Big Bridge, Small Boat

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This is the lift bridge over the river at Port Adelaide, photographed in summer, 2008. It's almost visually humorous to see a gigantic bridge opened fully to allow through a tiny sailboat on account of the mast being a fraction too tall to pass under the closed bridge! It also nicely contrasts the weight of the industrial construction of the bridge against the relative delicacy of the boat: one built to work solidly through the generations, the other built for speed in a mobile element. The picture was taken from the Hart's Mill Waterfront area, at medium-high telephoto, and was simply a matter of composition, the bright day providing ideal conditions. Sharpened only. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

White on White

Shooting interiors can be difficult, artificial lighting is always an interesting exercise, but here a white subject is seen against white lighting, and that is a recipe for burnout. But the chip compensated amazingly, as the shadow areas and the yellow parts can be seen to be properly exposed. This is an old British Bloodhound surface to air missile, photographed at the Fast Jets Fighter Museum, Parafield Airport, north of Adelaide, in January 2007. Only sharpness and colour were enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Salt and Steel

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The play of sunlight on the water and hulls makes a fascinating contrast to the shadows of the quayside, in this study of trawlers at Whitby, Yorkshire, UK, taken in November 2007. These are the powerful boats that go up into the arctic to bring back the fish to go with England's chips (or they used to be, I heard the Russian fishing fleet has been supplying England's fish and chip shops for many years now). The shot was taken by telephoto from the east side of the River Esk, looking into the same quadrant as the sun, thus the harsh reflections. The image was sharpened and the colour increased slightly for publication. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Trucks by Night

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This was one of the set I did at Newcastle Airport, England, in November 2007, shooting through plate glass as evening deepened. It was an experiment in exposure latitude and shutter speed, and especially in holding the camera steady actually against the glass. This was a long telephoto shot after full dark looking into the light pool of major floods. Though the tanker was moving, the shutter speed was sufficient to freeze the action. The composition is an interesting industrial scene and the contrast of the white vehicles against the night is quite striking. Sharpness and colour were enhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Whitby Fish Market Quays

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This is a wonderful texture shot: the wind-patterning on the water surface, the concrete and timber, the steel and rust of the boats, and the bright winter sun of a clear afternoon. I took this shot in early November, 2007, thankful that the roaring wind up on the cliffs did not reach to the protected harbour. Photographically this was a no-brainer, a little telephoto to properly frame the subject matter, keep the camera level, then snap. The atmosphere is what makes the picture: you can almost smell the salt and the fish, and hear the herring-gulls. Enhancements were slight, sharpness and colour saturation only. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Visual Contradictions

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Industry has to be somewhere, but the mind usually pictures it clustered around polluted rivers, or in areas sterilised by contamination. Thus the contradiction of this steam-belching installation (nuclear power station, perhaps?) surrounded by the rich greens of the English countryside. Somewhere in the Midlands, this frame was captured from the window of an express on the line between London and York in November, 2007. The eye is on one hand soothed by the farmland all around, yet offended by the ugly organic shapes of the cooling towers and their endless belch of steam that contributes to the overcast. Enhancements include sharpening, contrast and colour saturation. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic exposure, high-end optical zoom. Image by Mike.

Industry, from Above

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A domestic air connection on a clear morning is a moving canvas for a photographer. I try to keep my lens to the window, and you see the most amazing things, some of which even photograph cleanly. You're working with the ever-changing lighting angle, the cleanliness of the window, and your own reflexive ability to frame and shoot moving targets in some meaningful way. This was a chilly morning in November, 2006, at the end of a tiring series of connections from Australia. The domestic had left London just after dawn and was not far from landing at Newcastle, maybe 30-something minutes later, when we passed over this river industrial complex, and I spotted this ship. It looks like a service and support vessel for the North Sea oil rigs, and makes a fascinating sight with its cranes and helicopter pad. See how low the sun angle is, the shadows of buildings and cranes crossing the hull. I'm not sure whereabouts this is, on the Humber, the Tees or the Tyne, I don't remember exactly how long it was prior to landing. The shot was taken at maximum optical zoom looking hard down as the aircraft banked, and was the best of three. The frame was sharpened and colour-balanced to compensate for the dulling effect of the aircraft window. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic. Image by Mike.

Omnipresent Communication

You can go nowhere in the modern age (nowhere industrialised and urbanised) without communications. That mobile in your pocket is so compact because the network is all around it, it doesn't have to shout very far to reach big ears listening for it. These are the sort of ears involved, industrial masts that sprout from buildings and the landscape, to carry the signal traffic to computers that route it in the blink of an eye. Whether this particular mast carries the mobile phone network I'm not certain, but the same principle applies: signals, all around us, every instant. There is something very science fictional about it all, even from the perspective of living in the 21st century, and classic SF from fifty years ago rarely made accurate projections about information systems, or predicted the role they would come to play in our lives. We didn't get the spaceships, but we did get the computers, the phones, the giant TVs... And the structures, which would not look out of place in some harsh, mechanised landscape in the paintings of Foss, Elson, Moore or Jones. This was a simple telephoto framing of a mast on a tall building, shot through a construction site in central Adelaide on a hot Sunday morning in February, 2007. The image was sharpened 5% but is otherwise unenhanced. Fuji FinePix S5600, automatic exposure. Image by Mike.

Low Sun and Industry

There's always something engaging about the juxtaposition of the natural world with the pure artifice of human technology, and industrial buildings against the sky are the simplest of such compositions. But an industrial complex with a design aesthetic is not common at all, and the eye is drawn to the composition. These towers appear to be the chimneys from underground furnaces or kilns, at Britain's National Glass Centre, by the river at St Peters, in Sunderland. A rare clear sky framed the low sun of early winter; this would have been mid-afternoon and looking into the south, which tells you how far north Sunderland really is! The chip did an admirable job of balancing the extreme glare with the total silhouette of the towers. Fuji PinePix S5600, automatic. November, 2007. Image by Mike.

Steel and Hot Sun

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If there's one thing that characterises all modern cities it's that they can't exist without the industrial systems that put them up, and the tower crane is probably the most recognisable of them all. Besides their mechanical fascination, they appear and disappear like mushrooms: one day there's a vacant block and it seems the next time you look the cranes have sprouted and begun their march skyward. Then one day they simply disappear again, leaving a new building in their wake. This was a simple telephoto shot from street level while I was waiting for a bus one Sunday morning at the beginning of February, 2008, on King William St, Adelaide, and the hot day with its hard blue sky framed the industrial interest of cranes, antenna complexes and high-rise buildings in a way that just begged to be photographed. Fuji FinePix S5600, optical zoom, automatic exposure. Image by Mike.

Perspective Composition, In Steel

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This is the sort of image that always grabs my eye, the visual 'perspective effect' created by long, straight structures. Tower cranes are always great subject matter, dramatic and interesting, often seen against spectacular skies, thus juxtaposing the explicitly artificial with elemental nature: they are exciting industrial images, ranking with locomotives and foundries for their disembodied aesthetic appeal. This was a mid-November afternoon in London, a building site a few hundred yards west of the Tower and fronting the Thames. The contrail of an airliner passing diagonally behind the cranes created a symmetry that was too good not to frame up as it happened. FinePix S5600, full auto. Image by Mike.