Tag: Preston
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#619 – Higher Walton Mill 2
I wanted to take some alternative views of the mill but struggled to find a perspective I liked as not only is the mill set back from the road, it’s at an angle to it as well as below the road level. The perimeter fence did catch my eye though. It’s not something I’d normally…
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#618 – Higher Walton Mill 1
Like many Lancashire towns, Preston once had dozens of cotton mills, but very few have survived. There are of course a couple of significant exceptions, with the refurbished Hesketh Mill on New Hall Lane being something of a landmark as you approach the city centre, and the gigantic Tulketh Mill – complete with chimney –…
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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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#532 – Drone Photography – Vernon Carus 2
I’m still figuring out how to compose photographs from above – while the options are theoretically unlimited, in reality, with a fixed wide angle lens and limitations on where you can fly (distance to buildings, overflying issues, etc) then in reality, interesting compostions aren’t as easy as you might think. But photographs from directly above…
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#531 – Drone Photography – Vernon Carus 1
Vernon Carus’ Penwortham Mills were one of my earliest explores back in 2007. The mill had only recently closed after the company relocated to a brand new factory a few miles up the road. The local vandals had been visiting so security had been reinstalled on site in the old security office and after a…
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#455 – Vernon Carus Revisited
I visited Vernon Carus’ old Penwortham Mills site back in 2007, not long after the site had closed and work transferred to a new factory round the corner from my house in Chorley. At the time, there was a full time security guard on site who kindly let me wander round for a couple of…
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#321 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 5
Once I’d got the main photos, I tried a few more experimental ones. I like to try to get different perspectives in an attempt to tell a bigger story, and the flexibility of a 14x zoom enabled me to do this easily. These are variations of one I took at Fernhurst Mill a few years back,…
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#320 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 4
The view from the north (end) The once monolithic landmark is reduced to a much more compact form. The demolition has been a methodical dismantling, and a relatively neat affair (or at least as neat as deconstructing thousands of tonnes of brick, concrete and other dusty, dirty materials can ever be), and just one section…
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#319 – The Last Days Of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 3
The days of swinging a big iron ball are long gone, demolition these days is more like deconstruction. A long arm excavator with a powerful claw pulls the building apart, and then places all the material for recycling into big piles or straight into trucks. It does make for slow progress though, especially when there is…
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#318 – The Last Days of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 2
I grew up in a town full of red brick mills. They were all very similar to New Mill, being very large 4 or 5 storey mills, sometimes in large complexes of two, three, four or even five mills. As the industry shrunk dramatically from the early 60’s onwards, these giants and their chimnies started…
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#317 – The Last Days of Bamber Bridge (New) Mill – 1
New Mill was a massive local landmark, towering over the main street and neat terraced streets of Bamber Bridge. It could also be seen quite prominently from the M6, and was adjacent to the Blackburn – Preston railway line. You really had to try hard not to see it, as it was the tallest building…
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#222 – Derelict Mills – Part 10 – Vernon Carus
More often than not, the places I go are dead. Not just as a building, but the companies that inhabited it have also died, along with all the traditions, products and culture that was unique to that enterprise. Technology and commerce move on, budgets shrink, new companies with lower costs come into the market, older companies…
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#146 – Ribble Steam Railway on Film
A few from the Ribble Steam Railway charter in January 2010. I’d forgotten that I’d taken my F100 loaded with some Kodak BW400CN, until I got the film processed the other week. To be honest they’re broadly similar to the digital ones, but what the heck, you can’t beat a bit of real grain.
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#129 – An Unusual Visitor – Part 2
Just a few more of the River Carrier before it left Preston. I packed a camera and visited the dock on my way into work in the morning, and as expected, I got a nice reflection due to the stillness of the air and the sun being low. Shame about the dockside being on the bottom…
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#128 – An unusual visitor!
***Another somewhat off-topic blog post!*** Preston Docks shut to commercial shipping in 1981, having only made a profit 17 times in 90 years. One of the biggest problems was dredging – being an inland port, the River Ribble needed constant dredging and in 1975-76, 45% of income was sued to keep the channel clear. With ships getting bigger…
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#85 – Mastermind
Saw this as I squeezed through a door in the mechanics workshop at Vernon Carus. It’s only when I got home and converted it to black and white did I realise the shaft of light was hitting the chair. I suppose I should really re-visit the photo to accentuate the effect, maybe one day!
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#62 – Details
Who said railway photography has to have the train as the main, or only, compositional element? OK, so unless you are a railway enthusiast you may not recognise these lamps as being used on steam engines, but as part of a larger set of images, it adds a different perspective to it. As I often…
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#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…
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#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…
Mechanical Landscapes 