Hans Steeneken
A great thing about having websites (and the internet in general now I think about it), is how information and people have become more accessible. I wrote a blog article a few months back on Hans Steenekens All Trains To Stop, and a few weeks late, Hans contacted me via my blog, and we have exchanged…
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#121 – Hot Work
It’s easy to see industrial sites through rose tinted glasses when walking round old, derelict sites or museums, but I’ve spent my career in factories and I know that even today, industry can be hot, hard, sometimes dangerous work. This old foundry is a great example of that – podging rods such as this were used to tap the hot…
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#120 – Cupola Flowers!
Like all abandoned sites, nature has taken up where it left off before the site was developed.
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#117 – Lethal Processes
I don’t know what this building used to do at Royal Ordnance Factory (ROF) Wrexham, but I suspect it was something dangerous that involved making or processing something lethal. Either way, it’s remained unused for over 60 years, the only evidence left being the foundations for something, and a large sunken pool of water at one end…
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#116 – Grown Up Scalextric – Chassis
One I missed from the series of images that I posted from the Leyland Test Track. I’ve since been told that this is probably a wrecked computer monitor, but I saw it and noticed the word ‘chassis’ on it’s base and thought it appropriate. It’s perhaps not as prominent in the composition as I’d have…
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#115 – Pattern
Pattern found in the foundry. Note sure why, but casting patterns are often painted red (although you can’t see that in this photo). There were quite a few patterns left around the place, quite surprised they’d not gone on a bonfire when the place shut.
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#113 – 13
Huge bowl mounted on a railway wagon for transporting iron round the works. Sometimes photos work just as well in colour as they do in black and white, this is an example of that, as the rich brown texture of the image is such a dominant part of the composition. By converting to black and white,…
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#112 – Terex
This giant dumptruck had its engine removed before being dragged by a bulldozer up the hill to its current resting place. I can only imagine the strength of the guy who apparently sat in the cab and steered it while it was under tow as without an engine there’s be no power steering!
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#111 Bunker
Entrance to some kind of bunker at ROF Wrexham. This was once a huge site, but it was closed after WW2 and most of it has been cleared for the Wrexham Industrial Estate. A few buildings remain, but are often innaccesible due to the thick undergrowth that, especially in summer, prevent you getting anywhere near.
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#110 – Grown Up Scalextric – One Way
I quickly got bored of photographing tarmac. I can do that in my street outside my house, so I looked for things that made this place unique. There weren’t too many, but there one or two things that made it interesting.
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#109 – Grown Up Scalextric – Tyres
I don’t know why, but I was surprised to see piles of tyres at the test track. Turns out most of them were to indicate where manholes were, becuase the manhole covers had all been nicked. However, it did seem appropriate somehow.
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#108 – Grown Up Scalextric – Armco
I used to have a Scalextric when I was younger, complete with banked corners, cross-overs and all sorts. At around that time, this place was in full swing, testing trucks from the production lines at the nearby Leyland Motors Works. Since then, the place has gone into an irreversible decline, and like pretty much all of…
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#103 – Coatham Sand Dunes 2
I enjoy looking at traditional landscape photographs, I just don’t take many myself. And like anything else, the more you do it the better you become, and vice versa. To that end, when I was on the sand dunes near Redcar Steelworks, I thought there was a definite photo opportunity, but I just couldn’t see it. It…
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#101 – Coatham Sands 1
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#99 – Light Engine
Another one from Snibston, I used a telephoto to isolate the loco as it ran light engine along the sidings to meet up with the coach it was hauling for the day. I wanted to capture the diesel shunter in the background and some of the industrial backdrop, but only succeeded in getting the shunter in. …
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#98 – Horwich Loco Works
Horwich Loco Works is somewhere I’ve been meaning to look at for some time, but never got round to it. For years I’ve looked at it’s huge long brick Erecting Shop as I pass it on the M61, and last went in the early 90’s when the site was used for car boot sales on…
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#97 – The Y
Unfortunately there wasn’t much happening at Loughborough station but a visit to the sheds and a mooch around the bookshop killed an hour. In the distance here is a demonstration freight train, but it’s maybe too far way to see here. Still, I like all the period features in the scene.
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#96 – Explosives!
Unlike proper heritage lines, Snibston didn’t appear to have a demonstration freight train running, at least not a steam hauled one (although there was a charter on the Friday, but I only found that out afterwards). That was a shame as they’d brought a steam train in especially from the Chasewater railway and it ended…
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#95 – Cobbles and Steam
The area around Keighley station seems pretty much as it was 50 years ago, all cobbled streets, ginnels and old stone mills. I wanted to make a feature of this landscape so I had a scout around the area on foot, which is often the best way as you see things you wouldn’t if you…
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#90 – Buxton Lime Firm 2
Another one from Buxton. As before, processed in Nik Silver Efex Pro, using the Wet Rocks filter and (I think) the Ilford Delta 100 effect.
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#89 – Buxton Lime Firm 1
Converted to black and white using the ‘Wet Rocks’ filter in Nik Silver Efex Pro, and some HP 5 film grain. Not sure why it looks slightly HDR like, it’s only one image, and it’s not seen Photomatix.
Mechanical Landscapes 