Author: Alan Burnett

It Was Never So

This image comes from a 120 year old picture postcard of Halifax, and it is about as fake as any modern AI generated concoction. The colours have been painted in with all the skill of an arthritic canary, and the figures appear to have been randomly stuck on with haste as well as paste. Such … Continue reading It Was Never So

Skipping The Puddles

I've called this "Skipping the Puddles" because there are lots of skips and lots of puddles. It must be over forty years ago that I took the photograph, which means it was probably somewhere in South Yorkshire. I seem to have caught two people climbing over a factory wall, but it is perhaps a little … Continue reading Skipping The Puddles

Of The Era

I may have used this image before on my daily calendar. After six years, I do occasionally repeat myself. I make no apologies; however, it has always been one of my favourite photographs of Halifax. I took it on Rhodes Street in the early 1970s, when large areas of that part of town were being … Continue reading Of The Era

Random Beach

Counting both the photographs I have taken myself over the last seventy or so years and the old photographs I have collected, I currently have some 114,000 stored on my hard disk. Sometimes I like to leave it to chance and use a random number generator to choose an image from this collection for my … Continue reading Random Beach

Down The Sepia Path

This is an old sepia photograph, taken from one of the many old album pages that litter my room. Many people believe that the sepia colour that characterises photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the result of fading over time. This isn’t actually the case; sepia toning was specifically introduced to … Continue reading Down The Sepia Path

Cleaning Up

In dating pictures of old Halifax, there are certain events that – rather like the destruction of the dinosaurs in geological times – mark the changeover between major epochs. One such event was the stone cleaning of Halifax Town Hall, bringing about its transition from soot-black to golden-stone, in 1972.

Concentrating The Mind’s Eye

I took this photograph in Sheffield, forty-odd years ago. Could you take a similar photo now? The bin will certainly be gone, replaced by some overgrown plastic box. I'm not sure about the stairs and the railings. Today's photo would be digital, and, by default, in full colour - and that would somehow change the … Continue reading Concentrating The Mind’s Eye

Small And Wide In The Arctic

At first glance at this old family photograph, you might think something went wrong with the print's dimensions: everything appears far too wide for its own good. However, that was my grandmother, Harriet Ellen Burnett, and she really was very small and very wide. And that was the door of her house on Arctic Parade … Continue reading Small And Wide In The Arctic

Ode To A Gable End

This is a proper gable end, not some half-hearted apology for a wall stuck onto the side of an over-delicate bungalow. It's seen life, this gable end: horses and carts, trams and trolleys, bikes and boats. Some might not see its beauty, but I did when I took this photo fifty-odd years ago - and … Continue reading Ode To A Gable End