Scoping it out
At the end of May this year I planned a trip out to Jodrell Bank, after a conversation with Emily in the barber shop where I get what’s left off my hair cut. She had been raving about it and how it was an amazing place to visit with the information on display and the Lovell Telescope.
Loading up my cameras for the journey I headed off. In my bag were my new Leica Q3 digital camera and a Canon Sureshot Zoom XL loaded with 35mm film.
On the way out I went through a place called Holmes Chapel and there was an amazing viaduct off to the left of the road, so I decided to stop in the gateway and get the drone out to take some video of this amazing feat of engineering. I had a few photos of the wonderful structure before I popped the DJI Mini 3 Pro up and had it floating around the twin rail lines on the top before capturing a vid of a train coming down the lines. Only after I got home to look at the photos on my mac did I spot that the Lovell telescope was visible in the distance.
Incidentally, I found out that Harry Styles, ex of One Direction, grew up in Holmes Chapel and the viaduct is a bit of a shrine to him as a 1D video was filmed there…
Back in the car on the way to the space themed facility I was a little disappointed that it started raining but a mile down the road I caught my first glimpse of the large white dish on the horizon. ( I didn’t see it with the drone, as I wasn’t looking for it). I pulled over at the next available safe place and then got the camera out, set the zoom onto 90mm equivalent to take a couple of pics.
The 90mm equivalent isn’t really a 90mm lens though, it’s actually a crop from the full size image captured on the 28mm lens. at the 28mm lens it’s a 60 megapixel image, but cropped into 90mm it drops it to 5.8megapixels. As it works out I didn’t keep the picture and instead used one from my iPhone, it’s still not great but it was my first view.
As I got closer I could see more and more of the dish and wasn’t sure what else was going to be available to see when I got there. Once I got there and went to the ticket desk I found that I could use my Student Art Pass to get a concession rate. The main adult tickets are £14 but it would still be amazing at that cost.
In the visitor centre there was a good display of technology and explanations as to where and why the Jodrell Bank observatory came to become what it is today. The fascinating explanation of the birth of radio astronomy as a result of listening to enemy radio comms including the Sputnik satellite. The inside of this visitor centre is walled by a corrugated metal plating material which I later found out was the old surface of the dish, pre-refurb. It’s interesting stuff and then once ready it was time to go into the theatre and watch the history of the observatory and a bit of a space journey, which I had to close my eyes for due to motion sickness.
The video was informative and well done, narrated by Prof Brian Cox, I was going to go outside again but I thought things could only get wetter. (Infinite Monkey Cage joke).
After examining the displays and reading as much as I could I headed out to the large piece of land where the Lovell Telescope was sited, and was impressed by the size. On the way to the base of the huge dish I stopped at a couple of listening dishes, set opposite each other where you can whisper into one and the voice is sent vie the parabolic structure to the other dish where someone can hear it easily. It was great and I was loving it. Even better was when other families were playing on them and you could stand halfway between the two and hear both sides of the conversation really easily. I love physics.
Once at the base of the Lovell Radio Telescope I started taking a few more photos and then my film camera ran out, I’d only put a roll of Ilford Pan in it and didn’t notice it was only 24 frames.. Doh.
I had a wander around the base, even though it was fenced off, and was amazed when it was moving on the rails. The engineering in this device is amazing and the shoulders that the dish rotates on is made from parts of gun turrets from Royal Navy Warships HMS Revenge and HMS Revenge Sovereign. It is massive and the lvoely sounds it makes when rotating around it’s base are wonderful to hear, I spent time recording videos here for the sounds.
A few more photos of the structures and a wander back through the exhibitions before the shop and then I was on my way out to the car to head to my next destination.
As I was driving away from the observatory and complex, I noticed the Lovell dish in the distance so stopped to throw the drone up and grab a picture or two of it. I was careful to not get too close or get in front of the antenna as I didn’t want to be responsible for causing a nuisance.
It’s Terminal
It was going to be a 40 minute drive to my next stop, a brutalist design icon of a bus station was awaiting me in Preston. I’d seen pictures of the building and thought I’d head over that way to go and grab some photos of the striking piece of modernist concrete.
