February, Flaxmills and Firestarting!

It’s Mill Time

What a busy month it’s been so far then. In the first week of February we had a trip to the Flaxmill Maltings in Shrewsbury.

The buildings at the site in Ditherington host the first ever Iron framed building. Now we’re not talking the first in Shropshire or the first in England, this is the first in the world. This building was designed using some pretty revolutionary techniques with cast iron being used as the frame and a brick skin. The reason was due to fires in Flax mills which were more often than not made of wood and brick.

This construction technique is the basis of all modern skyscrapers and dates back to this design in 1796, this is quite an extraordinary set of buildings. If you want to know more history, and there is lots more, click here.

Degradation

Caterpillar Shrewsbury, where I work, have a great relationship with the community and have been involved in some worthy projects in the area around Ditherington.  With these connections Cat employees often find out about open days at this historical site, and the Cat Photographic Society then find out also. What a great opportunity to go into this place while it’s in a state of disrepair and take some good shots.

So it happened that Graham, a member of Cat PS, was talking to a member of the Flaxmill regeneration project and got talking about photography. There is to be some Visual recording of the site as it is today and as it progresses to become one of the great attractions of Shropshire’s County Town.

Upon entering we were told where we could and couldn’t go, were given a hard hat and told to go and have fun.

We walked off into the old buildings with our cameras, completely unescorted and started snapping. The degradation of the buildings, whilst sad, makes for some really interesting photos. The textures and colours along with the striking shapes and over engineered parts of the building really drag you around from one location to the next.

This photo is from the South Silo and above each of the ceiling mounted inverted pyramids is a huge silo for holding the grain that was used when this site was converted into a Maltings for processing the Malt ready for some ale production.

This photo shows the columns holding up the massive constructions with sunlight being cast upon their bases and on the floor. The sunlight enters this dark-ish room through the little holes in the window boards  These I was to find out from Graham were to let the bats in the area get in and out of the buildings at will.

This isn’t a monochrome picture but real colours as taken on my Canon 500D using the kit lens (18-55). I like the picture as it’s quite brooding and the light on the concrete surfaces is washed out, exactly like it was to the eyes that were struggling with this brightness in this murky room.

A Light in the Black

This next photo is the result of a bit of trial and error and shows an old machine of some sort in a  completely dark room on the second or third floor of the main mill building.

When I found out we’d be allowed to shoot in the buildings without being on the usual tour I decided that I might take my light painting kit. The parts of the kit I could fit into my pockets were a sprinkling of LED bicycle lights, a torch or two and some bits of string.

We started off by setting our cameras up on tripods in front of this interesting box of rust  and then tried different techniques to make an intriguing picture.

We attempted to do a long exposure or two and paint the machine with a torch to illuminate the parts we wanted to see and to leave the rest in shadow. The torch wasn’t strong enough and in the end we used a Jessops flash on 1/16 power to light up the front and then the side. It gave us the pleasing result of lighting up some of the surrounding room too.

Then I removed my bicycle lights on string from my pocket and attempted to create an orb. This picture, above, has two orbs in it but the red one is concealed by the foreground machine. You can see some pleasing red light in the back corner of the room and again I like this effect.

Graham’s photo, here,  is off the same exposure and shows both orbs. The difference in photos is quite astonishing considering. I think that the ISO of our photos was significantly different and this is why mine is slightly darker.

Visual Volunteering

We did have a good walk around the some of the site but there was still some we didn’t get to this time. Fortunately, this Visual Recording is an ongoing project and I’ve now signed up as a Volunteer to support the project with a little of my time now and again. All they ask in return is a copy of your photos, there are different agreements as to whether they can use your photo with/without attribution or for commercial / non commercial uses. I see it as a valuable project for our town and also a valuable bit of experience in a site of historical importance.

Twisted Firestarters

After the Flax mill fun on the Saturday, it was time for some Monday night Cat PS meeting and small field trip hilarity.

A group of around seven of us met up in the “Quarry Park” after dark to shoot some steel wool light painting photos. The group enjoyed themselves I think, almost as much as I did.

In the previous two weeks there had been a tutorial on my blog of how to do this and how to take some photos of it too! The team had done their homework and arrived ready for some “setting fire to Bob” fun.

We chose the Bandstand after a great idea from Graham for the location. All tripods were set up and cameras ready for some long exposures. The training began with helping people to get their ISO’s set mid range and apertures set likewise then use manual settings for shutter speed, some used 15/20/30 secs and others used BULB to capture all required.

Dave, the founder of the Cat PS stood central in the bandstand with a torch (flash-light for our american cousins) shining into his little face. Apart from keeping unwelcome spectators from interfering, it acted as a point where people could point and manually focus on before the main event.

You can see from the above photo that I was in the centre, after Dave ran for it, I lit the steel wool with my PP3 9v battery, shouted “OK START” to the waiting pack of paparazzi and then spun the whisk on a string around in a vertical circle and then turned around on the spot to create a wire-frame orb effect that you see in the centre of the spark fest.

The first few pictures we took showed the sparks and whirling wire-wool dervish but the detail was missing on the structure itself. Looking at these results we came up with an idea of using a flash gun remotely to fill in the foreground of the pillars. Some of the other guys also had a large torch to hand and used them to paint the dome of the structure to illuminate the colours and the weather vane.

The results of the photos for all of our club members will be shared no doubt in time and will have varying levels of success. I did see some great photos on LCD’s while we were in Morgans pub afterwards to warm up and they looked great. My photos didn’t turn out as well as I’d expect but I’m pleased that a good number turned up and had fun!

After all that’s what it’s all about!!

In summary then:

• Light painting can be done anywhere.
• Better not to do fire based work in old, historic buildings.
• Getting involved in your community can benefit everyone.
• Going out as a group can teach you a lot about your skills and learning points.
• Don’t try to put out lit steel wool with your hand. Not a good idea.
• Learning points such as fill-in flash weren’t thought about prior to the evening.
• Having fun is really easy to do and makes everyone happier!!