What better way to start the second half of the year than with this photograph I took over half a century ago? I'm not sure what went through my mind when I took it, but it has turned out to be one of my favourite photos - part exercise in scale, part composition in grey, … Continue reading The Beauty Of Shape
Month: June 2026
Sunny, Happy Days
What a difference a century makes. Warm weather at the end of June 1926 meant that kids at Holy Trinity School in Halifax had their lessons outdoors, “under ideal conditions.” A hundred years later, similar warm weather brings a very different response. Before we start bemoaning the delicate snowflakes of the modern era, it should … Continue reading Sunny, Happy Days
A Grainy Memory
It was the 1980s. It was somewhere in the Lake District, I think. It wasn't raining - rare for the Lake District - and the light of day was beginning to merge into the shadows of a summer evening. It's nothing more than a memory: a grainy, black-and-white memory.
Leave The Faces Well Alone
All lovers of old photos are faced with endless decisions about artificial intelligence: when to use it, how much to use it, and whether to use it al all. Don't ask me for answers - you have to make up your own mind. I do have one rule myself: I tell whichever AI bot I'm … Continue reading Leave The Faces Well Alone
Another Wall
Another photograph of another Yorkshire stone wall. This one is far more recent, however. It is also in a very different part of Yorkshire. This was taken in the north of the county, where fields contain flocks of sheep, not factories.
In Halifax
I'm pretty certain that this photograph - taken well over 50 years ago - was taken somewhere in Halifax. It has all the necessary ingredients: an overgrown, stone-cobbled lane rising up a steep hillside to meet a soot-blackened wall of monumental proportions. It's probably so obviously Halifax that, at no time over the last half … Continue reading In Halifax
A 1916 Girl
On the back of this sepia portrait of an unknown girl is a studio stamp that states: "W Buckley, Portrait Specialist, 28 August 1916, Regent Square, Blackpool." There is something quite beautiful about the portrait - William Rawlinson Buckley was a celebrated Blackpool photographer - and something that is so resonant of the time. This, … Continue reading A 1916 Girl
A Heated Basin
We are living through record heatwaves here in the UK at the moment, experiencing temperatures that make you want to find a cool stretch of water and take the plunge. I took today's photograph in Brighouse Canal Basin well over half a century ago, when it was surrounded by gasworks and endless, rundown factories. You … Continue reading A Heated Basin
A 1907 Poke
A "Facebook Poke" is defined as "a digital nudge or virtual greeting used to get a friend's attention." The equivalent 120 years ago was a postcard - sent, as it happens, to my great-uncle Fowler Beanland - with the slightly ambiguous message, "What Ho." The advantage of the 1907 poke is that we can compare … Continue reading A 1907 Poke
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