Once there I chose to park on the very top floor of the multi storey car park atop the bus terminal so that I could fly my drone from there, if it stopped raining.
I parked and had a wander around with my Leica Q3 capturing some wonderful photos of a public building that I later learned from a work colleague that had grown up in Preston was always a loved part of the town. I’m a sucker for a multi storey car park, as you probably know, so it was a great experience having an amble around, in and out of the building and around the bus station forecourt.
The car park was very photogenic and I was making some wide angle photos with the 28mm lens on the Q3 and also on my iPhone 13 Pro. There was too much to fit into one photograph but what I captured I loved. Some images I chose to desaturate to black and white (greyscale) and others were left with a bit of colour, but absolutely no colour popping. For some concrete buildings, it appears to suit a black and white photo, this was one that did.
I made many images of the bus station, coach station and car park before heading into the city to see if there might be any more concrete, I wasn’t disappointed. The Guildhall building is a concrete wonder that reminded me of the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo with it’s strong feeling of being upside down. Almost like the huge concrete internal staircases are visible on the outside but they are seemingly not supported by anything. The angles and faceted features were almost like some type of concrete gemstone.
Moving further I came across the Avenham Multi Storey Car Park being close to some old derelict buildings that had been pulled down leaving the back walls only. the car park was quite cool and a car park attendant came out to talk to me. These types of meetings usually end up with me being told to sling my hook and stop taking photographs but this guy was great, he told me to get up onto the top floor and have a look out over the rest of the city. He was sound, and he wished me well on my mission. If only all security staff were as chilled as this fellow.
Up onto the top of the car park it was weird seeing signs for Covid 19 and social distancing looking so fresh as if they’d only just been installed. Of course there is an obligatory set of stairs with yellow edged treads and a cold steel handrail to just be functional enough without being inviting. Not quite as pissy as the Northern Quarter car park in Manchester a while before, it was well looked after.
Time to head back to the Bus Terminal on the way through the city participating in some candid street photography. Upon arriving back at the car I noticed it had stopped raining. Out came the Mini 3 Pro, a quick check on Drone Assist showed that the one end of the car park was safe to fly from but if I was not careful I could get too close to the HMP Preston and and up in a cell myself. In the UK drones are used to drop drugs and other contraband into prisons so it’s taken very seriously.
On the way home I stopped at Lou Coffin’s Gulf petrol station which has had the name removed from it but the pumps are still there, looking a bit tired and faded nowadays. It always served as a signpost marker to tell me I was on the right track to get home soon and with the tidying up I thought it won’t be long until it’s gone completely.
Manchester MMU Exhibition
Earlier in the month I had the opportunity to visit Manchester and attend an exhibition for Manchester Metropolitan University Photography students in their second year. One of our friends daughters, Amelia, is studying photography there so I took the chance to go and do some street photography and a visit to The Alan hotel, restaurant and bar for the exhibition.
I do like to see how other people approach photography and Amelia is my son’s age and I’ve known the family since all our kids were at school together, so it’s odd that she has now grown into a photographer to me. I’ve seen her work at the Shrewsbury Sixth Form College when she presented at the end of her BTEC a couple of years prior and was impressed by her storytelling.
I had a wander around the city looking at the Northern Quarter car park, as mentioned previously,, some street photography on the main avenues of the city centre, especially during a pro-Palestine march. I had a great day just walking around and then I popped into the exhibition to see the work.
I was impressed by some of the work on display, there was a particular photographer who had created digitally what I thought had been a wet-plate collodion looking photograph series of his family members. Amelia had created some images of people in a conservatory of a stately home, with their faces replaced by the same photograph folded up into the shape of a flower. She called her series Bounded Flora and it can be seen on her instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/photosbyameliadance/
There were works by her coursemates that relied on props also, some that worked and some that I struggled with but it’s all subjective so everyone else would have been fine with it all and it might just be me. It was till great to see the emerging talent of the youth of today not wasting their lives solely with selfies and food photos but interesting and thought provoking images.
Not one to waste a journey, on the return journey from Manchester I popped into a disused RAF Base by Tilstock, nr Whitchurch where there are a number of disused metal buildings that would be a good scene for a modern horror movie. After a few photos here and trying not to get shouted at by the owner of the property I headed home for a long old sleep.
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