Mechanical Landscapes

  • #273 – A Space Shuttle at Manchester Airport?

    Last week saw the delivery of the ‘youngest’ space shuttle Endeavour on it’s 747 transporter to Los Angeles, and the news stories reminded me of when the ‘Enterprise’ came to Britain back in 1983. If memory serves me correctly, it was on it’s way to the Paris Airshow, and according to the internets, actually landed…

  • #272 – Olympic Park Abstracts 2 – The Orbit

    More Olympic fun. I found the Orbit fascinating to look at, just a pity that there were no tickets available to go in it. The red on blue here has worked well, especially as I have my Fuji X10 in ‘Velvia’ simulation mode, which really saturates the colours. I hop that the orbit will be…

  • #271 – Olympic Park Abstracts 1 – The Velodrome

    OK so they’re not really abstracts as such as you can probably tell what they are, but I took these like this as it was hard to get an interesting picture of the whole thing in many instances. All with the Fuji X10, the prospect of hauling an SLR round all day, as well as…

  • #270 – Southampton Panorama

    One of the features that I’m really enjoying on the Fuji X10 is the sweep panorama function. You can set this to 120, 180 and 360 degree sweeps, but I do find it a little frustrating to use. As I always do 120 or 180 sweeps, it can be a little hit and miss as to…

  • #269 – Mechanical Funscape 2

    These images are variations on the same theme as the image in the last post. As before, the black and white treatment has brought out the texture of the slightly corroded, painted surfaces of the steelwork. By removing the distraction of colour, the shapes are now far more prominent as are things like the repeating…

  • #268 – Mechanical Funscape 1

    Engineers have turned their attention to all manner of things, developing machines to serve us in many ways – for example, to feed us, transport us, clean us, kill us, and in the photograph above, to frighten the living $&%! out of us. Camelot is Chorley’s own theme park, and about ten minutes from my…

  • #267 – Brymbo Photographs in Urban Realm Magazine

    I correspond every now again with Mark Chalmers who shares an interest in urban exploration, and he recently asked me if he could use some photos from Brymbo Steelworks to illustrate an article he was writing for Urban Realm magazine . The article is a feature on a final year MA architecture project based on…

  • #266 – Farewell Hans Steeneken

    A recent email brought the sad news of the passing of Dutch railway photographer Hans Steeneken. The email was from someone who has now got access to his emails, and he said that he died ‘last June 6th’, but I’ve just checked my emails and my last email from Hans was September 2011, so I presume…

  • #265 – Book Review – The Industrial Landscape – Bernd and Hilla Becher

    Zeche Concordia, Oberhausen (1967), Germany I’ve heard a lot about the industrial photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher over the years, but from the work that I’d seen, I just couldn’t get excited about it. OK, I’ll be the first to admit that this field isn’t exciting in the same way that, say, motorsport photography…

  • #264 – Recommendation – Poundland £1 Kodak Film

    Boo!  Everytime I walk past the Poundland shop in my local town centre, I always remember the Trigger Happy TV sketch where Dom Jolly walks round a pound store asking how much everything is to the increasing exasperation of the shop assistant, it goes something like this: “So how much is this?” “A pound” “What about…

  • #263 – Recommendation – DS Colour Labs

    Given the cost of ink and decent Fotospeed paper, I tend to use my A3 printer sparingly and for applications where I need control over the end result such as for competition and exhibition work. For everything else I either get done at my local Tesco (6×4 prints) or Photobox (everything bigger). Recently though I…

  • #262 – Prestolite of Leyland

    #262 – Prestolite of Leyland

      I was quite surprised to stumble across this vast crumbling edifice, less than 10 minutes from my home, as most of the former Leyland Motors plants in Leyland had been cleared. Yet, sat behind rows of houses and a dense row of shrubs was this huge, wartime-era factory, now empty after its last occupants…

  • #261 – Cheadle Bleachworks

    #261 – Cheadle Bleachworks

    For reasons that are, at best unclear, and at worse, downright weird, I have this thing about industrial ruins. Not so ruined that you can’t tell what it was, but ruined enough to be beyond repair. Proper mongy old crap – roofs caved in, doors hanging off and such like. They’re usually quick to explore…

  • #260 – Staffordshire Collieries Part 2 – Apedale

    #260 – Staffordshire Collieries Part 2 – Apedale

        Now this was more like it. Someone at Chatterley Whitfield had told us that there was another colliery, Apedale, that we could visit in Stoke, but it was at the other end of town. As I didn’t have a satnav, I had to follow Bungle at breakneck speed across town to find the…

  • #259 – Staffordshire Collieries Part 1 – Chatterley Whitfield

      Another one from the archives here, this was an ‘official’ visit to this crumbling edifice on a so-called open day. Actually, that’s being harsh and doing a disservice to our guides from the Friends of Chatterley Whitfield, who are probably more disappointed about the condition of this place than anyone else, and I’m sure…

  • #258 – Blog Recommendations

    They’re nearly all listed in my blogroll, but here’s an overview of some blogs that I subscribe to: Münchow’s Creative Photo Blog some really interesting posts on here on photography related creativity, a difficult topic to write about as I’ve found out! alanclogwyn.wordpress.com Quarryscapes – Alan Clogwyn / Richard Alan Jones photoblog of the North Wales…

  • #257 – Riverdance

    I posted this photograph of the MS Riverdance a couple of years back, but seeing the recent posts on Geotopoi of the wreck of the MV Carrier brought back a few memories. The story is well documented – storm force winds hit Britain at the end of January 2008, and overnight, the cargo ferry Riverdance was hit by…

  • #256 – Great North Steam Fair – 3

    The thing I like about Beamish is that despite it being a museum, it all feels real. Unlike Disney, who manage to suck the life out of everything in their sterile make-believe theme parks, everything at Beamish is real, and not only that, most of the buildings existed elsewhere before being taken apart and re-sited…

  • #255 – Great North Steam Fair 2 – Coffee Pots and a Colliery

    I think this is a de Winton engine, similar to the ones photographed on the Geotopoi blog The colliery at Beamish is a real one,  well sort of, it’s made up of bits of other collieries that have been rebuilt to form one new one. The steam engine works as well, and the entire setup makes a…

  • #254 – Great North Steam Fair 1 – The Steam Elephant

    Last year I went to the wonderful Beamish Open Air Museum, and loved it! Only thing was, we went a tad early in the season and not everything was open. Vowing to return, we opted to visit during the Great North Steam Fair, which pretty much opens the season. As we’d already seen a lot…

  • #253 – Return To Dinorwic – Film Shots

    I’d promised myself that I’d shoot more film in 2012, so the first proper opportunity I had was Dinorwic. As described in previous posts, I took along a digital compact, and two film cameras. Not ideal, but at least the X10 is small enough to slip into a waist bag and is out of the…