February Continuance Day 1: Walk - 4.73 miles, Time - 1hr 20min, Weather Misty moisty (just like the beginning of Janathon, though milder)
The question is what do you do when Janathon has finished? Many people are thinking about this and coming up with their own schemes for February and I wish them well. As for me - I think I will pootle along in my own sweet way as if nothing has happened.
Actually it is a bit more ambitious than that. I want to see if I can post a picture a day for the whole of 2011. The exercise will be secondary but the rule is that I should have to move about a bit to find something interesting to look at.
I have no idea if I will succeed. I know there will be days when I will not be able to post on the day (e.g. when I am away) but I should be able to store the pictures and post them later. We will just have to see how it goes.
As for the photos themselves: sometimes they will be about form, sometimes they will be whimsical and sometimes they will be flat reportage.
Today is one of the flat photos but, I think, in its own way interesting.
It is a perfectly ordinary street of pre-war houses. In many ways it reminds me of the streets I knew from my childhood in South London but it's also a reminder that Hemel Hempstead existed as a town of 20,000 people before it became a New Town.
All very mundane … except for the big green shed at the top of the road, which contrasts a feat of engineering with a traditional residential street. The shed is the Snow Centre, which has a 160m main slope with (artificially produced) real snow. For some reason I find the whole idea of being able to reproduce nature in a big shed, slightly magical and therefore find the complex something to wonder at. I know I am easily impressed and I know there are more than 50 such slopes worldwide but even so it is an engineering achievement.
In a small way (a very small way as the Snow Centre is not so dominant) the picture reminds me of old photographs from traditional shipbuilding areas, where the ship under construction would loom over the nearby streets of terraced housing.
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| Picture from Middlesbrough Evening Gazette |
It reminds me of the changes from the years from when we use to have a large engineering industry that made big useful things like ships, to today when most of the engineering is brought in and the objective is often some form of entertainment.
2 comments:
I love this idea of a contuance and the posting a photo every day thing. I feel like I have seen a photo like the ship one somewhere else recently - you didn't post one did you? It reminds me of a time when we were in Venice for the Bienalle, and were having a post-art drink, sitting at a table in the middle of a street. Suddenly a cruise liner appeared at the end of the street, just like this image, it felt as if it would continue steadily towards us as it turned slowly away. Very odd and thrilling at the same time.
I look forward to the photos.
There are a number of photos of ships being built down the end of the road and they are so haunting they tend to lodge in your mind.
I was looking for one from the inter war years but didn't find it but this one from Middlesbrough is still good, especially with the children playing in the street.
Isn't scale fascinating?
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