Mechanical Landscapes

Category: Industrial Landscape

  • #383 – Fiddlers Ferry Steam on the landscape

    Driving back from Bolton Steam Museum the other day, I took the marginally more scenic route via Horwich. Chorley Old Road climbs quite high and is always a good spot for some pleasant views, but I was quite surprised to see the steam rising from Fiddlers Ferry Power Station near Warrington on the horizon. The…

  • #381 – Library of Congress Images – Really Big Machines

    While browsing the Library of Congress Historical American Engineering Record, I came across some photographs of something I had actually seen. A few years ago, I visited the Wyman Gordon Forge in Worcester, Massachusetts in an official capacity to see their (almost) unique 50000 ton press in action. For a piece of metal bashing machinery,…

  • #380 – Library of Congress Images – The Long Stairway, Pittsburgh

    The photographs of Jack Delano have been featured before on this blog, and these were the documentary images of and around the railway. This is a slightly different subject matter and style of photography. There are a few different variations of this scene on the Library of Congress website, but this one just works best…

  • #379 – Locomotive and a watertower at the Erie Railroad yards, Jersey City

    This was a bit of a one off in the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection on the Library of Congress website. It doesn’t appear to be part of a series and I can find no other railway photographs in the same collection. But it’s a good ‘un nonethless, even though it’s needed…

  • #375 – Library of Congress Images – Building Liberty Ships at Bethlehem Fairfield Shipyard

    Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore, Maryland. A shipyard with a crane. (sic) One of the biggest contributions America made to the war effort was its enormous industrial base and associated ingenuity. It was Henry Fords protege’s from the motor industry who were brought in to help the conversion of the peace time manufacturing industry to an incredible machine…

  • #374 – Library of Congress Images – Industrial Landscape Panorama

    This is a join up of two 8×10 glass negatives so as you can imagine the digital file is huge! Panoramas are (relatively) easy to produce digitally, especially when you have the right tripod head, a fast computer and the right software, but taking one using a large format camera and making darkroom prints must…

  • #373 – Library of congress images – Bingham copper mine

      Bingham Copper Mine, Utah. Carr Fork Canyon as seen from ‘G’ bridge. In the background can be seen a train with waste or over-burden material on its way to the dump.       Bingham Canyon, Utah. Ore train at a mine of the Utah Copper Company. Until recently Bingham Copper Mine was the largest open…

  • #372 – Library of Congress Images – Virginia coal trains

    Boy this was hard work! The negatives were as rough as the environment they portray and must have been developed in gravy and moonshine. Most of the Library of Congress scans that you may have seen in earlier posts have required a few minutes work in Lightroom to give them some contrast and a bit…

  • Brymbo Steelworks Heritage Open Day

    All that remains – the empty space in the background is where the main works used to be. Brymbo Heritage Group have contacted me to let me know that they will be open on the upcoming Heritage Open Day on 27th September 2014. It starts at 1030 from the Brymbo and Tan-y-Fron enterprise centre, Blast road,…

  • #359 – Mechanical Landscapes Gallery Exhibition Now Open!

      After too many late nights and a lot of blood sweat and tears, my first exhibition opened today at my local independent bookshop, the delightful Ebb and Flo in Chorley. It’s only 12 framed A3 photographs, but the exhibition space is somewhat small and probably couldn’t take many more, so I’ve gone for quality…

  • #357 – Fletchers Paper Mill

    This one is another of those which I’ve had trouble processing in the past. For some reason, the combination of colours, as well as the light, is slightly odd and has always left me struggling a bit – I’m still not sure if I’ve cracked it yet. I don’t know whether increasing the contrast in the…

  • #358 – Old Lane Mill

    Sometimes images naturally lend themselves to high contrast, others don’t. In this I’ve shown what happens when you go too far. The starting monochrome conversion was inevitably quite flat, muddy looking even although given it was a grey overcast day on a muddy wasteland that’s to be expected. But overall, the scene just didn’t suit…

  • #353 – The Factory Photographs by David Lynch

    It’s a while since I’ve seen anything by David Lynch, but I remember that he had a very odd way of seeing the world. Best known for films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man and the weird Twin Peaks, he’s also had a number of solo art and photography exhibitions. His most recent exhibition and accompanying…

  • #352 – Cwm Bychan – Another Get Carter Landscape – 3

    And so to finish off this short series, a few black and white images. After lugging my tripod several miles to allow me to do some exposure bracketing, I realised in post processing that it probably wasn’t necessary, there was adequate information in the correctly exposed raw file. But as I’d gone to the effort…

  • #351 – Cwm Bychan – Another Get Carter Landscape – 2

      Warning – equipment discussion! A popular misconception is that an ultra wide angle lens is required for landscape photography, and while useful, it can often lead to hackneyed compositions and converging verticals. Used judiciously they are a useful tool, but not the only tool in the landscape photographers bag. I bought my Nikon 16-35…

  • #350 – Cwm Bychan – Another Get Carter Landscape -1

    #350 – Cwm Bychan – Another Get Carter Landscape -1

      If you’ve seen the classic film Get Carter, then you’ll recall the closing scenes of the film when Jack, against the backdrop of a clanking colliery ropeway on the bleak Durham coast, gets his revenge on the gangster who killed his brother. Watch it here if you’ve not seen it – it’s a tad…

  • #349 – Bank Bottom Mill

      Bank Bottom Mills in Marsden are a vast complex of mills that continued in production until 2003. On my brief visit in 2007, the mills appeared to be mothballed and still full of machinery, but still partially occupied. I did think they’d since been stripped, but having seen a number of reports on the…

  • #345 – Reworked Images 11 – Dinorwic

    This is the same scene that I posted up a few posts back, albeit a few feet to the left and a few feet higher up. I’ve not made it as contrasty as the other one as I don’t think it needs it due to it being entirely monochrome. I’m not convinced about the cohesiveness…

  • #344 – Reworked Images 10 – The Gate

    Oakwood mill is a complete ruin, quite why it’s been deemed worth keeping up rather than being demolished is beyond me, when some magnificent structures elsewhere have been flattened. I didn’t even bother looking for a way in, I took a few externals and moved on to look at other stuff in the area. I…

  • #343 – Reworked Images 9 – Jumbles Quarry Crane

    Maybe it was because I visited the quarry with someone (I seem to produce better images alone, although the venerable Tarboat was excellent company) or whether the location itself was a challenge, but I didn’t come away with many images that really inspired me. I felt they made a good record of the place but…

  • #340 – Reworked Images 6 – Jumbles Quarry

    This was an image I’d scratched my head with in colour. I just couldn’t do anything with it, and I didn’t think it worked well in monochrome, so even though I liked it and thought it had potential it never really went beyond basic adjustments. I’ve always thought it an intriguing image, but one that…