It was over forty years ago, but I can still remember taking this photograph. This was long before everyone had a camera in their pocket disguised as a telephone, so I would have been out and about with a hefty SLR, trying to imagine how the picture might eventually turn out. It turned out quite … Continue reading Foggy Night In Sheffield
Category: Scanned Negatives
Calder Scars
I must have taken this photograph looking across the Calder Valley from Hullenedge Road in Elland about fifty years ago. I was probably trying to capture the freshness of the scar resulting from the construction of the then, new Elland by-pass. Over the last half century, that scar has largely healed, although recent work has … Continue reading Calder Scars
The Slow Train
At one time, railway lines criss-crossed West Yorkshire like the warp and weft of the very fabrics the area was famous for. Holmfield Junction Station stood at the junction of the line from Halifax to Bradford via Queensbury and the splendidly named Halifax High Level Railway. None of these lines survive, and when I took … Continue reading The Slow Train
Dark Satanic Mill
As time goes by and memories fade, there is a tendency to romanticise life in the mills of West Yorkshire (and I'm probably as guilty as the next old fool when it comes to this). When they were turning out cloth - or yarn or carpets - by the mile and black smoke was belching … Continue reading Dark Satanic Mill
The Build Up
To be honest, I don't remember taking this photograph, but it remains one of my favourite shots of my hometown. Surrounded by hills, Halifax has always built upward: stone needles of mill chimneys, ornate church spires, and concrete-clad boxes of apartments. Scenes like this were made for black and white - colour had no place … Continue reading The Build Up
The Beauty Of Shape
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
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.
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 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
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