May 22, 2012

Liverpool, old and new

Gilly Places Liverpool, OCA, reflections 4 Comments

My prints have arrived – fantastic service from Photobox, as I ordered them yesterday lunchtime and they turned up first thing this morning.  All of them work, except for one that I think looks out of place with the rest.  It may have to go in anyway, as I don’t have another alternative; on the other hand, it’s a nice day out there and if I can get something today I still have time to get a print made.

I’m beginning to realise how worried I’ve been about this assignment; I wasn’t consciously worrying about it, but now that it’s all but done I feel a huge sense of relief and my back pain has improved beyond all recognition!  Just goes to show how much the mind affects the body.  I suddenly feel enthusastic about my photography again, too – I was beginning to wonder if my loss of interest was permanent.

I’ve started processing a backlog of stuff that my general apathetic state had allowed to build up, and which includes these shots of Liverpool.  I don’t find Liverpool a very inspiring place photographically – it’s not a beautiful city, although it has lots of other things to recommend it – but the light was wonderful on the day I took these.  The image above is of the famous Liver bird building – probably completely unknown by anyone outside the UK, but the stone birds on this building have become a large part of Liverpool’s identity.  The modern wall in front of it belongs to the recently opened Museum of Liverpool.  It seems quite appropriate to have the old and the new together.  The photo below is of old Liverpool reflected in the window of the Museum of Liverpool so it, too, brings old and new together.

I particularly liked the wavy, squiggly shapes that this reflection produced, so I cropped in to the picture above for a close-up shot that shows them off better.  I thought it would work well in black and white, but it didn’t – I think I need to seriously improve my black and white conversion skills.