Mechanical Landscapes

Category: Industrial Landscape

  • #83 – Welcome To Oblivion 1

    You think that barbed wire is going to keep me out…………?

  • #82 – Mechanical Landscapes Book Update

    Bit of an on and off one is this project. I’ve slowly been going through my archives for photos for a book, but am still trying to find a balance between urban exploration photos and industrial / urban landscapes. I don’t want it to be a mix of both, but getting the balance and the…

  • #80 – Sayers of Lorenzo Drive – Then and Now

    I was exploring the world with Google Street View recently, and decided to have a look at places I’ve known. I was keen to see the bakery of Sayers Confectioners in Norris Green, Liverpool, where I worked for a couple of memorable years as a graduate trainee. I’d heard that the place had closed in…

  • #79 – Vale Mills Re-Visit

    I’d nothing to do, so I decided to head back over to the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway to check out some possible locations. After a brisk walk around Keighley, I headed back up to Oakworth to check out Vale Mills. This time I put on a 24mm prime to give a wider field of…

  • #77 – Haworth Landscape

    First shot of the day from my visit to the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway was from a road bridge that overlooks the sheds at Haworth. Although the railway have an excellent viewing area that overlooks the sheds, I tried here first and was rewarded with a view along the rainy valley (it was absolutely throwing…

  • #76 – Vale Mills, Oakworth

    War Department 2-8-0 storms out of Oakworth Station on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. I’d spotted this location when I was on the train earlier and drove down for a closer look. When I got there, I had a walk round to see if I could include the mill and the railway in the shot,…

  • #74 – it’s grim up north

    Vale Mill, Mytholmes. I think that this was a path from Oakworth village and I imagine that it was used by generations of mill workers going to and from the mill in the valley floor. I took this when I was unsuccessfully trying to figure out a composition where I could include the mill and the…

  • #70 – When colour works…..

    I’ve blogged a few times about how sometimes colour works best, and sometime black and white does. Here’s one where colour does. I visited Jumbles Quarry deep in the Trough of Bowland with David Kitching (see his excellent website here), after failing miserably a couple of weeks back. Tracing the route of the old railway…

  • #69 – Threads

    Sometimes I take a picture and then review it and for some reason just find it interesting. This is one of them. Cheers.

  • #67 – Colour? Or black and white?

    I took this late on a February afternoon, with the sun low in the sky on the other side of the bridge. Clouds kept partially obscuring it, but I kept getting some terrific light on the railway arches, but no train! It finally arrived (on time), and I got this image. I must admit that…

  • #65 – over-reliance on technology?

    Stabilised lenses (VR in the case of the Nikon system that I use) are a fantastic innovation that has allowed me to take photos in circumstances that would be impossible with a normal lenses. However, I learnt an important (but cringingly obvious) lesson the other night – by and large, they work best when the…

  • #64 – Guesswork / bulb mode

    Sometimes, you run out of pre-set exposure times on your camera and you have to resort to the ‘guess’ mode, AKA  Bulb. This particular scene was tricky as the big floodlight in the background kept being turned on and off, which made exposure a pain. After several tests, I ended up thinking f*ck it, counted to…

  • #61 – British Industry

    I took this photo about 5 years ago on an old film camera, and developed the film myself. For some reason, it’s one that I keep coming back to and remains one of my favourite industrial images. The composition was almost forced upon me as I just poked the camera through a fence and hoped,…

  • #59 – Hand held vs tripod

    I’ve always regarded tripods as a necessary evil. I hate their weight and the fact they’re so big, unwieldly and time consuming to set up and such like. It’s for these reasons that some people like using tripods, as it forces them to slow down and indulge in a more contemplative type of photography. Each…

  • #58 – Paddy’s Hole

    Fishing boats at ‘Paddy’s Hole’ on South Gare on the River Tees. I liked the contrast between the little harbour in the foreground and industrial Teeside in the  background, and of course the setting sun always makes for a nice sky:) I took this when the light was fading rapdily, and as I didn’t want…

  • #57 – sunset

    I always moan at how in the UK we don’t get those lovely skies we see in those fabulous photos of steam in China. This is as good as we get in Preston. I wanted to capture the young lady at work on the engine, perhaps need a bit of dodging to bring her out…

  • #56 – adding a bit of atmosphere 3

    More steam trains! If on the off chance you read this blog regularly, you’ll have noticed a few recent posts of steam train pictures. I love steam trains, and have done for years, although I kind of drift in and out of photographing them. I enjoy the challenge of trying to make something creative and…

  • #55 – wheels of industry

    I was approached via my main website (www.theviewfromthenorth.org) by a director of a mill in Huddersfield. They’d bought the old Brook Dyeing site and wanted a set of photos for their archives. I agreed on the proviso that they let me photograph their other, working, mill in Huddersfield. They agreed, and I spent an interesting morning…

  • #54 – it doesn’t always go according to plan….

    What’s missing off this railway viaduct? A train. The steam hauled ‘Cotton Mills Express’ was due to travel over it, unfortunately the engine failed at Preston, so they cancelled it. I didn’t find this out until I got home, having waited for well over 2 hours. I kept thinking, I bet it’ll come as soon…

  • #53 – LX-3 Low Light Performance

    Got to admit, I’m disappointed by the level of noise in this photo. OK, so I’m used to very low noise on the D700, but this was taken at ISO200 on the LX-3, and the noise levels are poor (and I’ve reduced the noise in post-processing). My old Fuji F31 was much, much better than…

  • #52 – Adding a Bit of Atmosphere 2

    Following on from my last post, here’s another from the East Lancs Railway. Same idea, as before, although the engine is now a much larger part of the overall scene. However, I chose to compose it with the mill, water tower and signal box all in the scene, to help add a bit more visual interest.…