“If the anti-Christ ever turns up, I reckon he’ll emerge from Guernsey Observation Tower, just as the sun goes down.”

Here:

I do like a good sunset. And I do like Brutalist architecture in retreat but still around. So, apart from the anti-Christ bit, what, as the question goes, ‘s not to like?

Wuppertaler Schwebebahn

Via Ben Southwood:

There is an actual bridge in among there, so no worries putting Bridges in the category list. But is the Thing itself a bridge?

Wikipedia:

Its full name is Anlage einer elektrischen Hochbahn (Schwebebahn), System Eugen Langen. (“Electric Elevated Railway (Suspension Railway) Installation, Eugen Langen System”) It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world and is a unique system.

In other words, nobody copied it because they thought it was crazy.

The above photo is from that Wikipedia entry. It dates from 1913.

This blog now with social media knobs on

Indeed. See below.

It was several months ago now that a respected friend told me, with what to me seemed rather startling vehemence, that there should be social media buttons on each posting at this blog, in order to give it reach or influence or traction. Some such noun. This has now been done.

I doubt if this will do this blog’s reach or influence or traction much good. But I don’t see how it can do these things any harm.

Reflections in blue sunglasses

According to my hard disc, I photoed this photo on October 6th 2004. I fefinitely photoed it with my ancient Canon A70:

Not bad. Clearly visible on the right spectacle lens, as we look, and especially so if you click and make it bigger, is a current architectural obsession of mine, Battersea Power Station.

The guy wearing the glasses was a fellow pupil in a digital photography course, run by my Local Authority, which I participated in. To very little effect on me, I’m afraid. I was then and remain a self-taught pointer-and-clicker, on Automatic. Most of what I have learned is how well pointing-and-clicking on Automatic actually works. Aside from a few wisdoms about light and how to get it on your side, most of what I have learned has concerned what it makes most sense for me to be photoing. As I have noticed more things that I find worth photoing, my photos have got slowly better.

On the left, me. I don’t like regular selfies, with nothing but me. But I do enjoy Alfred Hitchcock type selfies, where I can be glimpsed in photos that are mostly about something else, or at the very least about more than just me.

Happy Easter

As in: I hope you’ve been having one. Because it is now quite late on Easter Sunday.

Although a devout atheist, I’ll celebrate with three big London places of Christian worship, all photoed in June 2016, from the top of one of them.

Here are the other two, an Abbey and a Cathedral:

On the left, Westminster Abbey, with Big Ben right behind one of its towers. On the right, St Paul’s. With a green crane right in front of it.

And here are a couple of photos of the building I was photoing from, the other Cathedral, Westminster Cathedral, a walk up Victoria Street from the Abbey:

On the left, looking down on Westminster Cathedral, again from the top of its tower; on the right, the shadow of the Cathedral’s tower, on some of the Big Lumps of Victoria Street.

Look very carefully at the photo on the right, and you can also see the other Cathedral, in the middle and far off, and the Abbey, off to the far right and far off.

Finally, two rather off-topic photos (not quite the phrase I’m looking for but it’ll have to do), photoed from and inside the same spot:

On the left, well, it’s been called a cathedral. Of power. Battersea Power Station, now being surrounded by apartments, them being the object of my last two expeditions.

And on the right, I’m just inside the tower of the Cathedral, with the openings to one of the outside balconies shaping the light as it crashes through onto where the lift is. That one had me saying “wow” when I was clicking through the old directory, and I hope you agree that that’s a good sign.

Like I say: Happy Easter.

Battersea silhouettes

I’m still, as yet, going on quite long photo-walks. These are combined with shopping and a lot of exercise, the latter being even greater now what with public transport being off limits. There is plenty, since you ask, of social isolation, far more even than is usual. Nevertheless, I still fear that the photoing aspect may soon attract the disapproving attention of authorities, formal or informal. Too little shopping. Insufficiently strenuous exercise. Too much enjoyment. We shall see.

But in the meantime, yesterday afternoon, I checked out, again, the now stalled progress of the new apartment blocks that Frank Gehry has designed to go next to the Battersea Power Station. Last time I tried photoing these, the weather let me down. Not yesterday. Trouble was, the light was coming from behind the buildings I was most interested in photoing. But there was so much of it bouncing around that even though starting out from totally the wrong direction it was still a great improvement on the earlier trip, for photoing that Gehry-weirdness. Which I may or may not get to blogging about.

