This photograph dates back to my Sheffield days in the 1980s - days of grey and white and miners’ strikes. I’d probably just got off the bus, and as I skated down the ice-covered streets, I stopped to record the scene.
Alan Burnett
@abfixby.bsky.social
One time teacher, one time writer on European social policy, now retired, walking the dog and doing a little harmless blogging. In love with the interface between words and images. www.alanburnett.com
This is a photo of my father’s cousin, Ivy Burnett, probably taken in Birmingham around 1910. It bears the mark of the Hamnett Studio of Bristol Street, Birmingham, and records show the studio was active at that address between 1908 and 1912. ...
I can't be exact about the date, but I suspect it was around 1969 or 1970 when I took this photograph. It looks as though I was standing in the grounds of what later became the Barge and Barrel pub, but back then it would have still been the Station Hotel. ...
Isn't AI wonderful? You can ask your favourite AI assistant to convert a selfie into a stone carving like the kind found on the walls of a medieval church. Alternatively, you can take a walk around Selby Abbey and discover that someone has already done it. Aren't medieval stone masons wonderful?
A random dip into my archives brings up this photograph I took twenty years ago during a visit to the Isle of Skye. Despite the undoubted beauty of all those greens, browns and blues: the shot still seems to work better as a black and white picture.
I am attending a wedding this weekend, and I have dusted off my camera so that I can take photographs of what will be a splendid family occasion. It will continue a long tradition: I took the photographs at the wedding of the groom’s grandparents, and also at the wedding of his parents.
My photograph dates back to the 1960s and shows the Mobil petrol station on Winding Road, Halifax. The garage was built on the site of the Old Crispin Inn, which dated back to the 1840s. ....
I must confess that I don't remember the old Sowerby Bridge Station, although I'm sure I must have seen it before it burned down in the late 1970s. ....
I created this image of Halifax back in 2018, so it is definitely pre-artificial intelligence. Perhaps it's artificial pseudo-intelligence, as it was created by repeatedly pressing Photoshop buttons without any plan in mind. .....
I have suitcases full of old photographs - my lost images collection - and sometimes, when I'm sorting through them, one will shout out at me. It's not who the people are (I don't know them) or what they're doing; it's the very essence of the image itself. ....
Those of us who spend our lives looking at pictures of old Halifax have a range of potential dating pointers: Is Square Church still a church, or just a spire? Is the Queensbury railway line still in place? are there trees on Beacon Hill? ...
Artificial intelligence took one of my photographs of North Bridge and Burdock Way in Halifax and did this with it. It's frightening. The problem is, it's frighteningly good.
Whenever I revisit one of my old photographs, I can never resist the temptation to seek out a modern view of the same scene to see what has changed.
This is Vine Street in the Great Horton district of Bradford. My father grew up a few streets away; my mother grew up a few more streets away in the other direction. There are terraced houses, a cobbled street and a mill at the bottom. ....
I took this photograph of Dean Clough in Halifax back in 2017. The profusion of green vegetation provides a date stamp: fifty years earlier, the buildings would have been the same, but the occasional sooty dandelion would have been the only plant life to survive. ....
A photograph taken in a Bradford back yard more than three-quarters of a century ago. It features me sitting on my mother's knee, watched over by my brother, Roger. Next Monday would have been my mother Gladys's birthday. Today is my brother's birthday. Happy birthday, Rog - see you in December.
We got a new Prime Minister yesterday. We've had quite a lot of them lately. Back in the old days, once you had finished with a Prime Minister, you erected a bronze statue to him or her. These days, that might be a somewhat extravagant use of bronze. ....
This is another of my Sheffield photos from when I was living in the city forty years ago. I was obviously much younger then because I was able to sprint out into the middle of a dual carriageway to get the shot - and live to tell the tale many decades later.
Is this real, or is it fake? As someone who has spent much of his life taking black-and-white photographs, I don't think I'm a good judge of what's real. Is it art, or is it computer-generated slush? Who knows? Who cares? Is it pleasant to look at? You decide.
Another photograph from my Sheffield series, taken back in the 1980s. The cars scream the 1980s. The background - slowly fading into a post-industrial emptiness - weeps the 1980s.
So I said to AI, "Here's a picture of Halifax's old Piece Hall Let's imagine, just for a second, that one of the world's finest singer-songwriters, James Taylor, was over there in the corner singing. Can you show us what that would look like?" This is what AI came up with. ....
It was over forty years ago, but I can still remember taking this photograph. This was long before everyone had a camera in their pocket disguised as a telephone, so I would have been out and about with a hefty SLR, trying to imagine how the picture might eventually turn out. ....
I must have taken this photograph looking across the Calder Valley from Hullenedge Road in Elland about fifty years ago. I was probably trying to capture the freshness of the scar resulting from the construction of the then, new Elland by-pass. ....
Many old castles have secret tunnels, but the one that runs under the ancient Dénia Castle in Alicante Province, Spain is somewhat different because it is less than a hundred years old. It was constructed as an air raid shelter for the local population during the Spanish Civil War. ....
At one time, railway lines criss-crossed West Yorkshire like the warp and weft of the very fabrics the area was famous for. Holmfield Junction Station stood at the junction of the line from Halifax to Bradford via Queensbury and the splendidly named Halifax High Level Railway. ....
Forget Fifty Shades of Grey: let the sun shine in Yorkshire and you get something much better - fifty shades of stone. ....
Raise a toast to the humble picture-postcard photographers of a century ago. They seemed to spend their lives producing decorative trinkets - bearing inane greetings - sent from aunt to nephew, friend to friend, and lover to lover. ....
When world leaders arrive at one of the countless international conferences they seem to attend these days, they might pause for a quick Facebook post or an X tweet, but they are unlikely to pose for, and add their signatures to, a commemorative picture postcard. ...
Each week I take the grandchildren up to cricket practice at Green Moor, high on the hills between Sheffield and Barnsley. Each week, as the kids bat balls and catch catches, I look at the scene and try and capture a little of what I see on my phone or my iPad. ...
As time goes by and memories fade, there is a tendency to romanticise life in the mills of West Yorkshire (and I'm probably as guilty as the next old fool when it comes to this). ....