Category: photography

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Then and Now – St Pancras Railway Station

St Pancras Railway Station

I took this photograph of St Pancras Railway Station in March 2019 from an office building across from the station.

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!

Back in August 2007 I took this photograph of St Pancras Railway Station.

St Pancras Railway Station

At the time the station was undergoing an £800 million refurbishment to become the terminal for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link as part of an urban regeneration plan across East London.

London St Pancras International, is a central London railway terminus on Euston Road in the London Borough of Camden. It is the terminus for Eurostar services from Belgium, France and the Netherlands to London. It provides East Midlands Railway services to Leicester, Corby, Derby, Sheffield and Nottingham on the Midland Main Line, Southeastern high-speed trains to Kent via Ebbsfleet International and Ashford International, and Thameslink cross-London services to Bedford, Cambridge, Peterborough, Brighton and Gatwick Airport. It stands between the British Library, the Regent’s Canal and London King’s Cross railway station, with which it shares a London Underground station, King’s Cross St Pancras.

This is the (similar) view of the station which I photographed in June 2016.

Two years later I was back and took a similar shot in September 2018.

This time I was actually catching a train from St Pancras to Paris (and then onto Brest) for a conference presentation.

I was back at St Pancras in August 2021, however I took a photograph from a different perspective.

St Pancras Railway Station

Close by to St Pancras is Kings Cross Railway Station.

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Then and Now Take Two – Snowing in Weston Village

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 published back in February some photos of Weston Village in the snow, so when I was there recently I decided to (intentionally) take a similar photograph and add it to the photographs I had taken there before. This time no snow, just some spring sunshine from April 2020.

Weston Village

However the following photographs were intentionally taken from the same location. I have over the years (when we had snow) taken a particular photograph so here is the 2018 version.

This with the wind and the cold was actually some of the worst weather I have seen down here, but as you can see it doesn’t look too bad…

This was how it looked in December 2010. Back then we had very heavy snow.

This was how it looked in eleven months earlier in January 2010,  again heavy snow.

And here it is in February 2009. At this time this was some of the worst weather we had seen in twenty years. This was taken from the other side of the fence.

 

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Then and Now – Clevedon Pier

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 came to my attention was last year in May 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!

I had taken some similar photographs in Clevedon, which you can see in this blog post.

Clevedon Pier is a seaside pier in the town of Clevedon, North Somerset, England on the east shore of the Severn Estuary. It was described by Sir John Betjeman, as “the most beautiful pier in England”. The pier opened in 1869 and served as an embarkation point for paddle steamer excursions for almost exactly 100 years. Two of the spans collapsed during stress testing in 1970 and demolition was proposed, but local fund raising and heritage grants allowed the pier to be dismantled for restoration and reassembled. It reopened in 1989, the pier now, once again, offers a landing stage for steamers and is a popular attraction for tourists and anglers.

I took this photograph of Clevedon Pier in May 2005.

In July 2014 I took these photographs of the pier.

Not quite the same view, but very close.

In February 2016 I took this photograph.

We were back in Clevedon in June 2017 and this was the photograph I took of the pier.

February 2018 saw me take this photograph.

In July 2019 I took another very similar photograph, this time much closer to the pier though.

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Then and Now Take Two – Moor Lane

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 published back in March some photos of Moor Lane, so when I was there recently I decided to (intentionally) take a similar photograph and add it to the photographs I had taken there before. This time no snow, just some spring sunshine.

Moor Lane

My other photographs of Moor Lane though did contain some intentional similar shots. The first of which was taken in January 2010 when we had some of the worst snow for forty years. I had woken up to a deep blanket of snow on the ground, so myself and my son got all wrapped up and headed off to Morrisons to do some panic buying of milk and bread (as advised by the BBC, well I think that was what they were saying. I saw this view of Moor Lane in the snow and it reminded me so much of how I pictured Narnia.

This was taken with a Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera which at the time was pretty good on taking photographs and video.

