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More City Panoramas – 1994

More City Panoramas: I spent several days wandering around the City of London – the “Square Mile” in July and August 1994, I think in prepaation for a group show in which I had decided this would be my contribution.

Bubb’s Le Restaurant Francais with the address Central Market, Farringdon Street is long closed, but a listing states that they served “a variety of traditional French dishes at their restaurant and can cater for private parties of up to 30 guests upon request.” There are still several French restaurants in the area.

A little further down West Smithfield was the London Central Market with on the corner a wholesale Cash and Carry and Harry’s Drinks and in the distance a covered way across the road between market buildings.

I photographed this corner on several occasions, making a similar panorama here in 1992, perhaps why I have not put this on Flickr.

Looking west along the river to Bull Wharf, Queenhithe and beyond. Bull Wharf proudly states it was REBUILT 1980 and it looks to me exceedingly ugly, probably why I didn’t upload this picture to Flickr. My picture perhaps makes the red brickwork event more virulent – the building looks much better to me in a black and white non-panoramic image I made at the same time from more or less the same spot.

*Car Park, Smithfield St, City, 1994, 94-704-51*

Slightly out of focus in the distance I can just make out Lady Justice on the roof of the Old Bailey and to her right more clearly the tower of Holy Sepulchre Church at the east end of Holborn Viaduct.

I think this car park probably extended to Hosier Lane and is now filled with the shops and offices of 12 Smithfield Street, built in 2004 and now described on Buildington as “an outdated office block that has suffered from poor environmental performance, limited architectural merit, and inefficient servicing. Its ground floor lacks engagement with the surrounding public realm, and its dated façade no longer reflects the character of the conservation area” and being refurbished and extended.

*St Mary Somerset Church, Upper Thames St, City , 1994, 94-704-13*

A rather dark rendering of this high contrast scene with deep shadow the block of St Paul’s Vista (or 1 High Timber St, now One Millennium Bridge) straddles Upper Thames Street with the bright sky above. My picture was made from the footbridge of Fye Foot Lane carrying a section of the CIty’s Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and Castle Baynard Street and on to Queen Victoria Street.

St Mary Somerset Church was one of those destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and like 50 others rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The tower remains between Lambeth Hill and Castle Baynard Street but the rest of the church was demolished in 1871 when like other redundant churches the land was sold to build churches in the rapidly expanding suburbs of London. The tower was a Ladies toilet before the Second World War, Damaged by bombing, it was restored by the city in 1956 and has now been converted into a private residence.

A fruit and vegetable stall on the pavement in Front of St Mary Aldermary (another rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire) on busy Queen Victoria Street which you can see at extreme left. I think the extremely low stone wall on the pavement and the railings mark the former edge of its churchyard.

I liked the range of architectural age and style across the upper half of this image, and particularly admired the ornate Victorian block in the centre of the picture. As well as a bus and a coach there are 5 London taxis in the picture, an aspect of London’s traffic congestion long overdue for reform.

Highwalk, Footbridge, Queen Victoria St, City, 1994, 94-705-31 — *Highwalk, Footbridge, Huggin Hill, Upper Thames St, City, 1994, 94-705-31*

This was taken from a now-closed section of Highwalk across Upper Thames Street and the church at left is St Mary Somerset. The alley at right is Huggin Hill with a view of the distinctive building on the block between Queen Victoria St, Bread Lane and Cannon Street, 30 Cannon St built for Crédit Lyonnais between 1974 and 1977.

*Highwalk, London Wall, City, 1994, 94-706-51*

So many buildings have changed around here since 1994. The building right of centre is Standard Chartered on the corner of Aldermanbury and Aldermanbury Square and was remodelled around 2010 and the building left of centre is Brewer’s Hall, now with a roof extension. I think this section of the highwalk led up at Brewers Hall Gardens

Limehouse, Poplar, Blackwall and East India Panoramas – 1994

Limehouse, Poplar, Blackwall and East India Panoramas: In June 1994 I took a walk east from Limehouse, making a new series of panoramic images as well as taking some more normal photographs. I think these images were taken on a couple of different walks, but here I’ll present them in a roughly geographical order, going east from Limehouse Basin to East India Dock Basin station and largely following the Docklands Light Railway.

