The latest in an occasional series on this blog — Abandoned Shoes, n+1. (A previous episode is here, for example.) As this one is waiting at the top of the subway that leads down and into King’s Cross station, perhaps it’s just trying to get home. I am reminded of a joke from an early series of Red Dwarf about “shoes having souls”.
This subway under Manchester Road in Rochdale is very neglected, a real hole in the ground. But with the sunshine pouring down from outside, it’s not unattractive.
I like Metros. Bucharest’s doesn’t have the grandeur and Art Deco sensibilities of the Moscow one, being more of a 1970s functionalist design, but it’s still got these long, open halls that are a great improvement over the rabbit warren that is the London Underground. I think I’ve got this shot pretty symmetrical, except of course for the TV screens, but those aren’t my fault.
Remarkably, this was my fifth railway station of the morning, by 10.15am, and I was to do another one before getting home — and I don’t just mean passing through, I mean getting out, and standing on a platform to get on some service or other. This wasn’t a Northern Fail moment, I was heading off early for a meeting but that got cancelled, I came home a different way, so be it.
This looks not unlike a photo I took nearly 10 months ago now of Simbach am Inn station in Germany, albeit without the trains and the cool Century Gothic font, but still, I like the way it separates the background into two disparate parts, but otherwise I think I have the symmetry and rule-of-thirds right.
We are getting longer platforms! And lifts to and from them, from the subway! It’s a miracle…. or will be, if we ever get the train service to match.
I just like the lines of redness, sliding down the stairs until they spill out into the kid’s coat.
This subway takes you from the Sussex campus under the A27 and to Falmer station — a route I took after my half-day’s work at the conference.
There is often beauty in unexpected places. This is all done with concrete, graffiti and strips of fluorescent light.
One of the criteria for choosing which pictures get onto this blog is whether one encapsulates the day on which it was taken. That is not true of this photo. I had a busy day today, visited my parents and then had a Saturday night out with Clare, in Blackpool – and one could do an entire photo essay on the subject of ‘a Saturday night in Blackpool’ (though I think it might be a job more fitting for a war correspondent than a humble amateur like myself). There was great light today, a beautiful high summer’s day, and I took plenty of photos I was happy with.
Nevertheless, this wins. If the art of photography is not about capturing moments, those coincidences of place and time which raise any experience above the mundane and everyday, then I feel happy with what I’ve done here. This place could not be less exotic really, just a tunnel I pass through at least two or three times a week when I am here in town. But this morning I loved the way the light was spilling down the steps and giving it a warm feeling. This photo is exactly what I wanted it to be when I took it, and that happens only occasionally.
Being 42 