I wish I could remember taking this photograph, but I can’t; after all, it was a long time ago. I must have been up Clifton way, looking down over the lower Calder Valley towards Brighouse. If you can’t get to sleep tonight, you could try the industrial West Yorkshire equivalent of counting sheep: counting mill … Continue reading Enjoy The View
Category: Scanned Negatives
Framed
When you’ve got a good subject - say, a fifteenth-century Grade I parish church - you need a good frame. What better frame for a church steeped in toil and industry than a nineteenth-century railway viaduct? My photo dates from a time when Halifax Parish Church was properly framed; now the subject remains, but the … Continue reading Framed
Gone And Going
It’s probably been sixty years since I took this photograph of the old railway sheds beside North Bridge in Halifax, and a lot has happened since then. The sheds have gone, replaced by a leisure centre that has since disappeared as well. As for the photographer, he is still just about keeping going, although he … Continue reading Gone And Going
Rooftops
At the start of a new month, I once again dive into my file of photographs taken over the last sixty or more years. Photographs make time stand still, and I see these pictures as little flakes of history. This particular flake dates back to around 1980 and was taken somewhere in Sheffield - please … Continue reading Rooftops
Ferry Cross The Mersey 2
I have somewhere in my possession a photograph of my brother and myself on holiday - always either Bridlington or New Brighton - and I, despite being only about six years old, have a Kodak Brownie camera strung around my neck. I would love to think that I was responsible for this picture of the … Continue reading Ferry Cross The Mersey 2
The Uses Of Zion
Coming across this old photograph - which I must have taken forty or more years ago - I was initially unsure of the exact location, as most northern towns and cities had a Mount Zion Chapel. I eventually narrowed it down to a building on Westfield Terrace in Sheffield, which has had a colourful history: … Continue reading The Uses Of Zion
Rooftops And Chimney Pots
I remember taking this photograph half a century or more ago, at a time when there was an outcry against TV aerials as despoilers of urban landscapes. I was always rather fond of them - there was an idiosyncrasy about them that is sadly lacking in their modern equivalents. Add a decent collection of chimney … Continue reading Rooftops And Chimney Pots
Half A World Away
A cobbled street of almost mountainous proportions, gas lamps casting light over a greyscale scene, and washing lines stretching from side to side like cut-price bunting: this was Claremount, Halifax, in the late 1960s. I took the photograph more than half a century ago, and more than half a world away.
Tired And Grainy
I must have taken this photograph almost sixty years ago. It’s grainy, low in contrast, tired, and of dubious quality. I asked AI to improve it, and it produced a version that was shiny, sharp, and so, so wrong. This is the Halifax I remember. Perhaps I, too, am grainy, tired, and of dubious quality. … Continue reading Tired And Grainy
