Industrial Action

 

A little update from a couple of weeks ago, which I hadn’t got around to posting… With a few hours to kill, we headed for the Bradford Industrial Museum, located in an old mill on the far side of town. I’ve always rather liked places like this (childhood trips to the now closed, and sadly missed, Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry having quite a lot to do with that), and I’ve actually exhibited here for their Steampunk exhibition a few years ago. Sadly the museum has suffered like most heritage sites in recent years with funding cuts meaning less staff and less exhibits, and a slightly run-down air the last time we visited a couple of years back. Happily the place looked a bit more cared for this time, even if it is still missing the working horses (sold off amidst much controversy a few years ago) and things like a café, now replaced with a couple of vending machines. As someone who works in catering in a heritage environment, it’s a depressing sign of possible times to come. Also the transport gallery, with its Jowett car collection, was closed, but at least this was for the good reason that the roof was being mended.

 

 

Anyway, being as the trip had been unplanned, I had only got a compact digital camera with me, but then I’ve found that to be an advantage sometimes, in that it can get at angles which cant be managed with a DSLR. Hence I spent the visit taking slightly abstract close-up shots of some of the exhibits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I put it down to watching too much Battlestar lately, but pretty soon any suitably complex piece of industrial machinery can start to resemble a spaceship… It would be good to do a shoot here in the dark with different coloured lights and similar effects, just to create some unusual images. The National Railway Museum in York run an event for students/techies apparently where they turn the place over to them to create strange, eyecatching lighting set-ups with the exhibits…

 

 

So that’s that then, just a chance to take a few odd shots here and there.  Hopefully the next update will be one featuring a planned project, after a couple of nights shooting with miniatures last week...