Category: Bridges

Photoers in 2003

All the photos below were taken some time during 2003. I don’t know the exact date, because either my then camera couldn’t remember such things, or I didn’t tell it to remember this particular thing. Probably the latter. (Yes, the latter. Other photos taken later with the same camera do have dates attached.)

Photoers, of course, in and around Westminster – the Abbey, Parliament Square, the Bridge:

All those clunky old cameras, with their tiny screens. And vast and elaborate video cameras. There’s even one (photo 9) where the camera bit does the twiddling, and the screen is part of the main body of the camera, where all the sums are done, an idea that came but then went.

Not a mobile phone to be seen.

Categories for this include “Food and drink” and “Signs and notices”, because pancakes, and signs about pancakes, are involved (photos 6 and 7).

You can already see me worrying about not showing faces, often by letting the camera block out the photoer’s face (photos 4, 7, 10, 12), or just by photoing the photoer from behind (photos 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9).

My clunky old camera with a tiny screen was a Canon A70. Which I still remember with pleasure even though the screen didn’t twiddle.

LATER: I realise that I have labelled all these photoers “PhotoersApril2004”, but this was before I realised that (because of other photos in the same batch of directories) they had to be earlier than that. Whatev, as the young folks say nowadays. (Good word that, I think.)

An eccentric form of transport

I’m always on the lookout for eccentric forms of transport, and I especially liked this one, which I spotted on Blackfriars Bridge this afternoon:

In the background, Blackfriars railway (station) bridge, and beyond that, the Shard, Tate Modern Tower, Tate Modern Extension.

This is, I think, one of those electrically assisted bikes, by which I mean pedals and a motor of some sort.

I looks too big and heavy to have much of a maneuverability advantage in heavy traffic. But at least the thing must have been quite cheap to buy. So the guy can start earning his living without too much saving up. I’m guessing this is the saving up bit. Good luck to him.

I used to go biking round Europe with a small tent and sleeping bag on the back. With a gizmo like this I could have carried a far grander tent and really lived in some style. But, rather inconvenient.

Exploring The City: Monument thoughts

When I say exploring, I mean three kinds of exploring, rather than just the one. The “just the one” is going there, and taking photos. But the second is finding things out from the Internet about the various things I saw and photoed. And the third is exploring my photo-archives for related photos that I photoed during earlier explorations.

Here’s an internet discovery of what the place I was exploring looked like, in (guess) the late eighteenth century:

That image is one of a collection of images to be found at the top of the Website for the Parish and Pilgrimage Church of St Magnus the Martyr in the City of London.

At the back there, the Monument, and the church of St Magnus the Martyr. Note how you also see three other church spires, and a rather distant church tower. In those days, churches dominated the London skyline.

Here another Monument image, this time one which I photoed in the vicinity of the Monument, yesterday:

At the top of that, beyond, you can just about make out a horizontal slice of the Monument itself.

I’ve obviously been up this London Big Thing, but not very recently. Now, I want to look more closely at how this London Big Thing looked, when it first arrived on the scene:

I’m sure there are plenty of references to God and how he should bless and receive into heaven, or wherever, all the people who perished in the Great Fire of London, at the base of the Monument.

Nevertheless, I wonder if The Monument was actually some sort of turning point for London architecture, in the sense that it is very tall, but not a place of worship. The Monument, from the moment it was built, was what is nowadays called a “visitor attraction”. It works by allowing people to climb up a big staircase inside to a viewing platform at the top, from which anyone who cared to make this effort could then gaze down upon London, and its many churches. No worshipping involved, unless you want it to be.

Until the Monument, I’m guessing that the last place of non-worship to dominate the London skyline so forcefully was the Tower of London.

The Monument must have caused quite a stir when it first appeared. Did some people then think it was an eyesore? (A major function of blogging, for me, is that it records questions. That’s one I don’t want to forget.)

And if the Monument was thought of by some to be an eyesore, did this make it easier for people later to argue for taller – also secular – buildings in its vicinity, the aesthetic and spiritual damage already having been done? Like the Guy’s Hospital Shard story, only this time for the entire City of London.

To bring the story up to date, here’s a photo I photoed a while back of The Monument and its immediate surroundings, from the top of the Walkie Talkie:

The Monument and St Magnus are still a bit taller than their immediate surroundings, which are nevertheless pretty bulky. But as for the Walkie Talkie, and the other Big Things beyond, it’s definitely a case of The Monument being dwarfed by modernity.