Limehouse Dock, Limehouse, 1994, 94-62-32 — *Limehouse Dock, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-62-32*

Limehouse Dock in 1994 was not surrounded by flats and there was a clear view from the the council flats – John Scurr House – on the corner of Ratcliffe Lane and Branch Road – which you can see at the right.

And in 1994, as in many such blocks, there was little or no entrance security so I could simply walk in and up the stairs to take pictures such as this. The DLR viaduct runs from the left side to St Anne’s Church and the marina is almost empty, while Canary Wharf Tower in the distance is twice the height of the buildings around it, but now is surrounded by other tall towers.

*Bridge, Aspen Way, Poplar DLR, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-65-62*

The bridge that leads across Aspen Way from the West India Docks to Poplar DLR station at the extreme right of the picture. At left you can see the DLR line from West India Quay which crosses the road in a blue bridge to join the line from Limehouse.

This picture made a rather nice album cover for the 1998 album The Limehouse Link by Mucho Macho, particularly impressive on the 12″ vinyl where it is carried across both front and back – reproduced at 24 by 12 inches, considerably larger than the CD version.

As Darryl Sterdan’s 1999 review stated “No vocals are no problem for the British DJs on their auspicious debut release” and despite its cover it made little impact.

*DLR, Canary Wharf, Blackwall, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-63-22*

I’d taken photographs in earlier years around the building of the Beckton extension of the DLR and the Limehouse Link tunnel and both had caused major changes in the area. Among which was this rather convoluted footpath leading under the road and DLR south from Blackwall Station.

*Bridge, Blackwall Tunnel Approach, Naval Row, Blackwall, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-63-62*

Parts of the Grade II listed inscription on the Northern portal of the Blackwall tunnel, built in 1897 are hard to read in my picture, so here it is in full: ‘THIS TUNNEL CONSTRUCTED BY THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL WAS OPENED BY/ HRH THE PRINCE OF WALES K.C. ON BEHALF OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA ON 22nd MAY 1897 IN THE 60th YEAR OF HER REIGN/ SIR ALEX R. BINNIE ENGINEER’

I had to wait some time back in 1994 for a train to pass across on the DLR. Services now are usually more frequent.

*Dock, DLR Station, East India, South Bromley, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-63-52*

I wandered rather a long time around East India Dock station, using the bridge across Aspen Way to photograph on both sides of the road. Here I photographed the station across an area of water which has been created in a part of the area formerly occupied by the East India Dock (Import), though I think nothing original remains. So probably I should caption this ‘water feature’ rather than ‘dock’.

*East India DLR Station, South Bromley, Tower Hamlets, 1994, 94-64-52*

Framed at the centre of this image are two towers, Canary Wharf and the much closer tower in Naval Row of the mid 19th century Italianate East India Dock Pumping Station, Grade II listed and one of the few relics of that dock, along with some listed walls and steps and the areas of water. The two towers are a similar shape but actually very different in size and detail.

More pictures from these June walks later.

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Isle of Dogs and Poor Doors – 2014

Isle of Dogs and Poor Doors: On Wednesday 3rd September 2014 the weather was fine with blue skies and clouds and I decided to spend the afternoon photographing in the Isle of Dogs before meeting with Class War for one of their ongoing series of protests against separate entrances for the wealthy and social housing residents of a tower block in Aldgate.

Isle of Dogs Panoramas – Island Gardens to South Quay

The main purpose of my visit to the Isle of Dogs was to make panoramas of scenes which I had photographed more conventionally over the years, including the black and white images that I included in my book ‘City to Blackwall‘ and more of them are now in my albums on Flickr.

