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…
Category: Industrial Landscape
#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…
#602 – Meadowbank Salt Mine – Part 2
The mine is unusually long and thin, with not much surface infrastructure compared with a coal mine. That said, there is no need for a washery, and there is crushing machinery underground, so all that is on the surface is a long conveyor that takes the salt to a storage building where it is then…
#601 – Meadowbank Salt Mine – Part 1
I’ve known about Cheshire’s salt mines for years, but never got round to finding out more about them until recently. There’s only one left, but it’s routinely in the news in winter as it supplies the majority of the salt spread on Britain’s road (as well as 57% of the table salt you put in…
#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…
#596 – A Return to Hartford Mill 2
I took a photograph from the Metrolink station on my previous visit (below), but it wasn’t that good so I didn’t do anything with it . In fairness, it was a truly awful day with heavy rain and high winds making photography difficult as I was constantly wiping rain drops off the front element of…
#595 – A Return to Hartford Mill 1
I thought that Hartford Mill had been erased from the landscape in the weeks after my visit in February 2020, turns out it hadn’t. A contact of mine who lives about 5 minutes away from it had posted a picture similar to the above on Flickr later on in 2020, but I assumed that demolition…
Mechanical Landscapes 