A shot you can't get now

[PeterW]

Here's a shot of Canterbury Cathedral which you can't get now. I took it sometime in the late 1960s. The day was rather dull with flat lighting but I wanted to get the pic as it was one of the rare times I'd seen the cathedral without any scaffolding round it.

We were on the open top deck of a multi-storey car park which has since been pulled down, and anyway a tall department store has now been built where the flat topped buildings in the foreground were.

I had my 1934 6x9 Super Ikonta with uncoated f/4.5 Tessar lens loaded with Ektachrome, and borrowed a step ladder from some maintenance men to get the shot. The transparency came out with a nasty blue cast which I had to deal with in PS, but I think the uncoated Tessar coped well with the lighting and the colour. That isn't distortion on the smaller tower on the left. The front really does slope back like that.



PeterW

[Randy]

Wonderful Peter, that would be a highly sought after picture in Canterbury I would think, eh?

[mickeyobe]

Peter,

A very nice picture of a magnificent building. We don't seem to have anything like that here in the provinces.

Mickey

[PeterW]

Thanks, Randy and Mickey.

When I first took this I tried printing it in the darkroom with direct reversal colour paper, but couldn't filter out the blue cast properly, so just put it away in a box. PS seems to have done a good job on it. One-up to the digital darkroom, and a lot more comfortable than groping about for a print tank in complete darkness.

PeterW

[doubs43]

Peter, here's another picture you can't get now..... and it's in your backyard. This was taken in 1983 with an Olympus OM-1.



Walker

[PeterW]

Hi Walker,

I remember the scaffolding, it was there for several months while the tower was getting a wash and brush up.

Not sure about quite in my backyard though, I'd need quite a long lens to get that shot. The clock tower of the Palace of Westminster, to give it its proper title, is about 54 miles from me. Nothing in terms of the vastness of the U.S. but the clock tower and Westminster Bridge is a 'bridge too far' to photograph from here, even if I climbed up on the roof. When I worked in London I used to walk or drive past it several times a week, and never thought of photographing it.

Way back in 1802 Wordworth wrote about the view from Westminster Bridge: "Earth has not anything to show more fair". Strange isn't it? We so seldom see the beauty in familiar views, only in views we see when we're miles away from home.

I suppose we just don't think enough about familiar things until they're pulled down and built over. To quote again, this time from Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi: "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Three or more years ago on the Zenit forum they started a project called Zemlya, or hometown in Russian. Members could post, I think, up to five pictures of their hometown and surrounding district. Tom Piel put up a separate board for it so the pictures wouldn't get wiped. Members could change the pictures as often as they wanted, and put a note on the main forum.

I know we'd be pinching someone else's idea, but maybe we could do something similar? How about it, Randy? The Zenit one had a world map as a font page, divided up into sections - US, Canada, Europe, Midddle East, Far East and Australia and New Zealand if remember rightly. You clicked on the region to go to a list of members who'd posted there, and then click on a member's name to see the pics.

Maybe we could do something similar. Maybe we could get someone to host it free. A banner ad wouldn't worry me much. Only don't look to me to run it and moderate it. We'd need someone a bit younger and more vigourous than I'm feeling at the moment.

Just musing - 'Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow', to quote yet again, but I for one would love to see where members live. Any thoughts (or volunteers!) anyone?

PeterW

[Randy]

Peter, we could call it "My little town" like in the Paul Simon song.

[doubs43]

peterw said:

Hi Walker,

I remember the scaffolding, it was there for several months while the tower was getting a wash and brush up.

Not sure about quite in my backyard though, I'd need quite a long lens to get that shot. The clock tower of the Palace of Westminster, to give it its proper title, is about 54 miles from me. Nothing in terms of the vastness of the U.S. but the clock tower and Westminster Bridge is a 'bridge too far' to photograph from here, even if I climbed up on the roof. When I worked in London I used to walk or drive past it several times a week, and never thought of photographing it.

Way back in 1802 Wordworth wrote about the view from Westminster Bridge: "Earth has not anything to show more fair". Strange isn't it? We so seldom see the beauty in familiar views, only in views we see when we're miles away from home.

I suppose we just don't think enough about familiar things until they're pulled down and built over. To quote again, this time from Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi: "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone."

Three or more years ago on the Zenit forum they started a project called Zemlya, or hometown in Russian. Members could post, I think, up to five pictures of their hometown and surrounding district. Tom Piel put up a separate board for it so the pictures wouldn't get wiped. Members could change the pictures as often as they wanted, and put a note on the main forum.

I know we'd be pinching someone else's idea, but maybe we could do something similar? How about it, Randy? The Zenit one had a world map as a font page, divided up into sections - US, Canada, Europe, Midddle East, Far East and Australia and New Zealand if remember rightly. You clicked on the region to go to a list of members who'd posted there, and then click on a member's name to see the pics.

