Bingley in the sunshine

It was an absolutely glorious day when I visited the photo exhibition in Bingley (see yesterday) and it was a pleasure to wander through the town in the warm sunshine. The 19th century Bowling Green Mills, now the Damart factory, where the exhibition took place, looms large over this end of the town. It's very noticeable because of that big, black chimney. 

Equally noticeable, just beside the Park Road bridge is a vibrant mural (which I showed once before on my blog). It features moorhens, many of which frequent the adjacent canal. Created by Misc.Etc, it was sponsored by Bradford City of Culture 2025.

On the other side of the bridge, an archway and steps lead down to the railway station. From here you can see the dual-carriageway road that was squeezed into the valley bottom to ease congestion on the town's main street. Sandwiched between the railway, opened in 1847 (right), and canal built in 1773 (left), the road was opened in 2003. To build it, they actually had to shift this section of the canal over to the left. 

Thankfully many little pockets of history have been retained. Just in front of the big mill is what was the Bingley National School, opened in 1814 by the Church of England to provide schooling for poorer children in the parish. It closed in 1824 and then re-opened as a mill school in 1833. The school was the scene of a terrible disaster in 1869, when a boiler adjoining the school exploded and 15 people including several children playing in the school yard were killed. It finally closed as a school in 1999 and has been imaginatively converted into apartments. 

Photo exhibition

I mentioned that I've recently joined Bingley Camera Club. It just so happened that they've had an exhibition in Bingley. It was in the splendid surroundings of Bowling Green Mills, a significant 19th century worsted mill complex in the centre of town, now owned by Damart clothing retailers. The gallery they were using was huge and well suited to such an exhibition, giving them room to display more than 250 prints. 

It was a good chance for me to see the quality and variety of their work. I was impressed. They seem to have some excellent photographers among their members (as we also have in Ilkley CC). I especially liked that there was room to display some of their work as projects, with six or eight prints by one author around a theme; for instance, 'lighthouses' was one grouping that I enjoyed. I am increasingly convinced that it's good to have 'a project' or a thematic core, or some kind of limitation on one's work (maybe just using one lens, or square images or camera movement), I find this can lead to some really creative ideas and images. 

I enjoyed my visit very much, got chatting to quite a few of their members and came away quite uplifted and inspired. 

Tree hugging

I'm very fortunate that, within a fifteen minute walk up or downhill, I can be surrounded by trees. A bit of 'tree hugging' or forest bathing is proven to bring calm and improve wellbeing. It usually works for me. Breathing in all the phytoncides that trees produce apparently triggers a spike in our body's natural killer (NK) cells and anti-cancer proteins, enhancing our ability to fight off infections. I don't really care why it works, I just keep doing it! 

Looking up the valley

Whenever I walk up High Bank Lane (aptly named!) I pause to look back at the glorious view up the Aire valley. ( Well, OK, the truth is I pause to catch my breath but we'll gloss over that!) The town in the middle distance is Bingley, with the wooded St Ives Estate on the left. 

The evening light show resumes

The evening skies have been relatively boring for a month or two. Now, as we enter autumn and the nights are drawing in, there seems to be more colour. I'm back to leaving the curtains open and checking out the light show most nights. It's never the same twice. Here's a small selection. 

Toxic haiku

Canal flows serene
but it’s looking rather green.
Toxic algae - bad!

Blue-green algae, technically known as cyanobacteria, is a collection of microscopic organisms that are naturally present in lakes and streams. Under certain conditions, blue-green algae can become abundant in warm, shallow, undisturbed, nutrient-rich surface waters that receive a lot of sunlight. The blooms can double in size every seven to ten days. It is rapidly spreading in the Leeds-Liverpool Canal over quite a wide area. Not only does it look unsightly (like pea soup!) but it's also highly toxic to dogs (and humans if you come into close contact with it).  Nasty stuff. It probably won't go away until we have more rain and colder conditions. 

Unfortunately it is also harmful to swans, ducks, other waterbirds and to fish - potentially bad news for the family of swans that live around Saltaire. I hope they have the sense to decamp to the nearby river, which isn't affected. 

Scavenger Hunt

I've recently joined a second camera club in Bingley. I'm continuing my membership at Ilkley, at least for now, though I do find the long drive to and fro in the dark in winter is increasingly taxing. Bingley is much nearer and I can get there by public transport too, if I wish. They meet on different nights, so there is no clash. It'll be stimulating to enjoy a different programme and perhaps some new ideas. 

The second meeting I attended at Bingley had a talk for new members about the structure and protocol for club competitions, which of course I listened to (though I'm not sure I'll enter any competitions this year). The rest of the membership went out in small groups on a 'scavenger hunt', armed with a list of challenges. Some of the photos they took were then shared and discussed in the second half of the meeting. 

It was good fun, so I decided I'd try my own scavenger hunt the next day, using one of the lists that was distributed. Here are my resulting images:

1 (above) - A splash of colour (Find a bold, vibrant colour and make it the star of your photo).

