Let there be light

Fife holiday 2026 #20

Whilst wandering the streets of St Andrews, I was delighted to come across a shop that still had its original Victorian cast iron and glass pavement lights, intended to allow a certain amount of light into the basement below. There used to be some in Saltaire but I think they have all been removed. The glass and iron deteriorates over time (those shown have been repaired with wood in places). I do like them. They usually look dusty and dull in situ but a bit of processing trickery lifts the colours. 

 

Line side

Another collage of five 'lines', as part of the little project I've been challenging myself to try. It's good occasionally to free yourself up and just play with ideas. I quite like the colour palette here, as well as the lines. 

Learning my lines

I subscribe to a few newsletters by photographers, and about photography. One of them recently suggested a project to take five photos of 'lines', which seemed a bit of a different challenge. So I set off around Saltaire looking for 'lines'. Here's one set of five that I found. 

It's fun to try different things, outside one's usual 'box'. 

Flaky

Perhaps it's a bit 'flaky' but I can occasionally be found taking multiple photos of an old door or metal panel, when I come across one on my walks. The peeling paint and rusty marks strike me as really quite exciting and interesting. These patterns are far too strong to be useable as a texture on another picture, I feel, yet the colours and shapes still attracted me. 

Underwater?

Walking past Salts Mill to the main entrance, I noticed the windows have been lined with some kind of clear film, perhaps to insulate them or to block UV light from spoiling the artworks inside. I can't say I've noticed it on the inside but from outside you can see that it has not adhered uniformly and there are lots of streaks and bubbles. I became fascinated by them and took lots of photos. They gave me the impression of an underwater scene, with weeds and fronds drifting.

Back home, I've been playing with them to create collages. It's a very absorbing pastime, rather addictive! 

Lister Lake abstract

I enjoy noticing reflections and trying to find a balanced composition. Rather liked the colours here. It was Lister Park's lake, on my last visit, quite a while ago now (when the trees still had leaves!)

I'm going stir-crazy being confined to home. Since it snowed last weekend it has barely got above freezing so there is sheet ice everywhere, on the side roads and pavements (though the main routes have been gritted). I can't get the car out as our drive slopes uphill and is icy. I've been reluctant to go out on foot in case of a fall. Our NHS is in a bad way. They've been on a shaky footing since Covid and now there's a winter flu surge. Ambulances, hospitals and Emergency Departments are struggling so, if you do have an accident, the prospect is a long wait for an ambulance (even if you're lying in the snow!) and then an hours long or even days long wait in A&E. So the best option is not to take risks, I feel! 

A little light fun

I was sitting reading at home when I noticed this pattern of reflected light on my wall. I'm not even sure what was creating it. Sunlight off a puddle perhaps? It seemed rather fun, so I took a photo and slightly changed the tone and colour with my processing software. You can imagine it might be all kinds of things.... let your imagination run riot. We have a 'Minimalist' competition at my camera club early next year. This could be a contender. 

Something different

And now for something completely different... I spotted this when I was looking for 'yellow' things a while back. Reviewing my images, I decided it was more orange than yellow so I didn't include it but I keep going back to it as an abstract composition. There's something about it that appeals to me. It is, of course, the lighting panel of a car, with the orange indicator (you know, those things that people never seem to use any more 😂  - at least round this neck of the woods they don't).

I did not take note of the make of car or anything. For me it was purely the shapes and colours that caught my eye - and those perfectly spaced raindrops that echo the punched holes at the top. 

Unintentional abstract

On the edge of Fewston reservoir, I was fascinated by a grove of trees at the waterline, with trunks partially submerged. The colours and reflections made intriguing patterns. This is a straight photo but looks like something you might create with clever use of multiple exposures or software.

Four abstracts

One day I challenged myself to find some 'different' views of Saltaire's familiar places. These are some of the images I created. They could be called 'abstracts', since they might fit the definition of 'relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colours, and textures'. They are also about:  extracting or removing (something, from its context). It's a way of playing, anyway, and freeing myself so that I might find something new in this small place where I have lived for almost a quarter of a century and where I have photographed extensively for the past fifteen years. 

The top image is reflections in the canal of Salts Mill and the last remaining walkway that spans the canal, linking Salts Mill with the New Mill. 

Below is shadows cast by the church's gates.  

