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,…
Category: Industrial Landscape
#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…
Mechanical Landscapes 