parisi udvar
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 15 May 2024].
In May 2012, visiting Budapest with my parents, we ventured from our hotel for our first full day in the city.
Just on our doorstep was this beauty, containing the Parisi Udvar arcade, though its full beauty hadn't yet revealed itself when I started photographing the building's exterior.
I'll write a piece about it and our experience when I share the second of three instalments of photographs.
jesus and jules
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 14 May 2024].
darkened windows
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 8 May 2024].
These are the first and penultimate photos I took with my D700 when visiting Margate with friends in September 2016 (in reverse order).
A building near Dreamland that I imagine is long gone almost eight years later.
Abandoned and/or derelict buildings almost always catch my eye. They're so photogenic.
radio city 96.7
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 2 May 2024].
I visited Liverpool from Sunday to Tuesday to support an event for my day job on Sunday and Monday.
I took advantage of my day off in lieu earned through that to stay an extra day in the city to see more of it.
The one time I visited the city for an extended period was on New Year's Eve 1999 for Cream 2000.
However, my time there during that visit was predominantly spent in a tent designed to accommodate 26,000 ravers, where the focus was music, dancing and welcoming in the new millennium, not the city itself.
I wrote a short piece about that visit on my Instagram earlier in the week when I posted a photo of Pier Head I took with my phone camera on Tuesday during my two-ish hour photo walk.
I snuck a short photowalk in on Sunday evening en route to get supplies from a supermarket. But, both that walk and the one on Tuesday predominantly focused on the waterfront area, with my walk on Tuesday extending into Matthew Street (where The Cavern Club is) and up to Lime Street, from where I caught the train back to London.
Unfortunately, due to the weight of my rucksack, I didn't manage to revisit places I'd passed that caught my eye en route to my accommodation on Sunday with my D700.
I could have left my bag behind reception in my accommodation after checkout and returned for it. But the hotel was about a 23-minute walk from the station, so it would have involved me walking there and back to retrieve it on top of my photo walk when my intended route took me close to the station anyway.
Liverpool is, understandably, littered with tributes to the Fab Four, The Beatles. And, while I have some photos from my visit that relate to them that I'm pleased with and will share in future, I wanted to avoid the Liverpool cliches for my first post of one of my D700 photos from the city.
So, instead, here's a music-related photograph of St Johns Beacon, the former revolving restaurant that became the home of Radio City 96.7 in July 2000.
Radio City's stations rebranded to Hits Radio on my birthday this year. Unfortunately, they've announced they'll rebrand the tower with their new logo, which I don't think will work as well on a structure of that era, so I'm glad I captured it when I did.
I hope to arrange to sit Sir Peter and his peacock friends in Delamere again for a longer stretch. If I can, I'll take advantage of the proximity to pop over to Liverpool again for a day or two or three to explore more of the city with my camera and to visit Tate Liverpool, the Open Eye Gallery, the various museums along the waterfront and more.
prunus cerasifera
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 1 March 2024].
Some Prunus cerasifera flowers I captured last Saturday during a solo photo walk in Hitchin.
Spring is coming.
west lane baptist church
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 24 February 2024].
cafe inside
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 9 February 2024].
hands clasped
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 9 February 2024].
a nice pear
looking up, going down
the fitzwilliam museum
a matter of opinion
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 28 December 2023].
off-duty umbrellas
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 12 December 2023].
east briscoe
butchery
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 29 November 2023].
When travelling, my camera is probably pointed equally at the sublime and the mundane. Whatever catches my eye.
In this case, a former butchery in West Ulverstone, Tasmania, caught my eye as Victoria drove me from our delicious brunch at Hey Buddy to West Ulverstone beach for a wander (albeit relatively brief as the weather turned wet and windy soon after).
We'd only driven about 160m when the shopfront caught my eye, and I asked Victoria to stop so I could take some photos.
I can't explain why I was drawn to it. Maybe it was the eggshell blue tiles. Maybe it was the faded signage. Maybe a combination of the two.
I don't recall if I registered the logo design fully in the moment, but that is definitely a reason I should have been drawn to it. I've included a crop of the detail of the logo (albeit not the best quality at that size) to explain why it was 100% worth stopping, in my opinion.
looking north (from henley bridge)
the heart of the birmingham waterways
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 10 November 2023].
Phil - my friend and fellow photographer - and I have been plotting and planning a photo walk along the Birmingham canals for the last two summers. For various reasons, we didn't manage it.
We came close in mid-June last year, but the day I'd booked a train to head up there, rain was forecast, so we cancelled the day before. The forecast showed heavy rain on the day, so we'd made a good call.
But last weekend, we finally made good on our plans.
We coordinated to meet on the train at Warwick Parkway at about 10:43. However, that meant me waking at 06:00, getting out of bed at 06:30 and leaving my flat at 07:30. I arrived at Marylebone Station at 08:10, about 50 minutes before my train was due to depart, which was even earlier than I'd been aiming for.
We set out from Birmingham Moor Street at about 11:20 and walked along the canals from Livery Street Bridge to Spaghetti Junction (the M6/A38 junction), finishing shooting under the bridges at about 15:00.
We walked back to Aston Station, arriving there in time to get out of the rain that had just started and to catch the train back to Birmingham New Street to seek out some food for Phil and a pint for me.
Despite the rain at the tail end of the walk, we had perfect weather and a pleasant and creative day. Phil had technical issues with his camera but managed to work around them to a large extent. I had a minor anxiety attack in the last half hour, heading back from Spaghetti Junction to Aston Station, but it was an otherwise stress-free day as far as my body was concerned.
I shared my iPhone photos from the day on my Instagram on the day and over the following days.
These are just two of the over 300 photographs I took with my D700 in Birmingham.
Thanks to Phil for suggesting the walk and the wide-ranging and engaging conversation throughout.
We'll return in the spring (hopefully!) with some other friends of Phil's to revisit Spaghetti Junction and complete the ambitious circuit he'd set out for us that we didn't manage on Sunday.
shot through the heart
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 27 October 2023].
rocket [the bell tower, barrack square, perth, australia, 2023]
rocket
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 8 August 2023].
If you're an Australian of a particular vintage (specifically, Generation X or Baby Boomer), I challenge you to tell me you're not thinking of Mr Squiggle's 'Rocket' while looking at my photo of Perth's Bell Tower at Elizabeth Quay.
I took this while on a whistle-stop tour of Perth with Rhys, one of my cousins.
While Kings Park was quite familiar to me, including the vista from the war memorial (which I had captured on at least one previous visit), the view had markedly changed in the roughly 20-30 years since I'd last photographed it.
This building and other high rises have since populated (and are still adding to) the skyline on Elizabeth Quay.
Although the architecture is vastly different: The Bell Tower is on a river, while the National Carillon is on an island in a manmade lake, and they are on almost direct opposite sides of the big, brown land we call Australia, I couldn't help but think of the near-annual visits my brothers and I took with my Granddad to the National Carillon on Queen Elizabeth II Island in Lake Burley Griffin as kids when confronted with The Bell Tower.
Perth was the city my grandparents moved to after decades lived in Canberra, and it was while visiting them in late high school that I first saw Perth.
I still feel I've only scratched the surface of Perth after about four visits, but there's something comforting about the same-same-but-different elements of the city to Canberra.
I'm sure that if my brothers, cousins and I were kids now and my grandparents were still alive and living in Perth, my Granddad would take us to The Bell Tower annually.