News From Nowhere No. 3,230

It was twenty years ago today (well, in fact, it was twenty years ago yesterday, but that doesn’t have the same musical ring to it) that I uploaded the first post to my News From Nowhere blog. Since then, there have been 3,230 posts and 3,913,493 visits. That first post featured a picture of the village of Burton Salmon in Yorkshire, and I’m reprising it for this special anniversary. If you want to know what I was doing in Burton Salmon back in 2006, you’ll have to become the 3,913,494th visitor to the blog.

That's Life

Street scenes like this one - which I photographed in France half a century or so ago - are wonderful reflections of everyday life. Nobody is posing, and no Sunday best clothes are on display; all you have is life in all its variety and confusion. There is no subject, and that itself is the subject. There is no story being told - which is a story in itself. That's life.

Long Time, Long Jump

 

I've been taking photographs for a long time. Here's one from sixty years ago, taken when I was still at school in Halifax. Some ran, some jumped, and others held the tape measure to see how far they had travelled. I just stood there and took photographs.

A Photo Of Time

 

It was such a long time ago. I look at the photograph now and search for myself. I find the hint of a look, the corner of a dream, and the start of a story. Yes, it is a photograph of me, but it is also a photograph of time itself.

Looking Down

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the view from Halifax, looking up the hillside towards the church of St Thomas on Claremount Road, is one that I have photographed again and again over the last six decades. The same is true of the view in the opposite direction: on so many occasions, I have stood amongst those stone gravestones and taken pictures looking down on Halifax. Here is one from 2009, when the church was still an active place of worship rather than the sad building it is today.

Exposed

Another of my Sheffield photos from the early 1980s. When using black-and-white film, cut out the grey middleman and concentrate on shapes and outlines - a fancy way of saying I didn’t get the exposure right!

Bruges Bronze

This was among some photographs of mine from the late 1980s, and I must confess that I had completely forgotten what it was or where I had taken it. A quick reverse image search provided the answer: "The image shows a historic bronze water pump spout in Bruges, Belgium, featuring a grotesque or Green Man face and water-spitting dragons or serpents".

November

 

The start of a new month - where will it lead us? If this photograph is anything to go by, it will lead us to Firth House in Rastrick.

Ghostly Double

 

This week, Sepia Saturday is celebrating Halloween with ghosts as its theme. In many ways, this is a suitable theme for lovers of old photographs, because so many early photos were linked in one way or another to ghostly phenomena. My photograph shows my Uncle Frank’s parents, Frank and Clara Fieldhouse, at the seaside. Whether the ghostly couple following them are the result of spirits, double exposure, or AI is up to you to decide.

Night Shots

 

You need an old camera, slow film, and a decent downpour to get a good night shot. Modern digital cameras are hopeless: they sharpen the focus, bring up the shadows, and tone down the glare, leaving you with something about as dramatic as a soggy digestive biscuit. Luckily, when I took this photograph of Commercial Street in Halifax back in the 1960s, my camera was old, my film was slow, and it had rained for days.

Industrial Cubism

I took this photograph in Sheffield more than forty years ago. After all this time, I’m not certain where it was taken - possibly around Kelham Island. The exact location does not matter; it is the starkness of the scene that grips the imagination, accentuated by the photograph’s black-and-white composition. The shapes possess a beauty of their own - a kind of industrial cubism - that is both attractive and meaningful.