Then, less abstract and not 'new' in itself as this is one of the perennial subjects I return to - reflections of trees in water. Yet it never stays the same for more than a second, as the water swirls, and the cloud patterns and the light change.  

 

And finally,  a variation of the top image, pushing myself to be a bit more creative: 

Curves and geometrics

Leeds Dock was redeveloped as a mixed residential, leisure and business area, around the canal basin, in the late 1990s/early 2000s. I find such 'modern' developments often have a wealth of interesting angles and shapes, reflections and juxtapositions and it's fun to seek out abstract compositions. Here are a few I found.

Stripes

I like stripes. In fact, one of my friends teases me because I wear so many striped T shirts and jumpers! I'm always delighted, therefore, to take my camera down to Leeds Dock in Leeds city centre. Some of the modern buildings there are clad in wooden screening, painted in a rainbow of bright colours. The effect is magnified by the reflections in the buildings' windows and the way it all wraps round the corners of the blocks. 

 

I took the images above on a recent visit whilst the one below was taken several years ago. It is a photo that has done quite well in camera club competitions. 

Machines (mostly)

There is lots to see above ground at the National Coal Mining Museum, with some of the original machinery still working and sheds full of vehicles and machines, archived for posterity. You begin to realise that, when our mines were gradually closed, it signalled the end of an era not just for the miners themselves and their communities but for whole swathes of British manufacturing capacity that supported the industry.

I found it interesting to try to pick out small photographic compositions from the machinery. 

Not a machine of course, but included just because he was cute, a little Welsh pit pony called Ernie, one of four retired pit ponies still kept at the Museum. They spend much of their time grazing in fields around the museum but are brought in to stables so that visitors can see them and learn about their lives. 

Indiana playtime

I was fascinated by the way the light and shade played out on Robert Indiana's brightly painted aluminium sculptures at YSP. I found myself drawn to making abstract photos and then I've processed them in different ways, even sometimes changing the colour balance. The square arrangement above started off as images taken from his Red, Blue, Green LOVE sculpture. The other three are abstracts from the One through Zero (The Ten Numbers) sequence. Wonderfully vibrant, aren't they? 

 

'Black Mound'

Here's another of the artworks that I enjoyed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP).  It is 'Black Mound' by David Nash, created in situ in 2013. It is made from coal and oak, charred black by carefully controlled burning.  The artist said of it:  'With wood sculpture one tends to see ‘wood’, a warm familiar material, before reading the form: wood first, form second. Charring radically changes this experience. The surface is transformed from a vegetable to a mineral – carbon – and one sees the form before the material.'

The more I looked, studied and photographed it, the more I appreciated it - the subtle black on black tones and textures, the relationship between the stumps and the spaces between and the way nature was encroaching and redefining the piece, slowly reclaiming it as her own. The bright yellow dandelion, a common weed, was showcased, becoming part of the sculpture, like a spark among the ashes. 

And just because I like playing, here's an abstract composition based on the image above:

Art-efacts

One of the places on my list to visit in York was their excellent art gallery. They had an exhibition of art by the Bloomsbury Group but I eschewed that in favour of the gallery's own collections and an exhibition of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, which was fascinating. They do allow photography in some areas, and for some reason I was drawn to making slightly abstract images that are mainly about light and shadow.

The small pool with fountains at the entrance (above) reminded me of Hockney's swimming pool paintings. 

A shelf full of mid-20th century glassware was eye-catching when the sun shone through the skylight: 

Ceramics with sinuous shapes caught my eye:

As did the structure of the building itself: 

 

Victoria Gate

More 'looking up' in Leeds, photos mostly taken around the newish (2016) Victoria Gate shopping mall, which houses the John Lewis department store and other relatively high-end retailers. It's a bewildering place, even more so on the inside than the outside, with lots of glass, shiny marble and soaring escalators. I find it makes me feel quite disorientated and a little light-headed, so that although I love the John Lewis brand, I don't much enjoy shopping here. I'd rather go to the branches in Manchester or Sheffield's Meadowhall, which feel a bit less dizzying. They also have very keen security guards who don't like you to take photos inside the mall itself, which is a pity since it is quite spectacular. 

My final photo is taken at the back of the Leeds Kirkgate Market Hall, presenting quite a colourful contrast to its grand and ornate Victorian frontage.