Here’s another photo of The Monument, this time from the Top of the Tate Modern Extension:

Again, dwarfed by modernity.

Walkie Talkie on the left there, behind the red crane. And since we have a crane there, here’s a roof clutter photo, also feature the top of the Monument:

Photoed from the other side of the River also. Don’t get me wrong, I love this kind of alignment/juxtaposition, as regulars here will know. But, that’s how little the view of the Monument from any sort of distance now matters to London’s aesthetic overlords.

A bridge in Serbia with an office and a hotel on it

Dezeen reports on this new bridge, to be built in Serbia:

Every time a bridge like this gets proposed (or even built), with architecture on it, however bland and boring it is, I rejoice that the day comes a bit nearer when such a bridge will get built somewhere in London downstream and east, in the vicinity of the Thames Barrier, or maybe further east than that. I don’t care where exactly.

The thing is, there don’t seem to be that many big bridges, for things like motorways and high speed trains, being built these days. The big news is in small bridges, like this one for instance. So, any bridge that any city does now manage to build is sure of a lot of attention. And if something like the old London Bridge got built again, downstream, bigger, that would definitely get lots of attention, to a part of London which is, as of now, dangerously bland and anonymous. All brand new machines for living in. Not much in the way of eye-catching picture postcard fodder. A bridge with architecture on it would really liven things up.

It should be big enough to have a viewing platform on it, nice and high up, to look upstream at central London from.

By the way, I just found out you can actually visit this model of old London Bridge, in a church, in The City. I saw it on television a few weeks ago and just googled it now. Blog and learn.

Expect photos.

Rotating bridge proposal

Cody Dock is one of my favourite little spots-that-most-people-have-never-heard-of in London, and here is what looks to be a brilliant idea for a bridge there, by someone called Thomas Randall-Page:

That’s the bridge in its two possible states. Left, people can cross it. Right, bigger-than-small boats can go under it.

I tried to contrive a verbal description of how it works, but have failed. It’s all to do with rotating the square shaped bridge in such a way that its centre of gravity stays steady. But, (a) take my word for it that it’s very clever, and (b) follow the link and see how right I am.

The world does not seem to be building many new big bridges, but it is still contriving little bridges of great inventiveness, if only because they’re cheaper.

Two more Oxo Tower views

Here are two Oxo Tower views, as photoed by me in July of this year.

And here are two more that I photoed from the same place at the same time:

On the left, the sort everyone does, and for very good reasons. On the right, one of my favourites that day, looking down to the Oxo Tower Pier.

LATER: And oh look, is that a Photoer I see at the far end of the Pier? Yes it is:

If I ever get another camera, I now intend that it will have an even zoomier zoom.

Some housekeeping

Yes, following on from yesterday’s cricket dramas, the mundane matter of how photos look, here, on this blog.

You will recall that last week, GodDaughter2’s Sister and I were wandering about in London. After we had passed through Trafalgar Square, we carried on, across the River, and then along to the Oxo Tower, up which I had never been and up which GD2S now guided me. Here is how the top of that Tower looks from just underneath that top:

Now for the housekeeping. The photo I just uploaded to my blogging software is 1000 pixels across. The blog software cleverly shrinks that photo on your screen, to make it fit the full width of the posting.

However, here is another photo I took from that same spot, of the two Blackfriars bridges, road in the foreground and the railway station bridge behind it, with a little clutch of those Ghost Columns (also featured in photo 4.3 of this recent photo-collection here) in between. (Top right, you can just make out the Millennium Footbridge.) This photo is, as of now, 1500 pixels across, and if all now behaves as it has been behaving, this photo will now look, on your screen, rather less wide:

The effect is not always visible. You have to widen out the blog posting before you spot the difference. But when you do, you see that the Tower Top is wider across than the Bridges.

Which is strange. What I would like would be for the blogging software to shrink the photo that is 1500 pixels across down to the exact width of the posting, but no narrower, just as it did with the 1000 pixel photo above, of the Tower Top, no matter what the size of the screen you see all this on.

Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to sort this out for me, unless you are Michael Jennings, the man who got this blog going, and who has more recently promised to give this matter his attention.

If you are not Michael Jennings, the purpose of this posting is, however, more than just a matter of showing you a couple of (hope you agree) nice photos. I am also interested in illustrating how an aspect of modern life consists of people like me (who don’t know how all this stuff works) asking people like Michael Jennings (who does know how a lot of this stuff works or failing that knows how to find out how it works) to make stuff we put on the internet look more nearly as we would like it to.

