Category: My photographs

Like a bridge but not a bridge

On the same day, September 24th 2013, that I took all those artistic photos not of cranes, I also photoed something else that wasn’t a crane either. In addition to liking cranes I also like bridges, but this other something wasn’t a bridge either, despite looking a lot like one. I refer to this contrivance:

So far as I can work it out, this is a structure to protect a road against some power lines which are crossing that road. The road in question being the A1014, aka “The Manorway”, just before it runs out of puff at a roundabout.

I know. Why this one structure, there? What’s so special about these power lines? Were people about to start working on them, and were they scared that they might fall on the road and set light to a lorry laden with some highly inflammable liquid, of the sort they concern themselves with in Coryton? Could be. According to this, there used to be a refinery there (hence yesterday’s ruins). Now, there either already is or there is about to be a diesel import terminal. Yes, apparently this got going last year.

Maybe the structure I photoed is somehow a consequence of this change.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Stanford-le-Hope but not cranes

So I was looking, as I do from time to time, through one of my Stanford-le-Hope directories (the one memorialising September 24th 2013), expecting to be amazed by photos of the giant cranes of London Gateway. Instead I noticed how much else there was in the Stanford-le-Hope vicinity besides giant cranes:

There was decaying industrialisation. There was vegetation. There were pylons. There was roof clutter. Even ground clutter.

So I went all the way to Stanford-le-Hope, so far away from London that I had to pay to get there, and some of my favourite things were things that we have lots of in London. But, it was great. Out there in Beyond London, everything is all spread out, and it is easier to photo things. But, you need to check beforehand that there are things. And there were lots of things at or near London Gateway, even back in 2013

Time I checked out London Gateway again. Some time next summer, I think.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Why I oppose leaves

Indeed:

Photoed last March, which I suppose is not yet Spring. If that’s right, then that makes Winter the longest season.

Wouldn’t it be great, for me I mean, if leaves happened in Winter, but if all the other seasons were too hot for them?

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Chimney pots and blue sky

October 21st of this year was a good photoday for me. There was this, and then this. Now let me show you nine chimney pot photos, taken on that same day:

The first four were photoed in the vicinity of South Kensington tube station. Then I tubed myself to the West End, which is where the rest of these photos were photoed.

I think my favourite is the fifth, or perhaps 3.2, depending on how you prefer your numbering to be done. But I like them all, or I’d not have shown them to you.

The final one, 9 or 3.3, was taken from the inside of the top of Foyles.

I’ve called this “chimney pots” because all these photos have that in common. But there are many other kinds of roof clutter also on show. I rejected including “roof clutter” in the title, because although most chimney pot arrays do indeed become very cluttered, as in randomly varied and chaotic, that cannot be said of photo 4, aka 2.1.

The satellite dish in 1.3, aka 3, looks, to a casual observer, aka me when I first encountered it in the directory (not when I actually photoed I), the moon.

Which I like. And I also like it when there are chimney shadows, as in 1.1 (1), and 5 (2.2). And there are other sorts of shadows in 6 (2.3).

Plus there’s a crane (7 (3.1)). and a pigeon (9 (3.3)). But, not any scaffolding that I can see.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Light from behind and light from in front

I spent most of today, and am about to spend the rest of it, recovering from some combination of a cold, and drinking too much last night, at my Last Friday of the Month evening. It went very well, but very well is not how I felt this morning, or feel now.

So, quota photo time.

I could rhapsodise indefinitely about this photo (which I photoed on the same afternoon I photoed this photo of Centre Point):

The thing I want you all to realise is that the light hitting the white sheet is hitting it from both sides. There is the sun behind the white sheet. And there is the sun bouncing off the windows on this side of the street, a lot of it in window shaped shapes.

The next project is to track down the building and see what it looks like without all the scaffolding.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

My latest advert-taxi photo-target – and my next

As I earlier said, about this taxi, and various photoshopped variants of it:

I hope I chance upon the original, and get a go at photoing it myself.

Well, yesterday, in Warwick Way, I did chance upon it:

I speculated recently that photoing sculpture might be easier to do well in cloudy light. I also recently speculated that something similar might well apply with brightly coloured vehicles. The above bright yellow taxi would seem to confirm this.

Next advert-taxi target, this very cute Swarovski taxi. I have already spotted one of these taxis twice, but my first sighting was in the dark with me burdened with laundrette stuff, and my second sighting was yesterday morning, but after I had been shopping and was thus similarly burdened. I tried to photo it, but it had moved on before I could.

