Tag: Sheffield

Stone Slates And Chimney Pots

This was the previous generation: the generation of stone slates and chimney pots, when harsh grey smoke drifted up to merge with a wet grey sky. It was bad for us - there can be no doubt about that. However, it will be a hard task to take a visually interesting photograph of some solar … Continue reading Stone Slates And Chimney Pots

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

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

The Nature Of Reality And The Digital Dilemma

This "image" (I'm not sure what to call it, I certainly didn't paint it in the conventional sense) is based on a photograph I took in Sheffield in the 1980s. As far as I remember, it was the junction of Old Street and Broad Street, but once all the filters and shenanigans have done their … Continue reading The Nature Of Reality And The Digital Dilemma

Under The Tram-Lines

I'm quite fond of this photo of mine - fond of the combination of brutal straight lines and sensuous curves, and fond of the way your eye is taken on a tram-ride of a journey through the scene.

Industrial Memories

My less-than-comprehensive negative filing system has this one listed as "Industry, Sheffield, 1980". I have a vague memory of taking the photograph, so I shall call it "Industrial Memories". I like a good chimney, whether it be a West Yorkshire mill or a South Yorkshire chemical works. Give me a good chimney and a bit … Continue reading Industrial Memories

Droning On

These days you would just launch a drone, but back in the 1980s we didn't have drones (probably a good things seeing what else drones can do). If you wanted an aerial photograph like this one of Upperthorpe in Sheffield, you had to construct a brutalist concrete labyrinth (aka Kelvin Flats), climb to the very … Continue reading Droning On

Sheffield Shapes

I took the photograph back in the early 1980s, and I messed around with it early yesterday. It snowed a lot back in the early '80s, and I wandered up and down the back streets of Sheffield taking photographs. It was the shapes that attracted me then, and they still attract me now. Sheffield shapes.

The Shape Of Things Gone By

This is not so much the shape of things to come as the shape of things gone by. That unmistakable shape of 1980s cars, TV aerials, telephone lines stretched across streets - they all spell out the eighties. And note the delicious absence of that most twenty-first century visual blight - the plastic wheelie bin. … Continue reading The Shape Of Things Gone By