I had gone back so make some panoramas in the area in the 1990s and early 2000s, using various panoramic film cameras, but the switch to digital had made creating panoramic images much simpler for me.

Perhaps the most important change was in accurate viewfinding – with my first panoramic film camera the most accurate way to see the extent of my pictures was by viewing along two arrows on the top of the body – much more reliable than its viewfinder. But of course digital also gave a wider range of shutter speeds and ISO.

And to do this, the camera needed to be firmly mounted on a tripod – and I carried a rather heavy Manfrotto around with me. This also enabled me – with the aid of a spirit level – to ensure that the camera was level. The Nikon I used for these panoramas had level indicators in the viewfinder and was easy to use handheld.

However to make these on digital I needed to use a fisheye lens – the 16mm Nikon fisheye. Not the kind that gives a circular image, but a full-frame fisheye where the image circle goes through the corners of the frame. This gives a 180 degree image across the frame diagonal, but rather less horizontally and vertical, with considerable curvature of straight lines.

Software – I then used PTGUi for these – than comes to the rescue, converting the spherical perspective into a cylindrical one which rendered verticals upright (there are several ways this can be done with slightly different results.) Later I moved to simpler software.

With the 36Mp Nikon D800E there were far more pixels than necessary even after this stretching and this was no longer a problem. I could work with single exposures rather than stitching together several images as I had done earlier with digital cameras.

Many more pictures at Isle of Dogs Panoramas.

Isle of Dogs – Wideangle Images

Although I had mainly gone to make panoramas I also took a Nikon D700 body and made pictures with a 16-35mm Nikon zoom. Not everything is best suited by the panoramic treatment.

Again there are many more pictures at Isle of Dogs.

Class War ‘Poor Doors’ picket Week 6 – Aldgate

*A police officer watches as people walk down the alley leading to the ‘poor door’ of the luxury development*

Class War and friends held their sixth weekly protest outside 1 Commercial St in Aldgate and it was a relatively uneventful one.

As the protesters arrived, two police officers came out from the building and talked with the protesters making clear that they expected the protesters not to block the doorway for people entering or leaving the building. More officers soon arrived to police the event.

There were a few heated arguments between protesters and police but nothing of any consequence. The protesters held their banner well in front of the door.

They talked and handed out leaflets to people leaving and entering the ‘rich door’ as well as to people walking past – and to at least one cyclist stopped at the traffic lights.

After keeping up the picket for an hour as intended, Class War packed up and left – until the next week.

More pictures – Class War ‘Poor Doors’ picket Week 6.

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A Long Day Around Hull – 2018

A Long Day Around Hull: We were staying in Hull for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary and on Friday 27 July 2018 we visited some old friends in Cottingham before walking to Oppy Wood in the morning. A bus took us back to the city centre where we bought sandwiches for lunch to a bus to Stoneferry where we sat on the bank of the River Hull to eat them before walking back towards the Wilmington Bridge and crossing here to view the extensive Bankside Gallery before going to the Whalebone pub to refresh ourselves before making our way back to the city centre for dinner and spending some time with family members at the Royal Hotel.

It had been a long and rather tiring day and I had taken a great many photographs, a few of which are included in this post, but rather more are on My London Diary – links in the separate sections below. In particular I had decided to make many panoramic images on our walk.

Hull, Cottingham & Oppy Wood – 2018

We set off early from our hotel in the city centre and took a roundabout route to Hull Interchange photographing a few of the interesting buildings on our way. I made a few pictures from the upper deck of the bus on the way to Cottingham and on the short walk to have morning coffee with old friends in their bungalow.

From there it was another walk to Oppy Wood, created by the Woodland Trust around 2004, after they had planted 18,000 trees as a living memorial for the 200 local men from the Hull Pals battalions who died in the Battle of Oppy Wood, near Arras, France on May 3rd, 1917. There is a permanent Kingston Upon Hull Memorial at Oppy unveiled there in 1927.

