Thursday, January 12, 2012

Let Me Take You By The Hand And Lead You Through The Streets Of London (or maybe Stoke-on-Trent)


Thursday is scanning day and today's dip into my old negative file brings this particular image to the surface. One of the joys of "scanny-dipping" is to dredge to the surface an image that has not seen the light of day for forty or so years and try to work out where on earth I took it. I have a feeling that this particular shot dates back to the early 1970s. At the time I was at University in Staffordshire, but spending many a weekend in London where the future GLW was at University. And I have a feeling - based on the width of the streets and the smartness of the buildings - that this is London rather than Stoke-on-Trent. For some reason I keep thinking of the area around King Cross Station or maybe a little further south in the Holborn area: but this thought is based on intuition rather than evidence. Wherever it is, it seems full of atmosphere to me : even after all those years in the dark.

20 comments:

  1. "Scanny-dipping." Only you, Alan, only you! Haha!

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  2. Scanny-dipping? I will remember that. Perhaps you have coined a new term.

    I love its atmospheric qualities, as well, how it goes from greater clarity on the right foreground and moves into a hazy (dare I say it?), shade of winter.

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  3. Hello Alan:
    A most atmospheric image as you say. Just enough smog to create the eassential London ambiance. Yes, 'scanny-dipping' what a perfect term!!

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  4. Magic; you have failed to mention that by great prescience you have also managed to photograph the Tardis on the right, just before The Doctor emerges. Well done

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  5. Love this picture Alan, is nice!

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  6. Scanny-dipping, indeed. Not such a great way to pass the time if you're underdeveloped!

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  7. It is a great black and white. Who would of ever thought we could take old negatives and create photos without all the chemicals and photo paper.

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  8. It looks too cold and damp to go 'Scanny~dippin'!!! Heeehehehe!

    Sorry, sometimes I just can't hold back.

    Great photo as usual Man.

    God bless ya and have a magnificent kinda day!!! :o)

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  9. I thought it was fog but if it is haze/smog so be it. Nice picture Alan.

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  10. I'm sure you said something beyond 'scanny-dipping' but I didn't notice. lol.

    That said, I know you Brits are so accustom to your charming phone booths that you don't even notice them anymore. But to someone like me, they are as wonderful and magical as the double deckers. :)

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  11. Scanny dipping sounds really cool!
    Some of the old black and white and fog made for some interesting photos. Seems to me the color film was common in the 70's were you using color?

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  12. Looks like somewhere on the upper reaches of the Edgeware Rd to me. Kilburn perhaps? The road is too wide for the City.

    I see you managed to capture a TARDIS too.

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  13. I noticed the TARDIS too :)

    Definitely London, rather than Stoke on Trent, but where? The Singer Sewing Centre isn't a lot of help and I can't quite read the name on the front of the bus.

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  14. "News From Nowhere" has been included in this weeks Sites To See. I hope this helps to attract many new visitors here.

    http://asthecrackerheadcrumbles.blogspot.com/2012/01/sites-to-see_13.html

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  15. Scanny dipping..great word!! You have the best photos too. I think I would have enjoyed the walk:)

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  16. Alan, I love this photo. These misty shots seem to frame the world as sort of a potentia waiting for us to collapse the pilot wave and call forth "reality". Is there any way to buy a print of this photo?

    Here are some stunning Depression Era color photos you might appreciate from the Library of Congress at our place. http://thebookofcletis.blogspot.com/2012/01/americas-varied-carols-part-2.html

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  17. Alan, may I post this photo and write about the emotion it evokes in me? Drop by and let me know when you can.

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  18. The kind of photo that seems much more fascinating now than it probably did when you took it, hence the languishing unobserved for forty years. Did we really drive vehicles like that?

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  19. This is London! We're at Holloway Road at the Nag's Head junction with Seven Sisters Road to the left (out of shot) and Parkhurst Road to the right. Ahead, the view looks up the Holloway Road towards Highbury Corner. The tall building in the distance, slightly left of centre, is the old Jones Bros department store, partly demolished and now a Waitrose supermarket. So then, it's not King's Cross or Holborn, but I'll take a completely wild guess, or maybe a suggestion - just a couple of hundred yards behind the camera is the Odeon cinema which you may have visited!

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Half-Formed Memories And Photographs