Unusual atmospheric conditions in Manchester this morning: a weird dryness in the air; a bluish tint to the sky; and a glowing yellow orb up there, delivering a slightly warming light in a strangely nostalgic reminder of times past.
The run ends, as I finally get out somewhere, after 29 days spent only at home or in Manchester. One reason this happened was that the weather through November has been very poor and prevented me from getting up to the Lakes for a walk, but finally we had a decent day today and I managed to bag my last two Wainwrights — the story of which will be up later tonight on my other blog. This involved a long journey round to the other side of Cumbria, hence my presence at Carlisle station early this morning (well, it’s early if you have to get to Carlisle from Yorkshire, anyway).
If this shot illustrates anything it at least proves that I do occasionally get my lazy butt into Manchester before 9am in the morning. And that at such times there, the light can be very good.
Sometimes there’s plenty of good light in the day and things to see, but just no time to stop and take photographs (at least, not ones that are any good). Today was one of those days, so here’s me not making the most of it. I suppose this one isn’t bad, but lampposts never help a shot.
I have been re-reading Gerry Badger’s superb book, The Genius of Photography, a fascinating history of the medium. Last time I did this I went all social realist on this blog and decided I was taking away these commentaries and letting the images speak for themselves. This lasted about a week after I received a surprising number of complaints both directly and indirectly. So don’t worry, I’m not going to do that again.
But Badger’s book does always make me ask, just why am I doing this? What is it I’m trying to create? Is it art? Am I making a statement about the world? I think the answer has to be no, I’m not an artist. But what I am is a blogger, a diarist: I’ve kept a journal for over thirty years now (yes, every day), and this blog has become an extension of it into the visual medium, and also a public medium. I hope I create pictures that are aesthetically pleasing along the way — a body of photographic work if you like, after all, I take so many that some of them are going to be half decent. But just as important is the accumulated narrative. This blog depicts the world as I see it each day, no more, no less. No photos are posed or staged, and all light is what I have to work with on the spot. And that’s what I do.
I doubt it’ll make much impact on the history of photography or be noticed by Gerry Badger should he ever write a second edition of his book, but it gives me a sense of my own place in the world, and that’s what gives it value.
Another work trip to London, and as on the last occasion I did this (Feb 27th), the changeover at Leeds station proves far more photographically fruitful than the capital itself. I’m very happy with this picture — one of those occasions where not only did the shot turn out pretty much exactly as hoped, but I got it first go, too.
Taking shots in tolerably good morning light to pass the time waiting for my train in to Manchester, it was only later, after uploading, that I realised this chap ambling down the platform was my next-door neighbour Tom (who also works at the university). And so starts another week for both of us. But the mornings are getting lighter and this is never a bad time of year.
Two days in a row of pictures taken by the side of the canal. This dog barked in a kind of elderly fashion at me as I walked past this morning. Honour was satisfied, without troubling either side, but it still woke up the owner.
Today is the last of 66 days in a row for me in the UK, which I guess isn’t very long, but it is the second-longest UK-bound period of this blog. I was in Manchester today but the run ended with a damn fine — but cold — Hebden Bridge morning.
The Wirral — the peninsula on the other side of the Mersey from Liverpool — might not be the most glamorous place in the world but this is a spectacular debut on the blog. I am very pleased with this photo, it came out exactly as was intended when I took it, and that’s always a pleasing thing.
Being 42 