Illuminate York 2015

Hello people,

As a demonstration of my lack of time to write this blog here are the photos from illuminate York 2015 (taken October 2015). The main things I looked at where the light boxes at the Guildhall, NRM train lights and disco balls down the Shambles. Not much else to say about them but to click and take a look.

I do truly love Illuminate York it’s my favourite arts event York puts on and does separate it from other cities in the UK and indeed the world. Long may it continue.

Illuminate York 2015 photos:

Working at the NRM

While putting some of my recent work on my back-up hard drive I came across some old pictures I took on my then amazing ‘smartphone’ Nokia N95. These shots are from my time working at the NRM, I hope this gives you a little snap shot into my time working for such a fun and active museum.

I’ve picked out a few highlights here:

This is Brian and he was taken from a press cutting after turning up to the museum for a party after over 50 years in the fish frying business, me and Ms Senior then made a little area for him. When puzzling over a marketing idea we would ask ‘what would Brian do?’

This is Tony who was the guy who painted everything in the Museum – his skills with a paintbrush were on another level, if you look around the Museum all the locos are hand painted mostly by HIS hand… mental. This is him next to his new project just a brand new full size steam loco!

This shot is Duchess of Hamilton arriving at York Station, this one had a special place in my heart as a Friend of the NRM first suggest that this project be undertaken and I’m pleased to say he made it to the launch of the restored loco but then sadly passed away a few months later. Ian Smith was head of CMS Ireland and a wonderfully enthusiastic man, a kind warm and gentle man, when he saw this in the Great Hall he had a tear in his eye and hugged me. He was a great man and I miss him, so this shot is for him.

This is the Marketing and Press department for the museum circa September 2008 (with me behind the camera). We had some good times…

The rest of the photos are below so enjoy the little snapshot into my working life at the NRM.

House sitting holiday

My in-laws let us house sit their house for while. Living in Cheshire it meant we could go to North Wales as well as Cheshire so we went and explored.

We found tiny railways, a small suspension bridge, ice cream, a lake, the museum of science and industry (Mosi) and Little Moreton Hall. The tiny railway is Rudyard Lake Steam Railway which is built on some of the run of the actual full-size railway that ran back in the day. It wasn’t running when I was there which is a shame but we had a good walk round the lake anyway.

Mosi is a cracking museum and newly refurbished, it looks at the industrial heritage of Britain but mainly around the North West so I took a snapshot of the exhibits. I used some lighting changes to help the viewer to look at these photos and focus on what I’m focusing on when I take the shot.

And then we have Little Moreton Hall, a cracking little National Trust property situated not too far from Congleton, Cheshire – I took a shot from the attic to the grounds below and then in photoshop gave it the tilt-shift treatment… I think it looks good so let me know what you think.

Just want to say this blog is getting quite popular so thanks very much for reading and if you like it don’t be scared to share it with your mates. As ever all these shots are taken by a Nikon D3000 with a 18-55mm VR lens.

Next time you will have coloured bears! I kid you not…

Lights…Nikon…York

 

Blackpool has miles of lights towards Christmas time, they become a sort of Mecca for the over 50’s and children dragged to see the wonder. York my home city has a different way of doing lights, we have Christmas lights, sure, but we also have York Illuminations over a few days a few artists are invited to transform the city at night and create light art.

This is great for 2 reasons, number 1 I get to enjoy my city in a very different light, second I get to practise some low light photography. The first place I visited was the National Railway Museum to see their offering as part of York Illumination 2010, it was on the whole very good, the southern C1 was lit very well and as the ugly duckling of the National Collection it did well to look pride of place.

My second choice as part of York Illumination2 2010 I went to Dean’s Park (the park next to the Minster). Here I saw the craziest light instillation, a globe with projections on all sides showing a mixture of different (odd) images. These odd images included archive footage of York, and Eye, a globe, crazy colour changes and various artistic shapes. So enjoy these York Illumination images, all taken using a Nikon D3000 as always and used a tripod on all shots to get the image stability during long shutter speeds.

Tree’s, flowers, locomotives, food, and a deer…

Morning/afternoon/evening, I have a rather large back date of blog posts I should have done so excuse the massive post but here are the images from the last few months and the stories behind them.

The order goes left to right.

1. Basil -after we had some work done on the house my rather silly cat thought rolling in all thr builders dust was a great way to get used to the new layout, his paws are grey while his body is white(ish) very silly cat.

2-12 Are all taken on a day out to Dunham Massey around May time I think. They are a mixture of glorious landscape images and macro flower images and one with a deer and a tree. I love taking macro flower images so much detail colour and vibrancy, which is why the landscape ones are featured I think the mix of colours are truly amazing, what a great pallet God has to work with.

13 & 14 These taken on my camera by Tish Bolton I think and see me learning how to drive a miniature steam train in the grounds of my old work place the NRM in the UK, it was a great experience to have before I left.

15 & 16 show the movement of a loco called Sterling single from the north yard through the tunnel on Leman road, York with about 5 cm to spare! It wa son it’s way down to London to take part in the railway Children play in Waterloo station.

17 & 18 a few pics of the last exhibtion i took photos of at the NRM all to do with the celebrations for 175 years of GWR ‘God’s own railway’ as it used to be known.

19 during my last meal out with work mates, Emily is centre with lou and gem either side, just thought it was a really nice image.

20 just a nice image from the banks of the river ouse on my walk home after my last day at the NRM.

21 – 23 Mairi with Basil our cat (we do have Sybil as well but she is less photogenic) and Mairi at her birthday party at our house.

So that’s it really, in my next post I’ll have gone through the 300 or so image I took on our Paris holiday and sorted them down to like 30 or so of the best images. So until then thanks for looking. Roy