One of the interesting things about the area around Dean Clough Mill in Halifax is the way that the inner city road system crosses the deep valley. Look one way and there are Victorian factory buildings and smokestacks, look the other and concrete flyovers criss-cross the sky like something out of a Judge Dredd story.
In places they contrast, such as in the first three images below – in fact the first picture is actually an alternate view of the famous snicket photographed by Bill Brandt, which I posted about a few days ago.
It’s a very interesting location to make photographs.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford XP2 Super. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Many pubs have shelters for their customers who choose to sit or stand outside the premises with their drinks, often in the form of gazebos or large umbrellas. The Hop Monkey in Halifax has taken things to a whole new level though, placing a shelter over the entire pub…
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford XP2 Super. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Another batch of pictures from Halifax, including at least one more that mimics one of Bill Brandt’s compositions from almost a hundred years previously. While the usage of this area has changed, much of the architecture remains the same as it would have been way back then.
Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Acros. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°. (except the final image, which was shot on Ilford XP2 Super and lab developed)
Back in the early 1930s, German-born photographer Bill Brandt moved to the UK and began to document British society. Part of this work took place in the norther English town of Halifax, and included a photograph of a cobbled snicket (a narrow alleyway) which has become quite famous. Brandt’s version, which can be seen in this article was photographed in 1937, when the mills and factories were still in full industrial operation (indeed, you can see a small cloud of smoke at the top of Brandt’s picture from a chimney obscured by the top of the mill building).
The buildings in the area still exist today, although their occupancy has moved from industry (one of the world’s largest carpet factories at the time) to hotels, offices, and leisure spaces.
Brandt’s snicket still exists too, and has undoubtedly been photographed by many other photographers since, so while I was there, I made my own version. The snicket has a lot more weeds these days!
Photojournalism isn’t something I tend to do. It’s not that often that I’m at the scene of something interesting enough to be classified as such.
However, on this occasion, I was. I posted about the events of this day way back on the 16th August (the day I witnessed the events), and here’s a recap of the bit in question (it happened after I’d been shooting some medium format pictures around the old mills in Halifax)…
After shooting a couple of rolls of film I decided to go find a cafe and get a drink and, as I was walking through the town centre, I noticed a police car besides which an agitated looking man and woman were speaking to an officer and gesturing to the building behind them – a jewelry shop occupied the ground floor, and above were another three floors of unknown use. I heard to woman talk about a fire, and what sounded like there being a gas cylinder in the room. Within a minute smoke had begun to emerge from a first floor window. More police arrived and started to make people retreat from the scene, saying there was a danger of explosion. Some people were still approaching the scene and were told in no uncertain terms to “get back!”.
Soon a huge amount of smoke began to emerge from the windows, reeking of whatever was burning in there, for a short period reducing visibility down the entire street, and the orange glow of flickering flames could be seen behind the smoky glass. Shortly afterwards a fire-engine turned up and soon a fireman was spraying water through the first floor windows. After a few minutes of this, the smoke started to diminish and more fire-officers entered the jewelry shop on the ground floor, having to rip open a security shutter to gain access. After watching for a while longer (and having taken a few photographs) it seemed like everything was under control and I decided to move on and find the cafe I was looking for.
I decided that I would have a day of photography today. I had to drop my son off at work at 7am so it meant I would have a decent early start, although I wasn’t looking for sunrise shots or anything (a good job, as sunrise was an hour earlier, and it was overcast anyway).
I’d decided to drive to Halifax, a town in West Yorkshire which I haven’t visited before, but which I knew had a bunch of interesting old mills and the like to photograph. The quickest way to get there is to take the M1 north, before heading west on the M62.