Unfortunately extensive work was going on in the area in a flood prevention scheme for the city and access to the site – usually open to the public – was much more limited than normal.

More at Hull, Cottingham.

Stoneferry, Wincolmlee & City Centre

Again I took a number of pictures from the bus as we travelled from the city centre to Anne Watson Street where we walked to a quiet spot by the River Hull to sit in the sun and eat our sandwich lunch, before making our way back towards the city centre.

Unfortunately there is only a short part of the walk beside the river and much of the time we were walking along a busy hot dusty road until we got to the footpath leading to Wilmington Bridge which used to take the railway lines to Hornsea and Withernsea across the river – but now only has cycle and footpaths.

We crossed the river mainly to photograph the ‘Bankside Gallery’ – pictures in a separate section – but there is also now a little more access to the river than before here. Hull Railway bridge was still taking goods to and from the docks.

We walked north to the end of the gallery, then made our way back down Air Street to Wincolmlee, still with many small businesses some in the old buildings in poor condition but now few making any use of the river.

We had got very hot and stopped for a drink at the Whalebone before making our way back to the city centre. There was still time to take a few more pictures there before going to meet family for a meal at the Royal Hotel at Paragon Station.

Much more at Stoneferry, Wincolmlee & City Centre.

Bankside Gallery

Hull has Banksy to thank for the Bankside Gallery. His ‘Draw The Raised Bridge‘ which appeared on Scott Street bridge on 26 January 2018 brought crowds to the area and inspired many to create murals on the many walls in the area, creating the extensive gallery.

The Grade II listed lifting bridge which has was closed to road traffic, its bascules permanently raised since 1995 was demolished in 2019-20. It had long been neglected by the city council both before and after closure.

Here I’ll post just three of the many images I took – there are many more at Bankside Gallery.

Hull Panoramas

On my visit to Hull in 2017 when it was UK City of Culture I had begun making a series of panoramic images in Hull, including many of the areas that I first photographed in black and white in the 1970s and 1980s for the work which became a show, ‘Still Occupied’ at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull in 1983, and later a self-published book of the same name and more recently in a couple of Café Royal zines.

Here are two of them – and there are another 16 on My London Diary that I made during this walk – at Hull Panoramas.

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1995 Colour – More from Dartford

1995 Colour – More from Dartford: The eighth part of my series showing colour images I made in 1995 continues with panoramic and normal images around Dartford. An earlier post 1995 Colour Part 4 – Around Dartford looked at some of the panoramas I made on a walk in March 1995 when I walked along the Darent and Thames Path to Littlebrook and Crossways. I returned to Dartford in April and May and made some more pictures.

Bow Arrow Footbridge, Dartford Tunnel Approach, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-1072 — *Bow Arrow Lane Footbridge, Dartford Tunnel Approach, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-1072*

Bow Arrow Footbridge, Dartford Tunnel Approach, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-1073 — *Bow Arrow Lane Footbridge, Dartford Tunnel Approach, Dartford, 1995, 95p4-1073*

I think this picture was taken on Cotton Lane. You can see the QEII bridge clearly and there are two lines of pylons. The storage tanks gleaming in the distance are on the north bank of the River Thames. There is no longer a rail siding here.

*Philips Newman, Cash & Carry, Victoria Rd, Dartford, 1995, 95c5-764*

*Industrial Estate, Dartford, 1995, 95c5-763*

I think this is probably on the Burnham Trading Estate, Burnham Rd, Dartford, where I also made several black and white images.

*Willding Yard, Eastwood Metals, Lower Hythe St, Dartford, 1995, 95c5-762*

Still more pictures from around Dartford in later posts.

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Victoria Dock & the Old Town – Hull 2017

Victoria Dock & the Old Town: We arrived in Hull for a visit during the the city’s Year of Culture on Thursday 16th February 2017, 8 years ago.