2 (above and below) - Leading lines (Use lines to draw the viewer into your image)

3 (above and below) - Movement (Freeze it, blur it or deliberately slow the motion) 

,

4 (above and below) - A different perspective (Shoot from unusually high, low, round a corner... make us see something differently)

5 (above and below) - A door or window (Look for colour, shape, character or symmetry)

It was an enjoyable challenge. You can be the judge of how well I did! 

The Penny Arcade

I met my daughter and grandgirls at Woodbank Garden Centre, where they have a Penny Arcade Museum, full of old slot machines and games such as you traditionally find on a seaside pier or at a funfair. You can exchange pound coins for a handful of old copper pennies and try your hand at various attractions. They seem to have extended the place. I'm sure there were many more machines than last time we went. It is very popular with families and quite a lot of fun. I wasn't terribly successful this time, though I did score a tube of Love Heart sweets, and several more pennies on the coin pusher machine. 

Fortune-telling machines spit out a short write-up predicting what will happen to you in the coming weeks. Thankfully my daughter's card turned out to be very positive! 

Concentration was necessary to hook a duck... not successful this time! 

Some of the machines are really rather attractive - colourful and retro. 

There are all sort of animated scenes and larger models too. All a lot of fun. 

Then, of course, we had to go visit Elvis the parrot and some of the other birds and animals in the centre. I suppose my girls will one day soon feel this is all 'beneath them' as they are becoming cool teenagers - but for now I'm happy to enjoy their enjoyment. 

Apple Day

I ventured along to a local community event - one of those 'small but beautiful' things that are so worth supporting. It was a celebration of Apple Day - harvesting and juicing our local apples. It was reminiscent of events you see abroad, where communities get together to pick olives or grapes and to celebrate the harvest. I guess these kinds of happenings were more common in the past but nowadays, when many of us get most of our produce from big supermarkets, we have lost the connection with our land - and with our community. 

Many helpers chopped apples to feed into the press. The press was screwed down to pulp the fruit. 

The pulp was compressed into a sieve:

Even the youngsters lent a hand to screw the press's lid down:

And behold, the apple juice: sweet, cloudy and full of natural goodness. What might have been wasted was put to full use. 

I think it's been a good season for fruit, perhaps because our trees - stressed by the summer's drought - seem to have decided they need to produce lots of seeds to survive. I've noticed numerous boxes and baskets of apples placed outside people's garden gates, with an invitation to 'help yourself to free apples'. This little community gathering was taking sharing that one step further. 

You could also buy local jam, home-made soup, buns and delicious ice cream. It was all rather delightful. 

In City Park

With the buzz around the Flower Carpet in front of City Hall, the rest of Bradford's City Park was relatively quiet and calm. Children are mostly at school and, anyway, the fountains were only just getting going, so there wasn't much water for anyone to play in. (Over the course of a day they gradually fill up the pool and then it's drained again.) It was a good chance to practice slow-motion blur on the water. (It's amazing how steady modern cameras are, even without a tripod.) 

Some of the jets are coloured by lights - quite pretty. 

I  passed the rather poignant memorial to the victims of the Bradford City Fire. It commemorates the tragic fire of 11th May 1985 at Bradford City football ground, in which 56 people lost their lives and around 300 were injured. The names of the lost, set within the broken stadium, extend out to touch the cloaks of the three figures, symbolising the eternal bond between the living and the dead. It was given to the city by our twinned city of Hamm in Germany. 

Flower carpet

I went into central Bradford to see the Flower Carpet being created, another event as part of the district-wide Nature Season. A regular feature in Belgium, this is apparently the first time such a carpet has been created in the UK. (Though in Derbyshire we do have traditional 'well dressings', which are upright pictures made from flower petals and seeds.)

Around 40 volunteers were up at the crack of dawn to start creating it, using more than 300,000 dahlia heads laid out carefully to follow a pattern etched on sheeting underneath. 

Measuring 29 metres across, the floral installation was designed by Bradford artist Shiraaz Ali and draws inspiration from the city’s textile heritage and our diverse communities. The flowers were brought over from Belgium in a refrigerated truck. 

I arrived around noon, when the carpet was about 75% complete. I watched for a while and returned later, when they were putting the finishing touches to it. It was very beautiful and the colours were absolutely stunning. It was designed to 'evolve' over the four days it was scheduled to be there (hoping the weather was kind to it). In the evenings there was a sound and light display planned, and ultimately the flowers will be composted. 

There were a limited number of tickets to view it from above, through one of the windows of City Hall. They were very quickly snapped up, so I missed that chance. Standing on a low wall was as high as I could get! I'm being naughty and copying one of the photos from the Bradford Culture Company FB page, presumably taken by a drone, just because it is so amazing. (Image copyright James Speakman/ PA Media Assignments and/or Andrew Benge. I hope they'll forgive me!)