The first of the day’s lows came mere minutes after dropping my son at work. As I was driving towards the M1 junction I noticed a car ahead that seemed to be driving a little erratically. It kept suddenly slowing down, and I initially wondered if it had some sort of mechanical fault, but I soon realised the fault was with the driver, who I assume didn’t really know where they were going. The best course of action in this situation would be to find a suitable place to stop, and then take stock of your route. Unfortunately, the person driving this car took a more extreme action. As they got to the roundabout where the slip road to the M1 northbound is located they turned onto the slip road and then came to a complete stop. Vehicles come around this roundabout at quite high speed, many traveling in excess of 55mph, so having a vehicle block one of the lanes on the sliproad could be a potentially catastrophic event. I was able to pull around the stopped car without too much difficulty, but I could already hear angry beeps from cars behind me affected by the foolish driver.
This obstacle behind me, I proceeded on my journey. However, only a few minutes passed before the next low came calling. I was travelling at maybe 65mph when I saw a pigeon fly from the side of the motorway and land about thirty feet in front of my car. At the speed I was going there was nothing to do to avoid it and, even though I saw it begin to take flight, I hit it with an awful thump and the poor thing went tumbling across a couple of lanes of the motorway, trailing feathers. I felt horrible. I don’t like harming animals, and to have killed one in this way, even though I couldn’t avoid it, made me feel very sad and guilty. This wasn’t a good start to the day, and most definitely not a good start for the unfortunate pigeon.
After a somewhat subdued but uneventful remainder of the journey, I arrived at my destination. As with many towns that grew during the industrial revolution, there are a large number of old mills and factory buildings. Although most have now been repurposed for things like accommodation, office space, and retail use, they are still impressive and interesting structures, and there were plenty of things to photograph. Added to the buildings, there is a network of high overpasses in the area that curve above the valley floor like something out of Mega City One, making for a bunch more interesting photo opportunities. The weather wasn’t as I had expected (sunshine and clouds), instead being largely overcast, but I think these conditions probably suited the black and white photography I was doing.
After shooting a couple of rolls of film I decided to go find a cafe and get a drink and, as I was walking through the town centre, I noticed a police car besides which an agitated looking man and woman was speaking to the officer and gesturing to the building behind them – a jewelry shop occupied the ground floor, and above were another three floors of unknown use. I heard to woman talk about a fire, and what sounded like there being a gas cylinder in the room. Within a minute smoke had begun to emerge from a first floor window. More police arrived and started to make people retreat from the scene, saying there was a danger of explosion. Some people were still approaching the scene and were told in no uncertain terms to “get back!”.
Soon a huge amount of smoke began to emerge from the windows, reeking of whatever was burning in there, for a short period reducing visibility down the entire street, and the orange glow of flickering flames could be seen behind the smoky glass. Shortly afterwards a fire-engine turned up and soon a fireman was spraying water through the first floor windows. After a few minutes of this, the smoke started to diminish and more fire-officers entered the jewelry shop on the ground floor, having to rip open a security shutter to gain access. After watching for a while longer (and having taken a few photographs) it seemed like everything was under control and I decided to move on and find the cafe I was looking for.
Luckily, this was the extend on the bad event that happened during the trip (although I’d have preferred it had none of them occurred).
There was something good that happened on the way home though…
Rather than take the quickest route back, I decided to take a more circuitous way on the hope that I’d find something interesting to photograph with the two remaining shots on the roll of film in my camera. After ignoring the demands of Google Maps and instead taking random diversions that looked like they might lead somewhere interesting (or at least somewhere I’d never been before) I, by chance, arrived at Castle Hill just outside Huddersfield, Castle Hill is the site of a Bronze Age hill fort, but more prominently, the 100ft tall Victoria Tower. I’ve seen the tower from afar before, but never been close to it, and today I was able to not only photograph it, but also climb to the top (or as high as you’re allowed to go at least).
The pictures from today will appear here in due course once I’ve developed and scanned them all. Loads of stuff still to come before then though.
Anyway, in lieu of those, here are some completely unrelated pictures of the rocky coastline at Lloret de Mar…
Olympus Trip 35 & Kodak Pro Image 100. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Steel City Snapper photography 