Maybe we could do something similar. Maybe we could get someone to host it free. A banner ad wouldn't worry me much. Only don't look to me to run it and moderate it. We'd need someone a bit younger and more vigourous than I'm feeling at the moment.

Just musing - 'Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow', to quote yet again, but I for one would love to see where members live. Any thoughts (or volunteers!) anyone?

PeterW

Peter, as I recall the scaffolding stayed up for more than a year and possibly several years. It was more than a touch-up. It was a complete refurbishment of the tower and the clock works...... a really long term endeavor. That's how I remember it but I could be wrong. "Backyard" was, of course, figuratively speaking. I knew you were some distance from London..... possibly my favorite city of all. So much to see and do.

I once bought a pistol from a man named Tom Collins who ran a gun shop that I reached using the Elephant and Castle stop on the Bakerloo Line? His nephew was staring in a TV series about a Police detective IIRC. Tom Collins was a peculiar man and I'm told once blew himself through the window of his shop when he accidentally ignited a keg of gun powder. When I arrived, he couldn't find the specific pistol I wanted and asked that I come back in an hour. I did and he said he'd found it. He then took nearly 15 minutes finding it again!! I shot it in competition for Suffolk County for about two years before trading it for a newer one.

I see the new category for home towns. I'll be posting some I took over the hollidays in the town where I grew up. I'm still scanning.

Walker

[SidW]

peterw said:

.... Way back in 1802 Wordworth wrote about the view from Westminster Bridge: "Earth has not anything to show more fair" ....

Peter, still on topic but shooting by eye. Some members might not know that Wordsworth was standing on one of the marvels of his time, the second bridge across the Thames in London, 50 years old in 1802. We can neither see it or photograph it because it was damaged a few decades later and replaced in 1862 with the one we see today. Nor can we photograph the view he admired. What did he see? Not the Houses of Parliament, St Thomas's hospital or County Hall. The old mediaeval Westminster Palace perhaps, open country and an unrestricted view of Lambeth Palace on the south side, no other bridges. Looking downstream no bridges until London Bridge round the bend. No Waterloo Railway station or Clapham junction. The banks of the Thames were different, too, not the stonework we see today. Anyone have an old engraving of the 18thc riverside?

[PeterW]

Hi Sid,
I've got quite a few copies of engravings of old London, but not really any riverscapes. Here are three of bridges:


Westminster Bridge circa 1750, possibly as it was when Wordsworth stood on it admiring the view.


London Bridge circa 1756.


London Bridge as rebuilt circa 1796

PeterW

[SidW]

Great Peter. The first picture shows Westminster Bridge when it was brand new. The artist is downstream from the bridge, looking towards Westminster Hall beyond the bridge, eventually incorporated in the new houses of parliament, and beyond that Westminster abbey. On "this" side, the artist's side, unexpectedly for me, there's a substantial warehouse sort of building with 5 or 6 stories. I've read of a stonemason's yard there. And the Thames barges, with their booms that go diagonally uo to the top of the sail.

The mast of a barge would have to be dropped to get under the arches of old London bridge, second picture. That would have gone when Wordsworth stood on Westminster Bridge in 1802, not that he would have seen it on account of the bend in the river. It had been replaced as in the third picture. And look, there's a barge coming through with its mast down, moving upstream without any help unless it's the in-coming tide. And there's another in the second picture.

[PeterW]

Hi Sid,

Found some more copies of old engravings of the same locality, just a few years after Wordsworth wrote his poem. You obviously have an interest in London's history, and I thought they they might interest you, or anyone else who has a liking for London.


This is a general view of Westminster from the roof of Whitehall circa 1807. Over on the left you can see the bridge, and the sweep of the river that Wordsworth must have seen plus Westminster Hall and the old Houses of Parliament.



Here's Westminster Hall circa 1808.


This last one is what remained after the fire of 1834 of the shell of the Houses of Parliament that Wordsworth saw. Fortunately, Westminster Hall itself survived the fire.

I've got quite a few more copies of old engravings of the central London area, but as this is all very off topic, drop me a PM or email me at [e-mail] if there are any other parts in which you have a particular interest. Much of what's shown in the oldest engravings has gone, but much that's in the later ones remains, and in some photographs taken about 1915-1917.

PeterW

[bobm]

I've got a shot of the Skye Bridge just prior to completion, taken from one of the ferries that used to cross between Kyle of Lochalsh and Kyleakin and with the other ferry also in shot.

With the completion of the bridge, the ferry service was discontinued.

I'd post it, but it's on slide and I don't have anything suitable to scan it with.......