Look here!

[Randy]

Don't know how many of you are familiar with the photos taken with antique cameras by Gene M. Gene buys old cameras with found film, and also takes pictures of old barns. Gene is a member here, but doesn't post much. I found this set of pictures on another forum....take a peek. Monson Farm, Monson Mass

[kamera]

I love to see and to shoot old delapidated buildings. They have a charm all their own. In b&w they seem to actually take you back to their prime era. And in color you are brought back to the present and wonder how much longer will they be there...or soon will it be a shopping mall or housing development.

These shots are great.

Ron Head
Kalamazoo, MI

[Randy]

I know Ron, Gene is gaining a cult status on some boards. If you get a chance to check out his website, do so....it's pretty cool.

[PeterW]

I too love to shoot pics of old dilapidated buildings ... when I can find them. Trouble is that building land here in the south east UK is at such a premium that over the past 20 years or so they were all bought up by developers because it's easier to get planning permission to replace an old building than it is to get planing permission to build new on virgin land except in specified development areas.

When I say trouble, I don't mean real trouble. I'm glad that planning permission for development has got harder and harder otherwise the whole south east would become one huge paved suburban sprawl. (They paved paradise, put up a parking lot, come true!).

Peter

[Randy]

I'm suprised Walmart hasn't invaded England, Peter. There's a Walmart in every major town here, and they've put every small store around them out of business. I owned a hobbyshop for 15 years and my mainstay was model kits...Walmart arrived and sold them for less than I paid for them.

[PeterW]

Randy,

I'm suprised Walmart hasn't invaded England, Peter.

Walmart doesn't operate in the UK under its own name at the moment - at least not as far as I know, but it owns the ASDA supermarket chain and is in negotiations to buy the Matalan chain. At the moment, ASDA majors on food and household plus a growing clothing range, and Matalan is almost all clothing, but these things could change.

One of the difficulties Walmart faces in the UK is that retailing is in the middle of a huge upheaval, at least it is in the south east. There are just no new sites for large stores available in the towns, and redevelopment to build a big store is being refused 'change of use planning' to avoid traffic congestion.

Where town shopping areas are being rebuilt they are rebuilt as pedestrianised Shopping Malls with a large number of small shops instead of a fewer number of big stores, sometimes all under cover, in an attempt to slow down the demise of small shops and small retailers. In other words, an undercover 'High Street' complete with cafes and restaurants. Whole sections of towns are now pedestrianised. Local councils just don't like cars because they clog up the towns and fill the air with exhaust fumes. Clean air is the in-thing at the moment, and the Shopping Malls and most of the cafes are non-smoking. I smoke, but I've got to admit that no-smoking pedestrianised town centres are more pleasant, more healthy and less dangerous for children.

It seems to be working ... gradually. Small shops where you're served by someone who knows their trade and can offer advice, rather than a check-out girl who couldn't care less, are slowly coming back.

Unless there is an existing multi-storey car park for the Shopping Malls (and some of those are being pulled down), car parking is VERY restricted, usually for disabled people only, and out-of-town car parks are being built as Park 'n Ride places with fleets of buses to carry people into the town centre.

One drawback of all this is that small shops in the villages are slowly disappearing because people who live there have got cars and prefer the wider choice of shops in the Shopping Malls.

Outside of the towns, anything from five to six miles away, are the big 'Retail Parks' with huge carparks. You sometimes have to wheel your shopping trolley quite a long way to the car, but development of thesde is closely controlled to avoid urban spawl.

These Retail Parks have the large food supermarkets and big cut-price chain stores for other goods like home computers, DIY home improvement, carpets, home electrical and electronic goods etc. The buildings are large, but almost as soon as any extension to a park is built it is snapped up by a waiting list of UK retail chains. As an alternative to customers having to go that far out of town some chains now offer buying from an on-line catalogue, with free home delivery if you spend more than £15.

Walmart would have to join the queue, one reason I suppose why Walmart is looking at buying existing UK store chains. Walmart will get here, somehow, but Retail Parks have expensive overheads. I think the emphasis will be on mass consumer sales rather than specialised interests and hobbies. There wouldn't be sufficient sales per square foot, which is what the big chains work on here.

Sorry to carry on off topic, but you started it.

Peter

[paulatukcamera]

I am surrounded by them!

Down the end of the garden, we have a derelict mill building. At night as another bit of roofing falls off, the "crash" makes us wake up.

My garage is an old building that now has this nasty lean - but it doesn't seem to get any worse. It was a small hosiery manufacturers assembly shed/mill at the turn of the century. It is wood, but double skinned (for warmth) and there is an old fireplace they obviously huddled round at the back.

At the back of my house is a patch of land with two Ivy covered ruined cottages, again just mouldering into ruins.

100 yards Down the road, an old lady, Mivy used to live in a cottage that has now been abandoned to the elements and the vegetation is growing all round it.

By the church (now abandoned because of costly roof problems) is another house that has remained unoccupied (though not a ruin - mouldering gently) for the 22 years I've lived here!

Photos? Are you all really serious? If so, I'll wander around the garden and give you ruins galore! (probably have to be digital if you want a quick view)

Now could I run these holidays here "a ruined view" Makes you think doesn't it.

Do you know, I have never given them a thought - or photographed them in all the years I have been here!

Paul

[PeterW]

Ah, Paul,

The great god Commerce obviously hasn't yet penetrated to West Wales. I can remember ... just ... when some country parts of the south-east were like that. Country people lived there then, not commuting yuppies.

Nowadays BMWs and Jaguars and big bull-barred school-run 4x4s that never go off road would quiver in indignation at the mere thought of such things; gnarled garden gnomes would cover their children's innocent eyes; plastic double-glazed gazebos would gape and melt with horror, and blue-rinse matrons would swoon and need ministrations of smelling salts in darkened rooms.

BTW, err ... my back garden still looks like a junk yard, but I've got high fences and I'm old enough and eccentric enough to get away with it. ;D

"Strange old chap. Lived in the same house for years. He collects cameras and stuff, you know. Funny old folding things that had film inside."

"Really? How odd. I collect Georgian silver."

Put me in your area with a dozen rolls of FP4, and some low sunshine and I'd spend a week photographing not just the buildings but interiors and details of them, trying to bring out the sense of abandonment, neglect and faded past glory.

"The old yellow stucco of the time of the Regent is flaking and peeling.
The well chain is broken, the windows are gone ..."

Can't remember now who wrote it, but it used to be a favourite poem. But then I'm just a nostalgic old Romantic, living on beyond my era.

Peter