Graffiti

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An odd piece of graffiti... in the style of Banksy but stapling a drawing instead of using a stencil as a template. And what a subject <smile>... a Zenit E from way back when. A great camera in its day; my first SLR was a Zenit (upgraded from a Zorki 4, comrades!) in the late 1960's, which I eventually traded in for a Pentax Spotmatic at Jessops in Leicester. They were a tiny company then with just a couple of stores in Leicester.


This is one of the many derelict shops in Crewe and I might just change the theme of my project and photograph some more of the deserted premises.

Project Update: 'Times Past'

I've been out and about pursuing my little project and I was struck by the number of fairly old items scattered about the streets near home. As a result the project is tentatively entitled 'Times Past'. There's quite a number of things that date back to the 1940's and 50's if you look carefully and take note of your surroundings and I guess that as more and more development takes place such things will eventually disappear. Here's three images of things I particularly like...

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The faded writing on the wall of a public house and the old RAC road sign (is it the oldest one still in use, I wonder? I've not seen one like it anywhere else) were within 200 yards of each other. And no, that isn't my shop in the lower picture!


As always, comments are welcome...

Always Carry a Camera!

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It really does pay to always carry a camera with you... I was greeted with this line-up of Bentley's old and new outside the Bentley factory in Crewe when out for a stroll on a sunny summer day. You never know what you might see.

Storming North

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I grew up with steam trains... as a small boy my bedroom window overlooked a quite busy line and I was always fascinated by the sight and sound of a steam locomotive. In the late 1960's as the steam locomotive was phased out railway photography was radically changed from the sunlit front three-quarters view of a clean engine to a more realistic dirty, gritty, rainy one by the likes of Colin Gifford, Ian Krause and many others. They didn't go for pretty locations; the industrial north with its decaying buildings and lousy weather became the backdrop. And often the train was secondary to the location. I photographed many steam trains with my little Halina 120 camera during 1967 and to the end of July 1968. Sadly, the negatives were lost in various house moves.


Whenever it's possible I still get out and photograph steam trains. This is 71000 'Duke of Gloucester' at Coppenhall Moss just north of Crewe working very hard; I've treated this to a monochrome conversion, a severe crop and added some Giffordesque grain.


Two books that I can recommend are Gifford's 'Decline of Steam' and 'Each a Glimpse' and Ian Krause's 'Steam', which show how steam railway photography changed in the mid- to late-sixties.