Category: photography

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Then and Now – Tredegar House Orangery and Stables

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.  The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester.

I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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.

I was visiting Tredegar House, a National Trust property close to Newport. While I was there I took a range of photographs. Checking the date of my previous visit, I wasn’t too surprised to see some similar photographs.

I took this photograph in August 2016 of the Tredegar House Orangery and Stables with an iPhone 6s Plus.

This photograph was taken in March 2025 with a Canon EOS R100.

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Then and Now Take Two Again – Statue of Johan Ludvig Runeberg

his is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.

I visited Finland for a conference in Espoo back in July 2006. I had some time before my flight home, so took a bus to visit the centre of Helsinki.

Johan Ludvig Runeberg was a Finnish priest, lyric and epic poet. He wrote exclusively in Swedish. He is considered a national poet of Finland.

I took this photograph in July 2006 with a Sony DSC-P200 digital camera.

I took a similar photograph in February 2025 with a Canon EOS R100.

I was back in Helsinki for a workshop, so took the time to retake the photo. Not too much has changed over the last nineteen years, though the fact one was taken in summer and the other in winter.

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Then and Now – Chepstow Castle

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.  The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester.

I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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.

I was looking at some old photographs from a couple of visits to Chepstow Castle. Not too surprising I found I had taken similar photographs of the castle.

This photograph was taken in August 2009 with a Canon EOS 400D.

Chepstow Castle

I took a very similar photograph four years later, in August 2013, again with the same Canon EOS 400D.

Not quite the same angle, but close enough.

I also took this photograph of the castle grounds in August 2009 with a Canon EOS 400D.

Chepstow Castle

I did a similar shot four years later.

Chepstow Castle is the oldest surviving post-Roman stone fortification in Britain. Construction began in 1067, just after the Norman conquest by the Norman Lord William FitzOsbern.

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Then and Now – Barrington Court

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.  The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester.

I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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.

I recently visited Barrington Court and took this photograph of the house with a Canon EOS R100.

Going through my photographs from a visit in March 2017 I had taken a similar photograph with an iPhone 6S plus.

To be honest not too surprising, as if you were going to take a photograph of this side of the house you would take it from roughly the same location to get all the building into shot.

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Then and Now – Elmdale, Chepstow

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.  The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester.

I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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.

Elmdale is on the Gloucestershire side of the River Wye in Chepstow.  I visited Chepstow Castle a few times ten or so years ago. It happened to appear in a memories album on Apple Photos and checking other photographs of two different visits to Chepstow I realised I had unintentionally taken the same photograph.

I took this photograph from the ramparts of Chepstow Castle over the River Wye in August 2009 using a Canon EOS 400D DSLR.

This photograph was taken four years later in August 2013 using the same Canon EOS 400D DSLR.

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Then and Now Take Two Again – Wells High Street

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.

I took this photograph in Wells in August 2002.

It was taken with a Sony Cybershot. On a recent return visit to Wells in January 2025 I decided I would attempt to take this photograph again using my iPhone 13.

Not quite the same angle (and I did need to crop the image).

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Then and Now Take Two Once More – Bristol Airport

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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 o ar perspective years apart. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.

Over the years I have taken this view at Bristol Airport quite a few times, both unintentionally and now intentionally.

I was flying to Dublin in October 2024, so I took my usual photograph.

Not quite the same view as there was scaffolding in the way and it was raining.

I was flying to Glasgow in November 2023, so I took my usual photograph.

I was flying to Amsterdam in October 2023 so I took a photograph from the window next to the balcony at the departures lounge. The balcony itself was closed, it was rather foggy.

Bristol Airport

When travelling from Bristol Airport in August 2023 I took this photograph from the balcony at the departures lounge.

View of an airport

When I was at Bristol Airport on the 14th November 2022, I intentionally took a photograph from the same vantage point.

I had taken a similar picture in February 2017.

I took this view of Bristol Airport from the departures lounge on an early morning in August 2016.

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Then and Now Take Two Again – Wells Market Place

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.

I took this photograph in Wells in August 2002.

It was taken with a Sony Cybershot. On a recent return visit to Wells in January 2025 I decided I would attempt to take this photograph again using my iPhone 13.

Not quite the same angle (and I did need to crop the image). In addition where as before there were cars parked, on the day I went there was a market (and a lot more people).

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Then and Now Take Two Again – Sand Bay Bunker

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.

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.

I have taken many photographs of the bunker. This was taken in September 2024 using an iPhone 13.

This is the bunker in October 2023, which I took with an iPhone 13 intentionally.

I realised checking my photo collection that I had also taken the same photo (probably intentionally) in April 2021 with an iPhone 8.

Here is the (same) view in June 2020 taken with an iPhone 8.

This was the view in April 2017 taken with an iPhone 6S Plus.

There appears to be an extra telegraph pole in the 2020 photo, that was installed in the intervening  three years.

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.

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Then and Now – The View from Crook Peak

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.  The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester.

I always thought I should give then and now photographs 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.

I took this photograph in June 2024.

Crook Peak

I took pretty much the same photograph the year before in June 2023.

Crook Peak

Both were taken with an iPhone 13.