Well, I did say a few days back that there were likely to be a lot of Manchester urban scenes over the next few weeks, as that’s where I’ll be spending most of my time. Got to work now and again, I suppose. It’s an attractive enough city, at least, the bits I walk through are.
As I’ve been saying for some years now it’s hard to point a camera anywhere in Manchester and not have a decent chance of capturing a building site. This particular one is being initiated by my employers at the University as the final piece (for now) in the “£1bn Campus Masterplan” as we must learn to call it. A massive new engineering building will rise here over the next couple of years, unless the whole economy tanks in the mean time of course. Which does not look as distant a project as it did a year ago.
The first snow comes to Hebden Bridge only 194 days, or 6 months and 10 days, after the last snow (29th April).
Winter is coming… In more ways than one, I fear.
This weeping willow stands at one end of the 16th century bridge over the Hebden Water after which my home town is named (viz, Hebden Bridge). It has featured in the background or periphery of several photos before, but today I make it the prime subject, thanks to the late night street lighting and the sleet which was barrelling out of a damp grey sky on the way home (see tomorrow’s picture…).
To prove I occasionally still — but only occasionally — have nights out, this is the latest shot in any given night out since my 3am aberration on 9th Jan 2016, and the latest shot in a calendar day since, embarrassingly perhaps, 15th November 2014.
Apologies for the delay in posting. Mac fell into a coma on Monday morning. But some TLC from the Genius Bar has restored it to full health. Back on Monday, it was another lovely day in Manchester. Here’s the relatively monumental Sam Alex building (as most people on campus call it), named after a former professor of Philosophy at this august institution. I like the rim-lit shadowy figure to the right.
Of course, it’s around this time of year that it becomes not only easier, but more obligatory, to take photos in the hours of darkness — because there’s just that much more darkness around. On top of that today was a day spent mostly working at home (yes, I know it’s Sunday, but I’m busy)… so not much opportunity for anything exciting. I like this shot because it’s sharp, not always easy without using a flash, and the general gold-and-black colour scheme.
“This is my church. This is where I heal my hurts.” (Faithless: God is a DJ)
Looked to the left between Littleborough and Smithy Bridge stations, on my train commute into Manchester, and went into a sudden spasm of photographic ecstasy. Definitely one of the better pictures I have ever taken from a train moving at full speed.
Another shot of Manchester’s slowly developing transport infrastructure — but I’m in Manchester a lot this month, so get used to it. Anyway, I like this one, particularly as I didn’t have to crop it at all, so got the symmetry just right when the shutter was pressed. A kind of ‘played for and got’ moment.
Sometimes things can improve. When I first started work at the University of Manchester in 2005 the campus was split in half by this traffic-choked urban throughway, one of the main A-roads of the whole country. It was really rather dismal. Slowly, by incremental steps, it has markedly improved, with most traffic now directed around the sides of the campus. The latest round of roadworks have now mostly gone and it is so much better than it was 11 years ago.
And another thing — there have been many reasons to be unhappy with 2016 in a global sense — but the UK’s autumn weather has not been one of them. Since mid-August it has mostly been tremendous. Same again today, for sure, a glorious autumn day.
