Norwich Cathedral

I've just made a couple of visits to Norwich Cathedral to take some photographs for the Guardian Camera Club's August assignment - religious buildings and iconogrpahy. It made me realise just what a marvellous building this is, and that I have never really looked at in detail, and certainly not from a photographer's perspective either. I've taken quite a few shots that I'm happy with - in fact it will be hard to choose just six to post on the web site. I will include a few of them in this post. It was great to be there at different times of day, and see how the changing light offers different possibilities - sometimes a shaft of sunlight would pick out a feature of the architecture, but in a few moments it could be gone. Interesting how the little details appealed to me the most - the hymn books, prayer cushions, notices and so forth - maybe I was looking for something a little different.

Norwich HEART has a competition running till the end of October on the theme of Norwich's medieval churches, so it looks like I will be really busy over the next few weeks getting to grips with the local churches and their various uses - a good follow-on to the Cathedral project.

I came out of the first week of my photography course at the Norwich Arts Centre on the 1st of September and wandered into the nearby St Laurence church, which is usually closed, but currently has a display of fashion and textiles. It's a lovely light and airy church and I decided to take some pictures, some of which may well feature in a September post.

Hemsby meteorological station

I became intrigued a few weeks ago by the disused meteorological station between Hemsby and Ormesby St Margaret in Norfolk. It's certainly in a very sorry state, and I would love to have discovered it a few years ago. Information is hard to come by, but I think it closed around eight years ago. In any event, we took quite a few photographs there and here are some of them.

There is an earlier phoograph of the site, taken from the entrance gate, on Geograph:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/521621

Photography blogs

I've recently discovered the Guardian Camera Club, which encourages people to share portfolios and submit images for criticism, and there is a really interesting item about blogs here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/camera-club-blog/2009/jun/22/camera-club-blogpost
The main page for the blog is:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/camera-club-blog

After following most of the links I can recommend in particular having a look at
http://www.foto8.com/
http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/
www.lensculture.com/webloglc/index.html


This blog is really all about my pictures so for this post I'm including a photograph I took on my recent visit to Porto in Portugal - it's the interior of the marvellous Livraria Lello bookshop, Rua das Carmelitas 144, something of a local institution with its neo-gothic exterior and amazing and complex art nouveau wooden staircase and interior. There will be more on Porto to follow - now that I've actually found the time downloadall the pictures I took on my visit. I've several other projects on the go, so watch this space......
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Disused petrol pumps

Quite by chance I discovered an interest in photographing disused petrol punps and petrol stations last year on holiday in Normandy. We'd driven through a small village a few kilometres short of our campsite for the first night, the light was fading, but I just had to stop and take some pictures. Some time since I found some really rusty petrol pumps and garage buildings in Snowdonia, and I've just taken photographs of two really decrepit pumps I on a roadside in rural Suffolk. I've also taken pictures of a pump at River Green in Thorpe St Andrew, Norfolk, as much for the incongruous riverside setting as anything.

Again by chance while perusing some back issues online of the journal London Independent Photography I came across an article (Summer 2006, issue no. 4) about the photographer John H Rhodes, who has produced a series of images of disused pumps in the Scottish Highlands and elsewhere.

I think it must be something about their association with the motor vehicle and the freedom of movement it's inspired over the years that kind of makes them an iconic subject. That and the rust, dereliction and decay which I have often sought out in photographic subjects, for reasons I haven't fully thought through.

Llandudno reappraised

We visited Llandudno a few weeks back as part of our week in North Wales. I've been there a couple of times as a child with my grandparents and only once since, on a golfing holiday in my early twenties, so it was fun to see the town again. It was more genteel than I remembered, with

a very impressive sea front and esplanade. There's a very long pier and no doubt much besides.

We had a trip on the tramway that runs from the centre of town to the top of the Great Orme - that was a lot of fun, especially the first part where the tracks run quite steeply uphill through the built-up parts, before it passes the halfway station and crosses the open moorland above. There are superb views looking back across the bay. The top is commercialised and was busy when we were there, so i would recommend going up on the tram and walking back. I tried to capture the mood of the place with some pictures, though maybe they make it look a bit gloomier than it felt at the time!

Abersoch and the Llyn

The Llyn peninsular in North Wales is a place of contrasts: the popular beaches and seaside towns like Pwllheli and Abersoch, and the unexplored interior with its minor roads and solitude. On holiday a few weeks ago we took the campervan to Aberdaron, a little place virtually at the end of the peninsular. Surprisingly, the village paper shop opened promptly at 9.00 on a Sunday morning and I had no trouble buying a copy of our usual Observer. Later I walked a section of the coastal path right at the end of the peninsular. But the previous day we had paused a while in Abersoch, finding it much busier than expected (though no doubt the extremely hot late June weather was a factor). It's a bustling little place, with a pretty harbour, golf course, sand dunes and beach huts perched high above the beach, so naturally I took the opportunity to take some pictures and do some people watching. Apart from the beach huts, I really liked a collection of fishing paraphernalia outside the RNLI station and an old metalic ice cream advertising sign on the side wall of a shop in the centre.

Snowdon summit

Earlier this month I was in North Wales for a week or so with the campervan, and among other things took the opportunity of a trip to the top of Snowdon. On the train - but it was a really hot day and I wasn't sure whether I could cope too well with walking down, or even up. The little narrow gauge train from Llanberis was £23 return as we didn't organise ourselves in time to get the half price tickets on the first train of the day, but money well spent if you didn't fancy a three hour walk up and about the same going down.

Naturally I took quite a few photographs but the mountain was so crowded it was hard to get anything really interesting. Time at the summit was limited because if you didn't take the return train (after a 30 minute stay) you had to take your chances of finding a seat on a later one.

The new visitor centre at the train terminus just below the summit is really well designed to blend in with the landscape and is a worthy addition. There's a blog covering its construction here, and this features some pretty goood pictures as well. See http://blog.snowdonia-active.com