Category: Mechanical Stuff
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#606 – An updated typology
My last update to the typology was a 3×3 grid as can be seen in this post back in April, or if you can’t be bothered reading that, see below for just the picture. I’ve decided to go with a three row format which means that the total number of images must be divisible by…
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#590 – New Zine published and on sale now!
Wrecked on the beach is my first zine, and is based on my ongoing wrecks project. OK, so ‘wrecks’ is a bit of a leap of the imagination, it’s more beached and derelict ships that I’ve photographed across the UK and abroad, but hey, let’s not split hairs eh? It’s 32 pages with a colour…
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#565 – Astley Green Colliery 1
Astley Green Colliery is only a 30 minute drive down the M61 from me, but I’ve not been since 2012, so I decided that my first post-lockdown jaunt would be for a quick look. As of the time of the visit (June 27th 2020), the place hadn’t yet reopened for visitors, but that was fine…
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#558 – Hatfield Colliery 3
As a black and white photographer, I try to start thinking about how I want the final image to look when I am at the location. As I am shooting digital, the file is a colour file and while I know that you can preview and save JPEG’s as black and white in camera, I…
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#557 – Hatfield Colliery 2
My drone now accompanies me if I am going somewhere suitable to fly it, and Hatfield seemed a suitable opportunity to give it a fly. As I’m not using the drone regularly (it’s not my primary camera), I’m still getting my head round how to use the drone in my photography and how to compose…
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#556 – Hatfield Colliery 1
Britain’s coal mining industry has been in a long slow decline for decades. It’s been well documented elsewhere and is an emotive subject that I have no wish to get bogged down with. But with the recent drive to lower carbon emissions, the closure of the coal fired power stations has seen a dramatic reduction…
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#551 – Review of the decade – 2019
As per the last few years, 2019 saw no urbex and a continuing focus on the industrial and urban landscape. After several years of waiting for a drone with the spec I wanted at the right price I finally took the plunge and bought a DJI Mavic Pro 2 and it’s seen a bit of…
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#550 – Review of the decade – 2018
A most productive year, with a revisit to Redcar, some abandonment – albeit explored with permission – and more experimentation with long exposures. Pincroft Dyers – January 2018 I live at the other end of Chorley to this Dyeworks, pretty much the last remnant of Chorley’s textile industry that is still in use. It’s in…
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#547 – Review of the decade – 2015
Another demanding year – my grandmother’s health faded further and she sadly died in November. Overseas travel continued but the project was starting to wind down so I transferred to a different role. I started to pick up some momentum with my photography again with a couple of trips to North Wales and a couple…
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#513 – Abandoned Scammell Routeman
When I was a kid, I had a thing about trucks (lorries). I had loads of Corgi and Matchbox’s plus a few of the last Dinky toys made before they closed in the late 70’s. I could name every type of truck out there and during summer holidays would go on road trips with my…
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#450 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – Crossness Pumping Station 3
And so down into the basement…. Well actually it’s not really a basement as such. Four triple expansion compound steam engines were installed into a new building adjacent to the original one in 1897 to provide additional pumping capacity, but these were removed not long after in 1913 and replaced with Crossley diesels.The diesel engines…
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#449 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – Crossness Pumping Station 2
Beam engines – f***ing big beam engines at that. Crossness is home to four huge beam engines – Victoria, Prince Consort, Albert Edward (the Prince of Wales) and Alexandra (the Princess of Wales). Prince Consort has been restored to full working condition and Prince Consort is now being worked on. At the other end of the…
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#448 – Samsung Galaxy S7 Shoot – Crossness Pumping Station 1
Crossness Pumping Station is somewhere I’ve wanted to go for years. The magnificent Kew may have a more central location, glossy website and some giant engines, but Crossness is a marvelous mixture of wrought iron, rust and symmetry that is incomparable. I was really blown away by the place. I trained as an engineer, I’m…
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#423 – The secret railway…………….
Following the wander round Rhydymwyn, I was asked if I wanted to see some abandoned trains nearby. Now that’s the kind of offer that I can’t refuse, so we drove back towards Mold, parked the cars and made our way across some fields. Hidden away from view in some trees is this small collection of narrow…
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#419 – Leigh Spinners
Sometimes, you just see a photograph materialise in front of your eye – the light meets the composition and you are in just the right place at the right time. You stop and just bring your camera to your eye and thankfully you have just the right lens on your camera (I tend to use…
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#415 – Leigh Spinners Mill Engine – The Giant Awakes………..
After years of service, the giant was no longer needed. Obsolete and old, it was given a spot of oil and the blankets were put on. The giant went to sleep, resting, and maybe mourning the loss of it’s twin next door, cut up by the scrapman after a boiler explosion ripped apart it’s lungs.…
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#388 – Steam Engines at the Bolton Steam Museum
Bolton Steam Museum is the home of the Northern Mill Engine Society, and as I last visited about 5 years ago, I was overdue a re-visit! The society was formed in the 1960’s when mill engines were being scrapped at an alarming rate, a combination of the sudden decline of the textile industry and electrification…
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#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,…
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#365 – Library of Congress Images – Chicago Railway Yard
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001045480/PP/resource/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992001024/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992001028/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001045487/PP/resource/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001045474/PP/resource/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001046046/PP/resource/ Having explored inside the railway works, Jack Delano continued his documentation of the Chicago and North Western outside in the switching (shunting) yards. One tends to forget the enormous size of American steam locos until you see them with people next to them, and those depicted in these…
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#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…
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#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…
Mechanical Landscapes 