We had come partly because I was hoping to have a show in the city – it would have been my first there since 1983 when ‘Still Occupied – A View of Hull‘ was in the Ferens Gallery. This one would have been on a rather less grand scale and fell through when the bailiffs evicted the group who had been squatting another city centre property.

But we had also come to celebrate Linda’s birthday in the city where she was born and grew up and for which we both have a particular affection, as well as to see some of the things that were happening for the special year.

And as always I had come to take photographs, in particular to revisit some of the many places around the city I had photographed back in the 1970s and 1980s. You can see many of those pictures on the Hull Photos web site where I posted a new photo every day throughout Hull’s year as City of Culture and beyond.

I wasn’t bent on a “re-photography” project. These often seem to me a rather lazy way for people who haven’t any real photographic ideas of their own to capitalise on those of other people – or even their own earlier work. Parasitical. Though I do have to admire a few projects that have been really well carried out.

For me photography has always been about my immediate response to the subject. If the scene has changed so too will I respond differently; and if it hasn’t why bother to photograph it again?

In particular I had moved over the years to seeing landscape and urban landscapes very much more in terms of panoramas. Forty or so years earlier had I worked almost entirely with tightly framed scenes using a 35mm shift lens. But now – with a few exceptions – I was working with the very different perspective of the wide sweeping view of a panorama. It forced me to think differently.

Victoria Dock, Hull’s timber dock had closed before I began making pictures there, although there were still a few small pockets of industry on and around the largely derelict site, as well as some remnants.

Now the dock has largely been filled in – the large timber ponds had already gone when I first visited. Much is now housing estates, leaving just the Outer Basin and Half Tide Basin and a slipway with water in them. And we were staying in a room of a house on one of the new estates. We arrived in early afternoon and after dumping our bags went out for a walk along the side of the Humber as the weather was fine for photography.

I had walked along this footpath years before, going on past the still open Alexandra and King George V Docks more or less to the city boundary. Now the path is cut off by the Siemens wind turbine site on the former Alexandra Dock.

We turned around and walked back towards the Old Town where a new footbridge took us across the River Hull and on to a drink and an early dinner at the Minerva. After the dramatic skies earlier the sunset was rather disappointing.

After a long rest in the pub we decided to wander around the Old Town. In 2017 the area was still pretty empty on a Thursday night in winter, cut in half by the A63, the busy road to the docks (or rather dock), a reminder that Hull is still a significant port. But the footbridge I was then very sceptical about in my account on My London Diary was eventually built. Still something of a barrier, but far less frustrating.

We walked as far as the city centre to admire (and photograph) the turbine blade on display there before turning round to walk back over the River Hull – this time we took the now seldom-lifting North Bridge.

We walked south beside the river along the deserted riverside path to Drypool Bridge where the path was then closed off after the needless demolition of Rank’s Mill for a hotel that didn’t arrive and through the streets – another long wait to cross the A63 – and back to the house we were staying in.

You can read more details of the walk and see more of the panoramas I made on My London Diary.
Victoria Dock Promenade
Night in the Old Town

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1995 Colour Part 5 – Waltham Forest

1995 Colour Part 5 – Waltham Forest: My Greenwich Meridian project had taken me into North London as far as Pole Hill in Chingford, but I also wandered more widely in the London Borough of Waltham Forest and even strayed into its neighbouring borough of Redbridge, photographing both with a panoramic camera and my ”normal’ pair of Olympus OM4s on black and white and colour.

*Pond, Epping Forest, Whipps Cross, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-262*

Most of the pictures taken with these OM4s were made with the Olympus 35mm shift lens which could slide vertically and horizontally in its mount, particularly useful for photographing tall buildings when it by shifting it up I could keep holding the camera level and place the horizon close to the bottom of the image, so avoiding converging verticals or including large foreground areas.

*Leisure Centre, New Road, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-441*

*Leisure Centre, New Road, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95-3o-23, 1995, 95c03-335*

But often I had the shift on a camera loaded with black and white film, with the 28mm on the OM4 with colour in it. I also carried an ultra-wide 21mm, a 50mm and a short telephoto lens for use when needed.

