King Edward VII Recreation Ground
My brother and me in King Edward's Recreation Ground, Willesden. Years later, I did a painting of this place.
New camera
I just bought a camera and this post is simply marking that fact, with the first (published) photo taken with it.
We built sandcastles that washed away
We built sand castles that washed away, I made you cry when I walked away…
Smoking woman
This photograph I took in Tooting from the top deck of a bus in 2015 is getting a lot of views in my Flickr account.
It is of a woman having a cigarette in an alley just off Mitcham Road, by Tooting Broadway. She appears to be pregnant, is what it is, I think.
Buildings in London that are gone now
Change is good, generally. It keeps us from stagnating. The challenge of new ideas and new ways of doing things is good for our brains and drives adaptation and innovation. It underpins our evolutionary development.
In London, despite many years of imposed austerity and economic and social decline for the general population, property developers continue to be busy, avariciously gambling on unsustainable future growth that fails to account for the exigencies of the pivotal era we live in, by which I mean, the Climate Emergency in particular, but also, the social policies that are disenfranchising the working population, the rise of nationalism and so on.
This (photo) reminds me of that (painting)
The photograph on the left is one I took of a decorative old water pump in the garden of Paycocke’s House, in Coggeshall, Essex in the summer. The painting on the right is one I painted in 1986 called The blue conduit…
It was a very good year: rural Hungary in 1985
After graduating from art college in 1985, I went to stay with my grandparents at their smallholding in southwest Hungary for a couple of months, from August to after the grape harvest in late September.
It was a summer of good food and drink, simple labour, reflection, and some loneliness.
Beaching the inshore lifeboat at Cromer, Norfolk
Wednesday 24 April. At about 7.50pm, I was watching the sun setting at Cromer in Norfolk when I saw the inshore lifeboat east of the pier. As I went down to the beach to get a closer look, the boat turned towards the shore.
Fly-tipped
A week ago, a truck fly-tipped a load of waste onto the little road I can see from the back of my house. They did this blatantly and in broad daylight on Saturday morning. Within a couple of minutes, they were gone.
What looked like general household waste was eventually revealed to be a large quantity of building crap - rubble, plaster, and other solid and heavy debris. I posted a photo on our local community forum. Various people thought they saw the truck but didn’t get the licence number. Others pitched in saying they thought the licence plate was either covered, removed or fake. Somebody managed to get a photo of the truck making its getaway.
Lockheed U-2
I took these photos of this awesome Cold War wraith at an airshow (probably Farnborough) many years ago. I developed and printed the images myself (at art college).
1960s slide of a barrage balloon
This is a photograph I’ve been wanting to see again for years and years. I only vaguely remembered this particular trip, to the point that I doubted that it had happened. I remembered a giant airship, and people jumping from it. I had no idea at the time what it was I was seeing.
The Little Chapel at Les Vauxbelets in Guernsey
This is a photo of the Little Chapel at Les Vauxbelets in Guernsey, taken in the late 1960s or early 70s. I only vaguely recall going to the island of Guernsey as a small child with my mother and brother. I think my dad stayed at home, so I'm not sure who took this photo, but it did end up in the family photo album.
Rudston Monolith
I was once driving back home from Bamburgh in Northumberland and came across the amazing site of a giant megalith in the churchyard of a Norman church. I had no idea why there was an enormous - obviously ancient - standing stone in such close proximity to a beautiful old church. I had to stop and have a closer look.
Nile turtle in the Dalyan River (video 1:29)
This Nile Turtle arrived for breakfast every morning at the Longhouse Inn Hotel by the riverside in Dalyan. It was fed on any leftover eggs (scrambled and boiled). Some establishments on the riverside lure the species with chicken skin in order to attract more customers, a practice which is in fact harmful to this secretive turtle which is unable to digest this food alien to its natural diet. I would imagine eggs aren't great for it to be eating every day either.
Photographs taken around Lulworth Cove and Durdle Door in 2011
This is an update to a post I originally wrote in 2011 when I took a trip to Dorset to visit the unique landscape of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site in Dorset, southern England.
Five recent black and white photographs
Five black and white photographs taken within the last year.
Paddington Station then and now
I took a photograph in Paddington Station a few days before coming across one taken from almost the same spot 35 years earlier, in 1982.
Highbury Station Road: changes over time
I happened to be meeting a friend for lunch outside Highbury and Islington Underground Station last Friday and had some time to kill, so I walked round the corner, where it was less busy, looking for something to photograph.
I remembered taking a picture years before in Highbury Station Road - when I was still new to photography and still thought HDR was the best thing ever. This is the photo I took then. I was deliberately aiming for a spooky, timeless feel.
Daily photo diary from Turkey, September 2014
These are the 17 photographs I uploaded to my daily photo diary on Blipfoto from my trip to Turkey in September 2014.