But as always, on a successful photo walk, the official destination was only part of the story. When I took another look this morning at what I had, I realised that, in among all the beautifully lit photos I photoed pointing one way, with most of the light coming from behind me, were photos like these, with me pointing the other way:

I’ve photoed that amazingly tasteless sculpture of the naked woman pointing herself forwards at the front of a boat, but this is by far the best photo of her I’ve ever photoed. The secret? Added cranes and roof clutter.

Also in the category list below is other creatures. Spot the other creature.

Le bar à chats in Perpignan

As already much mentioned this week, I was in the south of France exactly a year ago, and as also already mentioned, exactly a year ago yesterday, I and various members of GodDaughter2’s family, including GD2 herself, were in Perpignan.

While there we stopped off at a tea version of a coffee bar whose USP is that the place, in addition to whatever human customers it can attract, is the home also of lots of cats:

That’s GD2’s Mum photoing through the front window in the final photo there.

The cats didn’t seem that pleased to see us. I suspect that cats who live with lots of other cats are more, well, catlike, and less inclined to interest themselves in humans and their preoccupations, in particular the human desire, when meeting a cat, to stroke it. These cats were not interested in being stroked, and they paid attention to us only when we got too close. They had other things on their minds, things of their own. Or so it seemed to me. I took many photos, and only one is of a cat being stroked. It was not that happy about it.

That they were not paying us that much attention brought home to me the fact that what we humans crave from each other, and failing that from our pets, is that very thing: attention. Mixing with creatures that resembled pets, but who were behaving in this crucial way not at all like actual pets, brought this point home very strongly.

As we left, I remembered to take a photo-note of the place, …:

… which means I can now easily find and supply a link.

When photoing, always remember to take photo-notes.

Perpignan photos

A year ago yesterday I was in St Cyprien, and a year ago today I was in Perpignan. However, I was in Perpignan again on January 9th of this year, when the weather was much better and hence so were my photos. Here is a selection of the photos I took then, there:

Not only was the weather better last January than it had been in April of last year; there was also a temporary Wheel in place (photos 20, 21, 22, 26). And (see photo 9) there was an exhibition on of some photos by former President of France Jacques Chirac. How about that?

A feature of any visit to Perpignan is, or should be, a journey to the department store called Galeries Lafayette (the big white building in photo 18), the views from the top of which are excellent (photos 19-28). The views on the way down from the stairs are pretty good too (photos 28-30).

Other than that, it was the usual. Amusing signs in French, roof clutter, strange plants, pollarded trees, various sorts of sculpture ancient and modern, bridges, left over Christmas signs, a motorbike. All good stuff, and all looking much better in the much better light there was in Perpignan on April 9th. Click and enjoy.

A year ago today …

I was in St Cyprien, in the extreme south of France, staying with my extreme south of France friends (aka GodDaughter2’s family).

Roof clutter ancient and modern, wires, orange tiles, fishing equipment, tourist crap with no soldiers or royal family (just Art), amazing plants (including little wine trees with mountains behind them), boats galore, and very well behaved sea for the boats to drive on. Not that all of those things are to be seen in these photos, but they are all very much to be seen in the extreme south of France:

And light. Lots of lovely light.

But, no outstanding single eyecatching Things, like in London or Paris. Just atmosphere and lots of it.

Quota Monty – quota Slim

I photoed lots of photos of the statues in Parliament, of Churchill, Mandela, Gandhi, Smuts, Lloyd George and the rest of them. Trouble was, the light was coming from the wrong direction for a lot of them.

My favourite statue photo I photoed yesterday was actually this one, of Monty:

He was facing in the right direction to get some light on his face.

But I think another got luckier with Monty is that I’ve photoed this statue a lot already, because it’s one of my favourites in all of London.

As is the one nearby of Slim, who yesterday was looking like this:

In between those two statues, there’s a statue of Brooke, which I am not quite so fond of. Nothing against Brooke, just that the statue looks, to me, a bit unconvincing, more like a caricature than a likeness.