An ongoing agenda for this blog is the texture, so to speak, of modern life. And this particular sort of techno-relationship, between a circle of tech-ignorant people and … That Guy, to whom they all go for answers to conundra of this kind, is very much part of how we all live now. Why be ashamed of any of this? Why not turn it into a blog posting? It’s interesting.

If, despite not being Michael Jennings, you feel that you nevertheless have something to contribute in this matter, feel entirely free to comment. I like comments, and am grateful for all the ones I get.

By the way, if you never have to ask That Guy for help, of the approximate sort that I have just described, then you, for your particular circle of acquaintances, are probably That Guy yourself.

Quota gallery – June 3rd 2009

Indeed. I did quite a bit of work on another posting today, about scaffolding and video cameras and suchlike. But it’s not finished yet, and I don’t like to rush what I say about scaffolding.

So here are twenty photos I photoed beside the River, just over ten years ago:

The second one is no ordinary building site. That’s the Shard.

The scaffolding in front of the BT Tower is, I’m pretty sure, the beginnings of what is now Blackfriars Station.

Most of these scenes are of things that won’t happen again. But the Blackfriars ghost columns are still there, exactly as shown.

Photography is light.

A bowling machine

This bit of video is all over my Twitter feed just now.

Prediction, the best cricket batsmen are about to get a lot better, because the bowling machines they practise on will be getting a lot better.

And then? A new game will be invented, consisted of bowling machines bowling an identical set of deliveries to competing batsmen, the way they now deal identical hands to competing bridge players.

How soon before robot bowlers compete against robot batsmen?

Note how the bowling machine actually bowls underarm.

But the funniest thing about this robot overlord is how it goes back to its default submissive posture, after it has done its apocalyptic damage.

A cricket fan photoer photos Tower Bridge

My walk back from Bermondsey yesterday soothed me in many ways. During the last few days I had been worrying that wandering about photoing had been losing its charm for me. Something to do with the social isolation of it all, and the deepening fear, as you get older and more fragile, of making enemies. Also, the sheer effort. Well yesterday was an effort. But the charm was as real as ever, and I made no enemies at all that I was aware of.

One photo, for me, summed it all up, combining as it did and does two of my greatest enthusiasms, photoing photoers, and cricket:

So much for the photoing. Now look at his hat:

ICC stands for International Cricket Council, and the ICC CWC is the Cricket World Cup, now being contested here in the UK. This hat is adorned with the heraldry of all the teams in this tournament. You can only see some of these teams, but so I assume. The tiger would be Bangladesh. The silver leaf is New Zealand. The crown and three (rather indistinct) lions is of course England. “Sri Lanka Cricket” speaks for itself. The green and yellow shield must be South Africa, because that’s the South Africa flag above it. The other five teams involved in this “CWC 2019” must be on the other side.

None of which I realised at the time. Such is my eyesight that all I thought I was photoing was a photoer wearing a elborately decorated hat of some kind. I only realised what the hat was about when I got home.

Anyway, my point is that while I was taking my walk, England were playing against the hitherto unbeaten Indians in this Cricket World Cup. England were widely spoken of as favourites to win this tournament, until the tournament actually began and England proceeded, in among winning several other games quite well, to lose to Pakistan, and then to Sri Lanka, and then to Australia. Losing to India would almost certainly have meant England failing to reach the semi-finals in their own tournament. Again. So, yesterday was a very big deal for England cricket. I spent my day alternating between doing my business in Bermondsey with Michael J and having a walk and a drink and another walk with Michael and then making my way back home while all the while photoing, and: keeping up with England’s progress on my mobile phone.

England did well. They batted splendidly, especially at the start of their innings, not least because of the return of the great Jason Roy. And they set a target they would probably be able to stop India chasing down. And sure enough, they did stop India chasing it down. It was tense, but it all ended happily. The Indians were not that bothered because they are almost certainly through to these same semi-finals already, barring implausible mathematics concerning scoring rates, and them losing their last two games.

England still might not make those semi-finals, if they lose to New Zealand on Wednesday, as they well might. But nevertheless, this was a most happy day, and the above photo is a most happy souvenir to remember it with.

My only regret is that there is nothing to be seen on the screen of the mobile phone that the photoer I was photoing was photoing with.