The ability to bring things into sharp focus is often seen as a positive attribute, but sharpness can imply certainty, and few things are certain in the world today. Sometimes you want things blurry so you can decide what is real and what is imagined. Sometimes you want the water to look like honey and … Continue reading No Sharp Shooter
Category: Calendar
With My Back To The Town
Back in the 1960s, I would often perch on Godley Bridge and photograph the view towards Halifax. Even then, it echoed those famous scenes of the 1930s - all soot-black buildings and strident mill chimneys. Occasionally, I would turn around and take a photo looking the other way, towards the Shibden Valley - all dinky … Continue reading With My Back To The Town
Messing About In The Market
This is based on an old photograph of mine of Brighouse market. I have subjected it to a whole series of filter-based interventions - in other words I've been messing with it. I quite like the outcome.
In The Early Morning Rain
This photograph of mine, taken a good few years ago, shows the Lisbon monument commemorating Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral's first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic in 1922. I particularly like the pigeon perched at the end of the wing, hitching a lift. I'm reminded of the Gordon Lightfoot lyric: “You can't jump a … Continue reading In The Early Morning Rain
A Modicum Of Luck
Another example of what can be achieved through a combination of an unsophisticated camera, a semi-skilled photographer and a modicum of luck. I took this forty years ago - in Doncaster, I think - but you couldn’t do it these days: the all-too-smart camera would produce a perfect exposure and a forgettable image.
2611.070
When I was young, I used to dream about changing the world or writing the definitive book on the lives of the great British brewers. But as I have got older, my dreams have changed. Now, as I drift off to sleep each night, I think about my plans to complete the catalogue of my … Continue reading 2611.070
Breathless In Sheffield
The photograph is from more than forty years ago and shows the steps leading up to Fitzalan Square in Sheffield from Bakers Hill. In the early 1980s, I commuted by bus and train between Sheffield, where I lived, and Doncaster, where I worked. Many a night, I would race up those steps in a mad … Continue reading Breathless In Sheffield
News From Nowhere No. 3,230
It was twenty years ago today (well, in fact, it was twenty years ago yesterday, but that doesn’t have the same musical ring to it) that I uploaded the first post to my News From Nowhere blog. Since then, there have been 3,230 posts and 3,913,493 visits. That first post featured a picture of the … Continue reading News From Nowhere No. 3,230
That’s Life
Street scenes like this one - which I photographed in France half a century or so ago - are wonderful reflections of everyday life. Nobody is posing, and no Sunday best clothes are on display; all you have is life in all its variety and confusion. There is no subject, and that itself is the … Continue reading That’s Life
