Tag: Wales
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#677 – Anglesey Mining Headgear 2
This is the typology photograph I ended up with. It’s realistically only viewable side on from this side and although I could have wandered on site to get a slightly better view I’m not sure it would have been vastly superior and I like the inclusion of the greenery at the bottom. It’s a simple…
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#676 – Anglesey Mining Headgear 1
This place had been on my list of places to photograph for my typology for a while but it’s a long drive and I’d relegated it to do ‘later’. But we booked our 2023 summer holiday in Anglesey so there was no excuse not to pay a visit! I’d visited the island previously in 2010…
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#645 South Wales Road Trip Part 13 – Big Pit
Big Pit was my last port of call as it was the most easterly pit and therefore – technically – on the way home. It’s the home of the Welsh Mining Museum so like all museums is free to enter, but they do charge £5 to park so regard that as an entry fee of…
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#644 – South Wales Road Trip Part 12 – Lewis Merthyr
Unlike Cefn Coed, the colliery museum at Lewis Merthyr remains open. Mine was a flying visit and I didn’t have time for the guided tour round the buildings as I wanted to look at a photographic exhibition that was being held there as well so I had to balance the time I had between making…
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#643 – South Wales Road Trip Part 11 – Great Western Colliery
This was a brief stop. The site wasn’t open and a small sign on the gate said it open Sundays 2-4 so I was 24 hours too early and I planned to be on the way home when it was open, so I just had a look from the pavement. And that’s quite easy to…
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#642 – South Wales Road Trip Part 10 – Tower Colliery
I’m not sure if you’re allowed in without a booking for one of the rides, but I thought I’d chance my arm – you don’t get if you don’t ask. The lovely girl on the desk was slightly perplexed by my request but agreed that I could go in as long as I stayed in…
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#641 – South Wales Road Trip Part 9 – Cefn Coed Colliery
The primary reason for my Wales trip was to photograph the remaining mines for my typology and I have opted to photograph them all from the same side on perspective. This is easier said than done, and not all of the remaining headgears can be photographed side on, but I was going to do my…
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#640 – South Wales Road Trip Part 8 Cefn Coed Colliery
Cefn Coed was on my list of places to see on my original, cancelled trip in 2021 but at that time one or both of the headgears were being rebuilt and in pieces. So I suppose one of the benefits of postponing was the ability to see both in a fully restored condition, and they…
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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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#636 – South Wales Road Trip Part 4 – Penallta
The aerial photograph from 1930 of the site shows what I think is a coal washery along with extensive railway sidings to the east of the site. These are long gone and housing has recently been built on the site, it as this is at a lower elevation than the colliery, the headframe on the…
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#635 – South Wales Road Trip Part 3 – Penallta
I’d seen a few photographs online of the upcast headgear, viewed through the downcast headgear structure. My plan was to try and hold my camera over the fence and photograph this through the legs to see if I could get a usable photograph for the typology but I wasn’t expecting much. As I ended up…
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#634 – South Wales Road Trip Part 2 – Penallta
Pennalta Colliery was my first planned port of call on my South Wales road trip. My plan was primarily to get a photo for my headgear typology and then get some from the adjacent housing estate that has recently been built on part of the site. I’d done some research on the internet to get…
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#633 – South Wales Road Trip Part 1 – Hafodyrynys
This bizarre contrivance is a slime thickener, which was part of a coal washery, the only remaining part of the former Hafodyrynys colliery. A colliery had been in operation at Hafodyrynys in the 1870’s, and another opened in 1914 which operated until the 1950’s. The old shafts were closed and three drifts were sunk, with…
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#572 – Bersham Colliery 2
While I was killing time waiting for a clear or cloudy sky (see post 570), I tried a few different compositions. I quite liked this multi layered composition, which is totally different to the single layer type I’m using for the headgear project. This was taken, processed and uploaded t the blog from my iPhone…
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#570 – Bersham Colliery 1
I’ll post a bit of history in the next post, but in this one I want to talk about the photographic aspects of this photograph. As this was going to be part of my ongoing colliery headgear project, I needed a featureless sky. Didn’t matter whether it was a clear blue sky or an overcast…
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#546 – Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Industrial Visions at The National Museum, Cardiff
I try to go to a few photographic exhibitions a year, normally in the North of England. But when I heard that The National Museum in Cardiff were exhibiting work by Bernd and Hilla Becher, I started to make plans for a trip as their work is rarely exhibited in the U.K. As an added…
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#542 – Review of the decade – 2011
2011 was my first full year of fatherhood and the sleepless nights coincided with a lot of business travel. Consequently photography fell down my list of priorities as my camera was mainly aimed at my daughter. Nonetheless I managed to fit a couple of explores in, and got a few snaps of the PS Ryde…
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#530 – Old Negative Scans Part 10 – Dinorwic
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#507 – 500 Post Retrospective – Slate
I’ve only visited two slate quarries (Dinorwic and Pen-yr Orsedd) but every time I visit North Wales I am reminded of the physical impact this industry had on the landscape. Although some slate quarrying continues, it is on a much smaller scale than in days gone by, largely due to the building industry’s preference for…
Mechanical Landscapes 