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Then and Now Take Two Again – Canon’s Marsh Gasworks

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 of the Canon’s Marsh gasworks back in the mid 1990s whilst running a field trip down to the Bristol Harbourside. This was taken  with a Canon SLR on film and then scanned ten years later into a digital format.

On a recent walk on the other side of the river I took a photograph of the same scene with an iPhone 13.

The old gas works are now apartments and the gas tower was demolished and replaced with a new development.

Though not quite the same shot, this photograph from 2005 shows that ten years later the gas works building was still empty waiting to be developed.

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Star Wars The Phantom Menace

Went to see Star Wars The Phantom Menace at the weekend on the big screen at Cineworld in Weston. I did wonder if the cinema were slightly optimistic about the crowds, as they screened it on their biggest screen. There wasn’t that many people watching; though it was Sunday afternoon so that may explain the lack of audience.

It was a treat to see the film in the cinema, though I did go and see it 25 years ago in the cinema too. The age of the film shows, in some respects, with regard to the CGI, the shots of the planets in some places looked artificial, and the later films were much improved.

Yes, we know it’s not the best Star Wars film, there is quite a few people out there who really dislike the film (and all the prequel films), but as a cinematic experience it was nice watch. The pod racing really works well on the big screen, as does the star fighters attacking the droid control ship.

I did enjoy the experience. I wonder if they will do the same for the twentieth-fifth anniversaries of the next two films?

I also only realised that Brian Blessed was in the film this viewing, he plays Boss Nass, the leader of the Gungans.