We had snow again in December 2010, so I took a similar photograph. Though we had snow by the time I got to Moor Lane a lot of it had melted and turned to slush.

In March 2012 the sun was out, and no snow.

We had snow again in January 2013, so yes, I took the same photo.

In 2016 the Moor Lane Bridge was closed to traffic for six months and then permanently closed to traffic. This has obviously had an impact of traffic on this stretch of road.

In March 2018 we had the Beast from the East and so I took a similar photograph again of Moor Lane.

So there is a distinct snow theme with these photographs, which is one of the reasons I took a new photograph of Moor Lane in the sun.

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Then and Now – Clevedon

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 came to my attention was last year in May 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!

Clevedon is a small seaside town in North Somerset.

I took this photograph of Clevedon and its pier in May 2005.

Eight years late in June 2013 I took this photograph of near enough the same view.

And in May 2021 I took another very similar photograph.

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Thinking about photography

Realising that I am taking less photographs this year compared to last year. In the main as I am exercising less compared to lockdown last year, but also I am not doing the photo a day that I did last year. Might make more of an effort to take more photographs for the rest of the year.

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Ashton Court

Back in December I posted a blog post in my Then and Now series on Ashton Court. I had over the years taken various photographs of Ashton Court from the basically the same location and perspective.

It probably wouldn’t surprise you that recently going through some old photograh prints (as in photographs taken with film and developed) I found this photograph of Ashton Court I had taken in the late 1990s

Though not quite the same perspective and location, it’s pretty close. Back then cars were allowed quite a way into the park to park (there were no meters back then either). You can also tell the age of this photograph from the age of the cars in the shot.

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Then and Now – Trinity Lane, Cambridge

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!

I grew up in Cambridge, but moved away when I went to university in York. I remember rarely visiting the University of Cambridge as a youngster, why would I? However I did do some specialist maths classes at Trinity College, so would walk down Trinity Lane.

When I was at a JISC RSC Eastern event in Cambridge back in 2009 I did take the time the day before to walk around the town and took this photograph of Trinity Lane in March 2009.

It was taken in the early evening with a Sony DSC-W53 camera, which to be honest struggled with the low light conditions.

I stayed over in Cambridge back in January 2020 and as on previous visits I had a walk around the city before heading to my hotel. I took this photograph of Trinity Lane. I hadn’t recalled I had take a similar photograph already, and it was only when reviewing some photographs that I recalled that I had taken two very similar photographs of Trinity Lane.

I took this with an iPhone 8 in late afternoon I did edit and enhance the image with Snapseed, but the iPhone was able to deal with the low light  conditions so much better.

 

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Then and Now – Moor Lane

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 series of photographs of Moor Lane though did contain some intentional similar shots. The first of which was taken in January 2010 when we had some of the worst snow for forty years. I had woken up to a deep blanket of snow on the ground, so myself and my son got all wrapped up and headed off to Morrisons to do some panic buying of milk and bread (as advised by the BBC, well I think that was what they were saying. I saw this view of Moor Lane in the snow and it reminded me so much of how I pictured Narnia.

This was taken with a Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video Camera which at the time was pretty good on taking photographs and video.

Back in the 1990s I use to drive down Moor Lane in attempts to avoid traffic getting out of Weston. However by the late 1990s Moor Lane was the heart of a new housing estate, which we moved to in late 2000. They turned it from a road into a footpath, however this section of Moor Lane is still available to vehicles.

We had snow again in December 2010, so I took a similar photograph. Though we had snow by the time I got to Moor Lane a lot of it had melted and turned to slush.

In March 2012 the sun was out, and no snow.

We had snow again in January 2013, so yes, I took the same photo.

In 2016 the Moor Lane Bridge was closed to traffic for six months and then permanently closed to traffic. This has obviously had an impact of traffic on this stretch of road.

In March 2018 we had the Beast from the East and so I took a similar photograph again of Moor Lane.

So there is a distinct snow theme with these photographs.