Tag: Steelworks
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#678 – Redcar steelworks at night
Recently, I’ve been going through the photographs I’ve taken of the Redcar steelworks on my various visits over a 10 year period before it was demolished, and I found a series of night photographs that I’d forgotten about. I’ve actually posted a couple of them before (a good few years ago), but it’s always good…
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#639 – South Wales Road Trip Part 7 – Port Talbot
I’d seen a few views of Port Talbot taken from the hills that overlook the town so wanted to go and have a look at the view myself. My contact who knew the area well warned me that the path up from the town was steep and boy was he right! After a good number…
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#638 – South Wales Road Trip Part 6 – Port Talbot
Following the relative disappointment of the steam covered scenes I photographed earlier, I found my hotel, rested up after a long drive and reviewed my photos from Hafodynyrys, Penallta and the steelworks, then went for something to eat. As I ate my tea, I glanced outside and noticed that the sky had cleared, the sun…
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#637 – South Wales Road Trip Part 5 – Port Talbot
A few years ago I’d seen a photo on Flickr taken from a street in the Margam district, that depicted a blast furnace towering over the terraced housing. This was exactly the kind of scene which fascinates me and I resolved to make my own version of the photo. Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised that there…
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#630 – North Sea Canal industrial landscape 1 – IJmuiden Steelworks
In my last post, I talked about a photo taken from a ship leaving Southampton, and these are taken the following day as we approached the coast of Holland. The smoke from the chimneys of IJmuiden Steelworks was visible some miles out to see, and as we got closer the unmistakeable cluttered skyline of the…
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#612 – Redcar Blast Furnace – Last Chance To See: Part 3
We get nostalgic – protective even – of landmarks. For me as an observer, this is an interesting piece of engineering and industry, but for many locals, it represented something, as did its removal from the landscape. I’ve been a member of a Teeside steelworks Facebook group for a few years and it’s open to…
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#611 – Redcar Blast Furnace – Last Chance To See: Part 2
A man with an enormous Leica and a chap who had retired as technical manager at the nearby Skinningrove steelworks were also photographing and we struck up a conversation as photographers often do. Both were local and far more informed than I, an outsider to the area and industry. We were joined by a photographer…
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#610 – Redcar Blast Furnace – Last Chance To See: Part 1
I’ve been intrigued by the blast furnace at Redcar for many years, and have made 5 trips to photograph it since 2009. Most of the British steel industry had gone by the time I started photographing industry in the mid-2000’s, and I didn’t grow up in an area that had any steelmaking (well, there was…
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#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.…
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#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…
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#587 – Steeltown Landscapes 2
Unlike the sprawling, overwhelmingly oppressive landscape of the steelworks at Scunthorpe with its acres of cooling towers, blast furnaces, coke ovens, conveyers and other artefacts of industry, the visual landscape of the Aldwarke steelworks in Rotherham is more generically industrial. Like Scunthorpe, it’s not easy to photograph from directly outside, you have to go on…
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#586 – Steeltown Landscapes 1
I posted a few photos a while back of Rotherham, a South Yorkshire steel town and neighbour to its more celebrated neighbour Sheffield. Britain once had many steel towns but there are relatively few now. The steel industry in Britain was once enormous and employed hundreds of thousands of people, and the economies of many…
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#584 – Industrial Tourism – Scunthorpe 5
To the South East of the site are the enormous rolling mills and the almost as big Basic Oxygen Steelmaking (BOS) plant. The rolling mills are nearly a mile long, and while the BOS plant isn’t as long, it is rather tall, and is said to be 4 metres higher than St. Paul’s Cathedral (which…
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#583 – Industrial Tourism – Scunthorpe 4
The blast furnaces are the beating heart of the steelworks, providing iron that is converted to steel elsewhere on site. The four blast furnaces – AKA the four queens Victoria, Anne, Mary and Bess – are not all in operation currently due to a recent drop in demand but are the most visual representation of…
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#582 – Industrial Tourism – Scunthorpe 3
Not only is it the enormity of the site that can be hard to get your head round, the enormous complexity of what is passing before your eyes can be confusing also. Beyond the basics of iron making, I’ve very little clue as to what else goes on so have no idea what these miles…
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#581 – Industrial Tourism – Scunthorpe 2
One of the key ingredients required for iron making is coke. Huge quantities are required and a constant supply is made on site at the coke ovens. The site has two coking plants (Appleby and Dawes Lane), but only the Appleby plant – the oldest, ironically – is used now. The pungent smells and ancient…
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#580 – Industrial Tourism – Scunthorpe 1
An old drinking buddy of mine in Bolton was enormously clever and was sponsored through his chemistry degree by British Steel, as it was still called in the mid-1990’s. After inevitably getting a first, he decided not to take a job with them as he “didn’t want to spend his life in a steel works…
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#579 – Steeltown Panorama – Scunthorpe
After visiting Rotherham, I headed for Scunthorpe, as I’d booked to go on a train ride round the steelworks with the Appleby and Frodingham Railway Preservation Society. The society are based on the steelworks site and run brake van tours of the steelworks railway system, but more about that in upcoming posts. Before I went…
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#578 – Steeltown Panorama – Rotherham
I’d seen similar photographs to this a few times over the past rather, mainly when Rotherham hit the headlines for the child grooming gangs operating in the town. Now I don’t want to get into that side of the story (and any comments posted about it will be deleted), but the photograph itself was an…
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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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#541 – Review of the decade – 2010
The start of a new decade brings with it a certain degree of reflection, mainly along the lines of ‘f**k me where have the last eleven years gone’. Over the Christmas period I noticed that the papers and other media are full of reviews of the decade, so, slave to convention that I am, I…
Mechanical Landscapes 