Observation deck

The new observation centre at Gibraltar Point

Heads or tails?

Believe it or not this is where the car actually landed!

Back to the Wash

Yesterday, after 30 years I returned to The Wash (see original pic's here). The emerging issue of the day was global warming. Today, 'one' of the issues is plastic in the oceans. The amount of plastic present didn't seem huge however, on consideration I was never more than 10 feet from a plastic bottle on a 5 mile walk and the wash is about 90 square miles of tidal flats, that adds up to a lot of plastic.


What it should look like

New project

Recently, I unsuccessfully applied for a St Hugh's Arts award to document the Lincolnshire coast. Perhaps documenting the entire coast was a bit too wide ranging and difficult to a handle in a 100 word application or perhaps the application was rubbish.

So, I think I'm starting to form something a little more concise. Quite a lot of photographers have documented the seaside (Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones etc) but, they have mainly concentrated on people and sociological aspects. Rather than the voyeuristic (I know, all photographers are voyeurs) and class observations, I'm more fascinated by the architecture and visual paraphernalia. It's always been the thing for me ever since I was kid in the 1960's. There's a kind of attractive dishonest beauty about it. I'm thinking this the could be the way forward, here's a couple to start with...

Phenomenology

You may have noticed that I sometimes catch my own shadow in the picture. I'm not the first or last photographer to do this though we all probably have slightly different reasons for it. In my case one reason is technical and the other existential yeah, I know what you're thinking! In winter the sun is always low in the sky and I mostly use a wide angle lens so, it's sometimes inevitable. The other reason is that any form of qualitative research or inquiry (in this case documentary photography) is by it's nature phenomenological. As soon as you look through a view finder, the choices you make become a part of the images so, I often like to leave myself in there as a bit of fun. Here's a few from the archive...

Steeltown

Fact-time folks! The steel industry at Scunthorpe was established around 1860 because of the local availability of iron ore, limonite (bog ore) and limestone. Scunthorpe itself was developed as a steeltown to service the growing industry. The plant itself is huge approximately 7 miles in circumference and 3 miles end to end.

To photograph it in its entirety is not really practical so, I have made it incidental and concentrated on a less seen aspect...


Opencast mine at the side of the works

Open cast mine, I'm guessing it's a sand deposit. I like the way they avoided the trees.

Nature finding a way. Actually having extensively photographed the landscape surrounding Llanwern Steelworks I again found it strange that this is where you see more wildlife than in most parts of the countryside. It's probably due to disruption and creation new habitat and that the landscape is mostly devoid of people due to its unsightliness and the blanket of low level noise from the works.