Shibden Gate

There is always a temptation to submit images that don't pass the pinpoint definition test - or that fail short of the standard for clarity and contrast - to some AI controlled filter that promises "crystal clear pictures that look like they were taken yesterday!" I didn't take this photo of the Shibden valley near Halifax yesterday, and it's grainy uncertainty matches my memory just fine. AI, keep your hands off it.

 

Tired Pinks And Sooty Greens

 

The view looking back up the Calder Valley from the top of Long Wall, Elland provides all the sensuous curves demanded by even the most obsessive nineteenth century French Impressionist. And that palette of tired pinks and sooty greens perfectly suits this land we call home. The image is a result of my favourite occupation: just messing about.

78 RPM

 

I wake up today to discover that I have become 78. How nice that would be if it meant I could spin around faster than ever, or that the revolutionary fervour of my youth was stronger and more passionate than ever. Alas, it merely means that I've lost what clarity I ever had, I often repeat myself endlessly and have become increasingly out of date.

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 panels.

Looking Down

 

The photograph is one of dozens I've taken of Halifax from the top of Beacon Hill over the years. This particular one dates from the early 1970s. Sometimes, however, I'd been blessed with the ability to draw so I could have captured the view's magical detail. Fear not: artificial intelligence enables dreams to come true (and a fair number of nightmares as well, but that’s another story).

Rainy Days

 

You expect rain in Manchester. When I was there last week it rained from the moment I got off the train until the moment I stepped back on the train again, four hours later. The rain washed out the colours, but left the shapes. Who needs colours when you have shapes like these?

Liverpool!

 

This is a wonderful photograph - so much more eloquent than the usual smiling-face mugshot. That's my mother pointing, my brother Roger digging in the sand, and me looking attentively at what she's indicating. I suspect that could be Liverpool as the background suggest the photo was taken in New Brighton. Even the sloping horizon contributes to what is a fabulous composition.

Fishy Shapes

 

Like a cross between Halloween-costumed children and monsters auditioning for Doctor Who, these smokestacks dominated the skyline at Grimsby Fish Docks 40 or 50 years ago. I visited the docks whenever I could and took photographs of what was clearly a way of life living on borrowed time.

Never, Never, So

 

.. And speaking of fakes! No doubt people will recall the time Vincent van Gogh spent in Halifax in the early 1870s, and his fondness of the view from Greetland overlooking the Calder Valley towards Wainhouse Tower. This painting of his dates from that time. I know what you skeptics are going to say: "the tower wasn't completed until 1875". Van Gogh had such an imagination, however.

It Was Never So

This image comes from a 120 year old picture postcard of Halifax, and it is about as fake as any modern AI generated concoction. The colours have been painted in with all the skill of an arthritic canary, and the figures appear to have been randomly stuck on with haste as well as paste. Such images frame our view of the past as a time of clean streets, pretty colours, and blue skies. Beware - it was never so.

 

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 late in the day to issue a Crimewatch appeal for their identification.