Month: September 2023

A Study In Brown

It's impossible to deny her anything. If she wants half your bacon sandwich, she gets it. If she wants to walk in her direction rather than your direction, that's the way you go. If she wants the cover to lie on the settee, you sit on another chair and try to keep warm. It is, … Continue reading A Study In Brown

Technicolor Grey

I remember the sixties and seventies in monochrome. When I occasionally come across one of my colour photographs from those days, it somehow seems all wrong, like a Technicolor film on a bad day. Whilst the streets were grey and the skies were grey, the fish and chips - hot from the fryer -radiated colour.

Grand

Another of those Walking Snaps - this one showing my grandmother and grandfather, Kate and Albert Beanland. Albert was my mothers' father - I never knew him, he died before I was born. His father was Fowler Beanland; my mother never knew him, he died before she was born. His father was Thomas Beanland; Albert … Continue reading Grand

Flour Sculpture

Having lived close to Brighouse for much of my life I tend to take the two giant grain silos that used to be part of Sugden's Flour Mill for granted, believing that they have existed since the Pre-Cambrian era and will continue to exist in one form or another until hell and the River Calder … Continue reading Flour Sculpture

DRONING ON ABOUT SHEFFIELD

I must have taken this photograph from high up in one of the block of flats in Upperthorpe, Sheffield, forty-odd years ago. Back in those days I couldn't pass a block of flats - and there were many to choose from in Sheffield in the 70s and 80s - without climbing the concrete stairs to … Continue reading DRONING ON ABOUT SHEFFIELD

MINING FOR COAL AND A WARM BATH

I came across an illustration the other day of two children being hauled up a mineshaft. After a little research I discovered that not only was the illustration a “real” record of two actual named children, but even more surprisingly, it was based on the practices at a coal mine just a few miles away … Continue reading MINING FOR COAL AND A WARM BATH

WALKING SNAPS

I do love what used to be called back in the middle of the twentieth century “walking snaps”. These candid photographs catch people unposed and unprepared. In an age when there seems to be a camera grafted into every piece of electronic equipment, this may not seem like any great achievement, we grow tired of … Continue reading WALKING SNAPS

THE DOGCART AND THE FLY

An early twentieth century picture postcard of The Moor in Halifax. It is a view I became very familiar with half a century after this postcard was first published. The fine looking building on the left of the view is my old school - the old Crossley and Porter Orphanage School (it had dropped the … Continue reading THE DOGCART AND THE FLY

UNDER THE BRIDGE

Like anyone else, I can see the beauty in a natural landscape. Find me a photograph of craggy hills sweeping down to mirror-smooth lakes and I will swoon with the best of them. Get me a picture of ripe-rich grain swaying in an evening breeze against a bucolic green background, and I will pin it … Continue reading UNDER THE BRIDGE