Ok, so the first photo obviously isn’t a mill! It’s King Alfred standing looking down on and up along the “Broadway”. It was decided in 1899 that a statue would be built to commemorate 1000 years since the death of Alfred. It was finished in 1901, and has been there ever since. He ruled from 849-899, the inscription reads: ‘Aelfred, To the Founder of the Kingdom and Nation’. Which is sort of true. Upon his death Edward the Elder (Alfred’s Son) became king, he was never able to quite unite the “Kingdom” either, so when his son, (Alfred’s Grandson) Athelstan became King it fell to him. He becam ..read more

Last October saw me walking the last part of this trek, and you can re-cap that here if you wish! Since then, we’ve had winter and the weather has been dull damp and wet. Parts of this track can be quite muddy and not much fun to walk, so I haven’t attempted more. Just recently, we’ve had a few reasonable days, so I’ve been back on it! If you haven’t been reading this from the start, I’m walking the Castleman Trail, a disused railway line, turned into footpath, mostly in Dorset, UK. I’ve been photographing with my Pentax Spotmatic, taking with me my 50mm and 35mm Takumar lenses, (hence Takuma ..read more

Silbury Hill (above) is the largest man made mound in Europe. It’s Neolithic and sits on the Wiltshire landscape. It dates from around 2700BC, and it is estimated that it may have taken 700 men 10 years to construct. Moving about 248,000 cubic metres of chalk and infill. When we think of the population of the time, both number of, and spare labour, it must be the Neolithic equivalent of putting man on the moon! Interestingly it was built on a lower point of the landscape, rather than close by higher areas, so it was clearly not meant to be a landmark. Neither was it a tomb. It was obviously i ..read more

I’ve been to the Hampshire town of Romsey many times. The Plaza Theatre there became a bingo hall, like most, but then in 1984 bucked the trend and became a theatre again. Romsey Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society (RAODS), now stage a dozen or so productions each year, but also hire the venue out for other functions. It was in this guise that I was involved in a film festival there. So I knew it intimately over 10 years or so – especially the projection box and the stage area. Despite that I never set foot in the rest of the town! So nearly 40 years later, this was my first sight of the to ..read more

Not that we as photographers need to put ourselves into groups or categories, but I think we naturally tend toward certain behaviours. At one end there is the “pro” who is all about the picture. The other end is the camera/equipment collector who rarely actually uses a film, but likes to collect and certainly talk about cameras. I once met a chap who collected light meters, and why not! Then of course there are stages between the two, the person who has one film camera, uses a few rolls a year and is quite happy with developing/printing/scanning from the local photo shop. Then there are the p ..read more

Last week I wrote a post about some of the historic buildings I photographed while I was in Southampton. Of course I also made some images of things that caught my eye, that were not historic. Most of the images in this post were taken at West Quay, a shopping mall opened in 2000. About 130 shops in 95,600 sq meters of space. I actually only popped in for a coffee and a cake, in, if I were in the states, would be called the food court. Good old HP5 plus did a good job in coping with shadows and highlights. I developed this roll in Ilfosol3 1+9 for 8.5 minutes, and got a good set of negs ..read more

Intro: I’m not one for trying odd film stocks that give weird results, I’m not knocking them, it’s just not for me. You know the sort of thing, out of date film that gives purple photo’s or “red scale” which I understand is just film loaded into the cassette the wrong way around so you shoot through the base of the film etc etc. Maybe for that reason I’ve never used a Lomography film before. I do realise that they sell films that give “normal” images, they’ve just been off my radar. When I heard that there was a regular black and white film that was 100 iso, that peaked my interest and I thou ..read more

After taking the ferry from Hythe, across Southampton Water to the city, I disembarked at the “town quay”. At the land end of the pier stands the impressive Edwardian “Harbour Board Building”. Once housing the board responsible from running the harbour, toady it is grade 2 listed, but used as a casino! Just as a note, about 500 meters away is Ocean Dock (Berth 44) where Titanic set sail on her maiden voyage. The actual bollards to which she was moored are still in place and are painted orange to denote them. The other side of the pier is home to Red Funnel Ferries. They take passengers acros ..read more

Last week I was on vacation from work. I didn’t go far, in fact I stayed in a holiday home about a half hour drive up the road! It meant that it was easy to get away, without fuss. I didn’t need to plan much. At the same time it was a change of scene and routine, and just far enough away that I did a few things that I perhaps may have not done from home. One of those was a long time plan to visit the small town of Hythe, on Southampton Water (not the one in Kent), visit it’s pier, railway and ferry. There has been a ferry service from the town, across to Southampton since the middle ages. Th ..read more

Much of what is seen today at Mottisfont, is the work and creation of Gilbert and Maud Russell, who brought the house in 1934 from the then owner. They both restored and changed the house. During the WWII Gilbert died and Maude moved to London to work for the admiralty. It is thought offering translation services. The house was requisitioned by the military, the long gallery became a place of convalescence for wounded. Children evacuated from London lived in the stable block and a local Iron Age hillfort was used as a lookout. In other words it has active history during WWII. It is perhaps ap ..read more