Photoing taxis is a lot easier when they are parked. It is also easier if the driver is not present. If he is, I say I am interested in his advert, and ask permission to photo first. Once they know you aren’t snooping on their parking habits, they’re usually very agreeable.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The original Sloane

Yesterday I found myself in Duke of York Square, which is just along the King’s Road from Sloane Square. So, what with the Duke of York being one of Britain’s most under-rated military leaders, at any rate according to this book, I thought that, this might be a statue of the Duke himself.

But a closer look at the plinth told me different:

Wikipedia tells us more about this, the original Sloane, from whom, of course, Sloane Square took its name, and because of whom Sloanes are called Sloanes. Sir Hans Sloane, it seems, was the collector of scientific specimens who first got the British Museum started. Plus, this:

He is credited with creating drinking chocolate.

Blog and learn. Here is a rather more artistic close-up of this same statue:

This statue is a recreation by Simon Smith of a statue carved in 1737 by John Rysbrack. Smith’s new statue was unveiled in 2007:

The original statue, now deteriorated, is housed in the British Museum, with a cast in the Chelsea Physic Garden. The sculptor, Simon Smith, said: “`I wanted the sculpture to show Sir Hans Sloane as a kind man with a sharp intellect and an enquiring mind. An approachable man of principle and logic, who’s morals and philanthropy are still of benefit to us today.”

The light yesterday was very dim, even early in the afternoon. But whereas buildings often respond well to bright sunlight, I find that statue photos are often deranged if sunlight is unimpeded, and better when the light is more spread around and is coming from lots of different directions, as happens under cloud. Less light, but of the right sort, does the job.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Crazy and massive clothing (and a bright red van)

On April Fools Day 2009 (the same day and just before I took these photos (that being how I came across this photo (which I took just north of Charing Cross station))), a man decides that he doesn’t want either a massive jacket or a crazy “T/shirt”:

Perhaps he feared that, what with it being April Fools Day, he might discover that the T/shirts were all pretty sensible, and the jackets only of moderate size, albeit both quite persuasively priced.

I tried googling “Tommy Coopers clothing”, but could find nothing that looked like this enterprise. Only references to a certain comedy hat.

Moments earlier, on that same photo-walk, next to St-Martin-in-the-Fields off Trafalgar Square, I took this photo, of a van:

I love how certain very bright paint colours look all the brighter on dull days. Hartley would surely like this one.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Lorry on roof

So, Friday, and something about cats, or dogs, or other creatures. Dogs, as it turns out.

I took the following two photos a month or two ago, when rootling around in East London in the District Line DLR sort of area, where the City of London is busy turning into Docklands. And I am pretty that this first photo was intended, in my mind, to be of the notices in the foreground:

But then I noticed the background. Was that a lorry? On top of a building? For no reason? With no obvious way back down?

Yes it was:

Not an entirely clear photo, and it was also getting dark which didn’t help. But trust me, there was no easy way up, or down, for this vehicle. A lot of trouble was gone to, by someone. But, why?

No, I don’t know either. But sometimes mysteries are the funnest things to photo.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Total Surveillance photos

Following yesterday’s very generic, touristy photos of the Albert Memorial (although some of them did involve a breast implant), here is a much more temporary photo, of the sort most tourists wouldn’t bother with:

You obviously see what I did there, lining up what looks like a big, all-seeing eye with a clutch of security cameras, cameras made all the scarier by having anti-pigeon spikes on them.

And what, I wondered when I encountered this in my archive, and you are wondering now, is the provenance of that big eye?

Turns out, it was this:

So, not actually a photo about and advert for the Total Surveillance Society. It merely looked like that.

However, just two minutes later, from the same spot of the same electronic billboard, I took this photo:

So as you can see, the Total Surveillance Society was definitely on my mind. Terrorism, the blanket excuse for everyone to be spying on everyone else. The two minute gap tells me that I saw this message, realised it was relevant, but it then vanished and I had to wait for it to come around again. Well done me.

According to the title of the directory, and some of the other photos, I was with a very close friend. A very close and very patient friend, it would seem. Hanging about waiting for a photo to recur is the sort of reason I usually photo-walk alone.

I took these photos in Charing Cross railway station on April Fool’s Day 2009. I would have posted them at the time, but in their original full-sized form, they unleashed a hurricane of messy interference patterns. But just now, when I reduced one of them to the sort of sizes I use for here, those interference patterns went away. I thought that these patterns had been on the screen I was photoing. But they were merely on my screen, when I looked at my photos. And then, when I resized all the photos, it all, like I said, went away. Better late than never.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog