Way back sometime in 2004, the Swing Bridge on the Tyne opened its engine rooms in a tour part as of what are now annual Heritage Open Days, and, after a deluge of enthusiastic questions, the Chief Engineer offered to tell me more about how this unique piece of engineering works. Many subsequent visits have mapped the survival of this elegant piece of engineering and its battle against the elements, and it’s a great story.
In May 2005, the timbers of the surface of the Bridge’s decks, the jetty, were renewed. Not all of them, just the parts immediately around the central pier, and two narrow walkways along the lateral sections running out in both directions into the course of the river.
The pictures of this Bridge have become markers really, of my development as a photographer, or at least of the conscientious and deliberate application of time and energy and of course, money, to it all. Early pictures were little more than phone quality: 2005 was pretty much the beginning of the digital point-and-shoot revolution so the camera used in the pictures above is a mere 5 megapixel Pentax Optio.
Sadly it would be another year before I started using film. Not that I might have made a better job with film, not then, but if I’d tried, there would be a roll of 36 somewhere, maybe 10 of which might have been half decent, and all of which could have been enlarged to show some detail, some information of use to say, a structural or civil engineer or surveyor.
Most of the photographs taken in those years haven’t survived the impermanence of digital storage. It’s oh, 3 or 4 computers ago, and there are at least 2 storage hard drives dead in their boxes between now and then, and online storage clients behave so badly it’s hard to know who or what to trust. So I choose film for everything important now, and print everything else that I think I might need someday. I urge you to do the same, unless you have a scrupulously rigorous digital workflow and a gazillion Gigabytes of storage. For of course now, each 15 megapixel camera produces whopping big files that you do have to store somewhere, and while memory is comparatively cheap, it isn’t cheap to restore it when it fails.
Other things that have changed? I no longer take pictures out in the mid-day sun, as we’re all urged so often to do. Flat light, the kind of skies with a low cloud cover, dawn or dusk, the right light is so very important. Critical. If it’s absolutely essential to work in this harsh, contrasty sun, a filter would help, neutral density maybe, and if using digital, exposing for the highlights, so something might be brought out of the shadows in post.
But who would have thought these would be wanted, after all this time? So hey, here they are, as they were shot, small, they may be useful. I hope so.
There’s a slide show that’s survived from this period, shot from above on the Tyne Bridge with the little Pentax on a very useful monopod which is missing. I’ll dig it out and post if I can work out how to play it as an animated .gif. It’s fun. And if it’s you who borrowed my monopod, please can I have it back? Thanks!
These are some pictures made at the last evening swing, in early June. The Bridge was opened for one of the Tyne’s river cruise boats, commissioned by a group of medical doctors, celebrating their graduation exactly 35 years before. There are 40-50 ish pictures from that evening, a bit of a soundtrack to go with them, and an interview or two to do, and that’ll become my first attempt at a photofilm. Recording equipment is on its way. I’m a Duckrabbit trainee, now, learning all the time.
Replacing the Jetty
Way back sometime in 2004, the Swing Bridge on the Tyne opened its engine rooms in a tour part as of what are now annual Heritage Open Days, and, after a deluge of enthusiastic questions, the Chief Engineer offered to tell me more about how this unique piece of engineering works. Many subsequent visits have mapped the survival of this elegant piece of engineering and its battle against the elements, and it’s a great story.
In May 2005, the timbers of the surface of the Bridge’s decks, the jetty, were renewed. Not all of them, just the parts immediately around the central pier, and two narrow walkways along the lateral sections running out in both directions into the course of the river.
The pictures of this Bridge have become markers really, of my development as a photographer, or at least of the conscientious and deliberate application of time and energy and of course, money, to it all. Early pictures were little more than phone quality: 2005 was pretty much the beginning of the digital point-and-shoot revolution so the camera used in the pictures above is a mere 5 megapixel Pentax Optio.
Sadly it would be another year before I started using film. Not that I might have made a better job with film, not then, but if I’d tried, there would be a roll of 36 somewhere, maybe 10 of which might have been half decent, and all of which could have been enlarged to show some detail, some information of use to say, a structural or civil engineer or surveyor.
Most of the photographs taken in those years haven’t survived the impermanence of digital storage. It’s oh, 3 or 4 computers ago, and there are at least 2 storage hard drives dead in their boxes between now and then, and online storage clients behave so badly it’s hard to know who or what to trust. So I choose film for everything important now, and print everything else that I think I might need someday. I urge you to do the same, unless you have a scrupulously rigorous digital workflow and a gazillion Gigabytes of storage. For of course now, each 15 megapixel camera produces whopping big files that you do have to store somewhere, and while memory is comparatively cheap, it isn’t cheap to restore it when it fails.
Other things that have changed? I no longer take pictures out in the mid-day sun, as we’re all urged so often to do. Flat light, the kind of skies with a low cloud cover, dawn or dusk, the right light is so very important. Critical. If it’s absolutely essential to work in this harsh, contrasty sun, a filter would help, neutral density maybe, and if using digital, exposing for the highlights, so something might be brought out of the shadows in post.
But who would have thought these would be wanted, after all this time? So hey, here they are, as they were shot, small, they may be useful. I hope so.
There’s a slide show that’s survived from this period, shot from above on the Tyne Bridge with the little Pentax on a very useful monopod which is missing. I’ll dig it out and post if I can work out how to play it as an animated .gif. It’s fun. And if it’s you who borrowed my monopod, please can I have it back? Thanks!
These are some pictures made at the last evening swing, in early June. The Bridge was opened for one of the Tyne’s river cruise boats, commissioned by a group of medical doctors, celebrating their graduation exactly 35 years before. There are 40-50 ish pictures from that evening, a bit of a soundtrack to go with them, and an interview or two to do, and that’ll become my first attempt at a photofilm. Recording equipment is on its way. I’m a Duckrabbit trainee, now, learning all the time.
Five years. It’s flown.
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