Bits and pieces, news, views, reviews and stuff
Every day during 2020 I took a photograph and posted it to Instagram and this blog.
I have done a photo a day before in 2012, 2014 and 2016. I did try in 2018 but i has a few technical issues so stopped after a few weeks.
You can click the thumbnails for a larger version of each image.
This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart.
I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. The first instance of this that I noticed was in May 2019 when I went to Manchester.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart!
The Edinburgh Tram started running in May 2014.
Though in the early 2000s I travelled to Edinburgh a fair bit, by the 2010s I had stopped travelling up there. In the 2000s I would catch the bus from the airport to the centre.
On the 1st December 2014 I made a trip to Edinburgh for a conference, it my first opportunity to travel on the then new tram. I took a photograph from the Airport Tram stop down the line.
Of course you take a photograph and then think nothing of it.
Five years later I am heading off to Edinburgh once more, I hadn’t been to Edinburgh in the intervening period, though I had been to Glasgow a fair few times. Arriving at Edinburgh Airport and heading towards Haymarket the obvious thing was to take the Tram. Waiting at the stop I decided to take a photograph….
Not quite the same photograph, but pretty close.
I was back in Edinburgh in November 2019 as well, but didn’t take a photograph of the Tram stop.
This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart.
I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. The first instance of this that I noticed was in May 2019 when I went to Manchester.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart! This photo though was a chance find. It was down to Amazon Photos, which I use as a photo back up.
There is a tree in our back garden that at one point had a supporting post. The tree started to grow around the post. Back in November I took this photograph as part of my photo a day series.
What I didn’t remember, until I was reminded by Amazon Photos that I taken a very similar shot three years ago in December 2017.
Comparing the two, over the last three years the tree has grown around the post more and more.
In July 2005 we went up in the air on a tethered helium balloon in Castle Park in Bristol.
This was before Cabot Circus and the Quakers Friar redevelopment.
Broadmead was less tired than it is now.
Quakers Friar was a car park.
We now have the Castle Bridge crossing the water and much of the old brewery has now been developed.
Though John Lewis had gone to Cribbs, what is now Primark was House of Fraser back in 2005.
This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart.
I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. The first instance of this that I noticed was in May 2019 when I went to Manchester.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart!
The Clifton Suspension Bridge is an iconic image of Bristol, however these photographs were taken from the southern end of the bridge looking down the Avon Gorge.
This was the shot I took back in August 2006.
This is the same view nine years later in August 2015
Then there is another shot of the same view, taken in August 2018.
This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart.
I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. The first instance of this that I noticed was in May 2019 when I went to Manchester.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart!
This view was taken in October 2014.
This was on our most recent visit to Ashton Court in September 2020.
Six years apart and pretty much the same view!
I was there in June 2017 as well and took this very similar shot.
Ashton Court is a mansion house and estate to the west of Bristol in England. Although the estate lies mainly in North Somerset, it is owned by the City of Bristol.
This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart.
I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. The first instance of this that I noticed was in May 2019 when I went to Manchester.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart!
Living in Weston-super-Mare and visiting the seafront on a regular basis, to be honest I am not too surprised that over the years I have taken photographs of the same place from (roughly) the same perspective. One place I seem to photograph a lot from the same viewpoint is Knightstone Island.
Knightstone Island was originally an island but was then joined with the mainland. Up until the late 1800s the island was in private hands, but was then acquired by the local council who enlarged the island by building a new retaining wall on the north eastern side. The council also built a new swimming pool and a Pavilion, which both opened in May 1902.
The Pavilion included refreshment rooms, a reading room, a billiard room and a theatre. It had electric lighting and a hot water heating system. Seawater was used in the swimming pool. Band concerts, plays, operas and other shows were performed at the Knightstone Pavilion, films were also shown. However the size of the complex restricted the audience numbers so the site was unable to have big shows or names performing. By the 1970s Knightstone Pavilion was struggling financially and it finally closed in 1991. There were plans to convert the site into a leisure complex but these never came to fruition and the buildings gradually deteriorated.
This is a view of the island from near the Grand Pier in September 2005.
In 2007 the whole island has been redeveloped. The Bath House and front section of the ground floor of the Pavilion were converted into commercial premises. The rest of the Pavilion and the swimming pool were converted into homes and two new apartment blocks were built on the island.
Here is the view in December 2009. You can see the redevelopment on the site. Seeing snow on the beach is always quite a unique view.
This is the (slightly different) view in June 2011.
The same view in May 2018
Another more recent view in January 2019.
This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart.
I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
I always think I should give them a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. The first instance of this that I noticed was in May 2019 when I went to Manchester.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart!
On the beach at Sand Bay is an old second world war pillbox. It looks like it has sunk into the sand, I am not sure if it has just sunk, or of it had slipped down the beach over the years.
This was the view in April 2017
Here is the (same) view in June 2020.
There appears to be an extra telegraph pole that was installed in the intervening three years.
Even I was a little surprised to see that I had taken two photographs each time of the bunker.
This was another view in April 2017
Here is the (same) view in June 2020.
I do think it interesting that there are quite a few pillboxes and beach defences at Sand Bay. You wouldn’t have thought that this coastline was under threat of German invasion back in the 1940s. It’s quite a way from the continent and you would need to go around both Devon and Cornwall (going past Plymouth, a major Royal Navy port), as well as South Wales before hitting the beaches at Weston and Sandy Bay. However doing some research about the pillboxes, I came to realise that the British in 1940 did believe that invasion may come from the South West. The Taunton Stop Line was a defensive line in south west England. It was designed “to stop an enemy’s advance from the west and in particular a rapid advance supported by tanks which may have broken through the forward defences.
I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook.
I always think I should give them a go, though often my attempts use screen grabs from Google Street View as was the case with these old photographs of Trenchard Street.
However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart.
The first instance of this that came to my attention was last year in May when I went to Manchester. I was staying in a hotel close to MediaCity, so caught the Metrolinktram into the centre of the city. I arrived in St Peter’s Square and decided to take a few photographs, including this one of a council building.
I had recently been using Amazon Photos as an online backup service for my photographs. One of the nice features is that in the app it shows you photos from the same date in previous years So I was amused to find that two years ago to the day, not only had I being in Manchester, but I had also taken some photographs including this one the same council building I had taken.
It only really came to my attention that I was doing this a lot, when checking the Places function on the Apple Photos Mac App that I could see I had taken the same photograph of the same thing just years apart! So I decided I would do a series of blog posts about these photographs.
I started to realise that this week that when I fly I usually post a photograph to instagram of the plane I flew on. But not any old photo, usually I have taken it from a process using the Snapseed app.
This was the photo I took this week in Edinburgh.
Looking from my archives I found these other photographs on my Instagram feed. Continue reading “Airport photographs”