*Houses, Sunset Ave, Woodford Green, Redbridge, 1995, 95p03-142*

And just occasionally I photographed the same subject both with the swing lens panoramic and with one or other of the Olympus cameras – and I’ll include a couple of examples in this post. All of these pictures were made in February or March 1995.

*Lee Valley Viaduct, North Circular Rd, South Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p02-251*

*Southend Rd, North Circular Rd, South Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p01-233*

*Recreation Ground, Higham Hill, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p01-263*

*Sandpiper Close, Higham Hill, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p02-122*

*Sandpiper Close, Higham Hill, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95c02-352*

For these Sandpiper Close pictures I think the added angle of view of the panoramic greatly improves the image and gives for me a much more powerful impression of what I saw and felt standing there and looking down into the Lea Valley.

*Riverhead Close, Higham Hill, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p02-113*

Although the two pictures of the Leisure Centre where only taken a few feet apart, they are very different images. Standing further back for the panoramic gives a better overall view of the site, but moving closer concentrates on the foreground. The slight colour difference between the two images – neither of them quite right – also complicates the issue. Colour balancing many of these old negatives is often very tricky.

Clicking on any of the images above will take you to a larger version on Flickr. You can also find some of the black and white pictures I took on the same walks in my album 1995 London Photos beginning at this picture. My next post in this series will look at more of the non-panoramic images from Waltham Forest.

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1995 Colour – Part 2 – Greenwich Meridian

1995 Colour – Greenwich Meridian: The second of a series of posts on my colour work, mainly in London, from 1995, 35 years ago and when I’d been working extensively with colour negative film for ten years, though still continuing to work with black and white.

*Obelisk, Trig Point, Pole Hill, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-841*

In 1992 I began making colour panoramas using a Japanese Widelux F8 swing lens panoramic camera – and later I used a Russian Horizon which gave similar results. Both worked with normal 35mm film but produced negatives that were a little under 60mm wide rather than the 36mm of normal cameras. Both use clockwork to swing the taking lens around a third of a circle exposing the film through a narrow slit behind the lens. The film was held in a curved path – again around a third of a circle – with the lens at the centre of the circle so that the lens to film distance remained constant.

Peacham Hall, King's Head Hill, Woodberry Way, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-411 — *Peacham Hall, King’s Head Hill, Woodberry Way, Chingford, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-411*

This arrangement avoided the change in distance from the lens to film that gives some stretching of the subject towards the edges of the frame – and begins to become very noticeable in ultra-wide lenses, particularly wider than around 18mm focal length on a 35mm camera.

95p03-552-Edit — *Level Crossing, Highams Park*, *Waltham Forest, 95p03-552*

Using the curved film plane avoids this distortion and enables a much wider field of view, while using a fairly moderate focal length – the Widelux has a 26mm f2.8 lens and gives negatives 24x56mm with a horizontal angle of view of 123 degrees.

*Bridges, North Circular, Hale End Rd, Hale End, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p03-463*

But there is a downside. Creating the image in this way gives a curvature to objects which is unlike our normal vision which is particularly noticeable on any straight lines, though lines parallel to the axis the lens rotates around remain straight – so if you hold the camera level, verticals will remain straight. But other lines become curved with the effect increasing away from the image centre, giving what is often called a “cigar effect“.

*Raglan Rd, Lea Bridge Rd, Whipps Cross, Waltham Forest, 1995, 95p4-373*

This is a constraint which makes composition far more difficult using a swing lens camera, and was not helped by a rather poor viewfinder on the Widelux. Usually for landscape work I tried to visualise the effect of the curvature and chose a suitable camera position, levelled the camera on a heavy Manfrotto tripod using the spirit level on the camera top plate, lining the camera up using two arrows on the top plate to show the extent of the view (more accurately than the viewfinder) and then pressing the cable release to make the picture.

Stratford Bus Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford,, 1995, 95p4-922 — *Stratford Bus Station, Great Eastern Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1995, 95p4-922*

For photographing events and some creative effects this is a camera you can use handheld, but you have to remember that even when using its fastest speed of 1/250 second the camera actually takes quite a lot longer to scan around the curved film.

Crowley's Wharf, River Thames, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-672 — *Crowley’s Wharf, River Thames, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-672*

These pictures are from a project I began in 1995 with the approaching Millennium in mind. It seemed to me to make sense to carry out a project based on the Greenwich Meridian.

*Greenwich Boating Pond, Park Vista, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1431*

So I set about walking the Meridian, photographing it at various points in London and used some of these pictures in an attempt to get public funding for a Meridian Walk with some markers in pavements and a web site and publication. Panoramic images seemed a very appropriate format for illustrating the line.

*Greenwich Meridian, Royal Observatory, Greenwich, 1995, 95p4-1242*

Unfortunately my grant application as usual was unsuccessful, but I did go on to take some more photographs. In 2009 others produced a Greenwich Meridian Long Distance Path covering all of the Meridian in England from Peacehaven to Sand La Mere which of course goes through London and we also have The Line Sculpture Trail. Quite a few more Meridian markers were also added in London since I made this walk.

Many more panoramas from my Meridian project and other colour images from 1995 in the album 1995 London Colour.

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Thames Path Panoramas – Vauxhall to Wandsworth 2014

Thames Path Panoramas: Back in January 2013 I had photographed and taken part in a rather less bloody re-enactment of the Epiphany bloody armed insurrection by Thomas Venner and fellow Fifth Monarchists against the re-imposition of the monarchy in 1661 being performed by Class War for film director Suzy Gillett. I’d tried hard to avoid getting in the way of the camera but do appear for a few seconds as the insurrection made its way to seize St Paul’s Cathedral.

On Sunday 5th January, a year less a day later I and others involved were invited to a private afternoon screening of the film at the Cinema Museum close to the Elephant & Castle. As it was a fine day I went up some hours earlier to walk and photograph a little nearby section of the Thames Path.

I’d been making panoramic photographs since the 1980s, at first by cutting and mounting together a few prints from black and white images. Back in 1991 I’d bought my first panoramic camera, a Japanese Widelux F8 with a lens that swings around while making a picture on 35mm film, held in a curve so that the centre of the lens remains at a constant distance from the film. Later I bought several more similar but much cheaper cameras made in Russia and a Chinese beast taking 120 film.

These cameras all produced a very wide angle of view – around 120 or 130 degrees – but with a different perspective to “normal” cameras, with some characteristic curvature of objects. The normal rectilinear view stretches out objects at the edges of the frame and is only really usable up to around a 90 degree angle of view. Later I did work with a Hassleblad X-Pan camera and with a 30mm lens which gives a 94 degree horizontal view – around the maximum usable for a rectilinear view.

Digital methods changed the game. At first I used a film scanner and software that enabled me to merge several scanned images. Then things became even easier when I shifted to a digital camera. For projects such as ‘The Secret Gardens of St John’s Wood‘ I combined up to around 8 different 12.3Mp digital images form a Nikon D300 to make very large prints with wide angles of view.

But by 2014 I was working with a Nikon D800E and it had occurred to me that there was a simpler solution with its 36.3Mp images. I could use the 16mm Nikon fisheye which gives 180 degree diagonal coverage filling the frame and then convert these images digitally from their fisheye projection to the more friendly cylindrical projection of my panoramic cameras.

I could now make panoramas almost as easily as taking any other images, capturing moving as well as static scenes with ease. For most panoramic images it is important to have the camera level, and the D800E had nice clear indicators that could be displayed in the viewfinder to ensure this, and with an f2.8 lens tripods became a thing of the past.

For these images I used the incredibly flexible PTGui software, but later found the simpler Fish-Eye Hemi plugin for Lightroom more convenient, though PTGui allows some interesting options. Unfortunately this plugin is no longer available, though I hope it or a similar plugin will be made available again. Using it you transform the images without any loss of image at the centres of both horizontal and vertical sides so you can visualise what will be in your final image when looking at the viewfinder while taking images.

Many more pictures at Thames Path Panoramas.

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Olympic Site & Budget Cuts – 2012

Olympic Site & Budget Cuts: Wednesday 5th December 2012 was a cold day in London, with the temperature just three or four degrees above freezing during the day, but there was plenty of blue sky with a few clouds and it seemed ideal weather to wrap up and go and see what progress had been made in restoring the Olympic site, still largely off-limits some months after the end of the games. And later in the early evening I returned to Westminster for a protest against the cuts which had been announced by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in his autumn budget statement.

Olympic Area Slightly Open – Stratford Marsh

Much of the area around the Olympic site had been closed to the public in May, including the Greenway, the elevated footpath on top of the Northern Outfall Sewer which runs close to the Olympic stadium, but this was now re-opened in part.

The section between Stratford High Street and the main railway lines which run from Liverpool Street station to Stratford and on further east was however still closed and would remain closed for years as work was now taking place for Crossrail – opened as the Elizabeth Line in 2022.

I started my walk in the early afternoon around the Bow flyover where the Bow Back rivers were still closed to traffic with a yellow floating barrier, but the footpath along the Lea Navigation had been re-opened. One improvement made presumably for the Olympics was a pathway and footbridge taking walkers under the busy road junction and across the canal.

Finding the new entrance to the Greenway meant walking between fences on the Crossrail site down Pudding Mill Lane, and probably I would have abandoned the route had it not been for signs put up by the View Tube café – though when I finally reached this I found I was the only person to have done so and the cafe was deserted.

There were still fences everywhere as you can see from my photographs but I was able to walk along the Greenway to Hackney Wick and then along the towpath beside the navigation. But the footpath beside the Old River Lea was still blocked off.

By then the light was beginning to fade and the Olympic stadium was gaining a golden glow. I walked a little further along the towpath and photographed the Eton boathouse as the sun was setting setting before crossing the canal and making my way to Hackney Wick station.

Many more pictures, both normal and panoramic views on My London Diary:
Olympic Area Slightly Open.

Osborne’s Budget Cuts – Strand to Whitehall

Several hundred students, trade unionists, socialists and others marched with UCU London Region down the Strand and into Whitehall shouting slogans against public service cuts, the rich, David Cameron and George Osborne in particular.

Opposite Downing Street they joined with others already protesting there including CND and Stop the War who were calling for the government to stop wasting money on the war in Afghanistan and vanity projects supporting the arms industry such as Trident and its planned replacement.

“The Afghanistan war — which everyone knows is futile and lost — is costing around £6 billion a year. The yearly maintenance costs for Trident are £2.2 billion a year. The cost of renewing the Trident system — which this government is committed to do — would cost up to £130 billion. Two aircraft carriers are being built at a cost of £7 billion. Then there’s the £15 billion to be spent buying 150 F-35 jets from the US, each of which will cost £85 million plus an extra £16 million for the engine.”

The rally began shortly after the marchers arrived. By now it was only just above freezing and speakers were asked to keep their contributions short because of the temperature.

Among the speakers were John McDonnell MP, Kate Hudson of CND, author Owen Jones, Andy Greene of DPAC, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett and others including a nurse from Lewisham Hospital threatened with closures, from the NUT, UK Uncut and other trade unionists.

*Kate Hudson CND and Romaine Phoenix Coalition of Resistance/Green Party*

Many of the speakers called on trade unions to take effective action against the cuts. calling for union leaders to stop simply speaking against them and take the lead from their members and start organising strike action. But of course few did and the cuts continued unabated.

More at Osborne’s Budget Cuts.

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