My trip to the UK over Easter happened to coincide with a Leica User Forum meet up in Bath on Easter Saturday. Since I was fairly local for once, I decided to make the journey down to bath to join a group of like-minded photographers. Although rain had been forecast, the weather was beautiful, and it was very enjoyable wandering around Bath.
It’s twenty years since I was last in Bath, and although I can’t remember much about that trip, I do remember it as being a lively student town (after all, my previous trip was to see whether the university would be a suitable place for me to study). It seems that it is still very lively today, and the good weather had brought out the crowds, and also the street performers, who were all there in force, hoping to earn enough money to buy a couple of Easter eggs…..
I spent most of the day chatting with fellow photographers, and ended up not taking as many shots as I had wished, but was happy with some of the results.
Street Performers in Bath
The Royal Crescent, Bath (wikipedia). This semi circle of 30 terraced houses was built in the eighteenth century by the architect John Wood the Younger. It is thought of as one of the best examples of Georgian architecture in the United Kingdom, and is a Grade I listed building.
Although the houses along the Royal Crescent all appear identical from the outside, the first residents purchased a section of the exterior facade, and then employed their own architects to design the interior of the buildings, leading to some very different designs internally. Nowadays, the houses are either split up into flats, used as single residences, or in some cases turned into guest houses.
All of the doors in the Royal Crescent are painted white, with the exception of this yellow one. It was painted yellow by one of the previous residents in the 1970s, and, although Bath Council objected, the Secretary of State for the Environment overruled the court case and allowed the door to remain yellow. However since the building is Grade I listed, it is hard to make any significant changes to the exterior of the buildings without prior approval and planning permission, so the door has remained yellow ever since.
All of the access doors along the Royal Crescent are on the first floor. The ground floor appears to be a separate flat or basement area for the upper floors.
Holburne Museum of Art, Bath.
All the shots in this post were shot with the Summicron 28mm on the Leica M-E
The HP Garage. The birthplace of Silicon Valley.
During a recent visit to Hewlett Packard Corporate HQ in Palo Alto, I took the opportunity to drive by the HP Garage. The Garage is where Bill Hewlett and David Packard first started on their journey to create the world’s largest IT corporation. The company has progressed leaps and bounds since then, but the philosophy of Bill and David is very much at the centre of everything we do – one of the key ideologies that is followed internally at HP is a quote by David Packard: “To remain static is to lose ground”
From Wikipedia: The HP Garage is a private museum where the company Hewlett-Packard (HP) was founded. It is located at 367 Addison Avenue in Palo Alto, California. It is considered to be the Birthplace of Silicon Valley
In 1937, David Packard (then 25 years old) visited William Hewlett in Palo Alto and the pair had their first business meeting.
In 1938, newly married Dave and Lucile Packard moved into 367 Addison Ave, the first floor three-room apartment, with Bill Hewlett sleeping in the shed. Hewlett and Packard began to use the one-car garage, with $538 in capital.
In 1939 Hewlett and Packard formed their partnership, with a coin toss creating the name Hewlett-Packard.
Hewlett-Packard’s first product, built in the garage, was an audio oscillator, the HP200A. One of Hewlett-Packard’s first customers was Walt Disney Studios, which purchased eight oscillators to test and certify the sound systems in theaters that were going to run the first major film released in stereophonic sound, Fantasia.
Image shot with the Leica M-E, 28mm Summicron
In February I was able to travel to Palo Alto to attend a new hire training, and took the opportunity to burn a few hotel points and spend the weekend before wandering around San Francisco. I managed to reserve the Marriott Hotel just off Union Square, which made a change from the hotels I have stayed at in the past in the Financial District, and it was a good base location for all the things I wanted to see.
Normally when I visit a city I try to walk around as much as I can. However since San Francisco covers such a large area, I decided to spend $20 on a ticket for one of the open top bus tours. The bus goes on a 2.5-3 hour journey around the major sights, and you are free to hop on and off at any of the stops along the route. This gave me the best of both worlds – I could use the bus to cover distance quickly, and I could walk in between the individual stops if I wished The first place I chose to get off was at Alamo Square Park so that I could take a look at the Painted Ladies. From Wikipedia: “Painted ladies” is a term in American architecture used for Victorian and Edwardian houses and buildings painted in three or more colors that embellish or enhance their architectural details. Shooting the houses from the park with a wide angle lens gives a nice view of downtown San Francisco, and, although the weather wasn’t providing me with perfect skies, I got an OK shot of the houses. Moving away from Alamo Square, I chose to walk across to Haight Ashbury, the center of the flower power revolution in the 60s. Today the area is mostly a tourist attraction, and the main street is bordered with shops selling head gear and alternative clothing. After spending a while wandering around Haight Ashbury, and realising that most of it is closed before 12pm on a Sunday, I got back on the bus and traveled through Golden Gate Park to Golden Gate Bridge. The tour guide provided us with a good commentary of information about the bridge. I hadn’t realised that the bridge was such a suicide hotspot, and in fact 46 people are known to have jumped in 2013 alone. The bridge itself of course is a masterpiece of civil engineering, 1300m long, and around 70m above the water. Another area that i always find worth a wander in San Francisco is Chinatown. In fact on this trip I think I ate most of my lunches and dinners here 🙂 It’s always a bit hit and miss with the quality of the food, but using the reviews on Foursquare before committing is always a good move. During the day there is quite a lot of activity around Portsmouth Square Plaza. Many of the older Chinese play cards or Chinese Chess here, and it is always interesting to wander around and here them chattering away and get quite animated with the games they are playing. Often when I am taking street photographs of people I gained eye contact with the subjects before I took the shot so that they are aware and OK with me shooting. I did this with both of the shots in Chinatown here, but unfortunately this upset one of the other ‘inhabitants’ of the park – there are also a lot of ‘bums’ here, homeless/down and out Americans with nothing else to do but drink and sit around. One of them, a tall, bearded low life, took offence of me taking a photo of someone unconnected to him, and came over and started shouting at me. Quite entertaining, and when he finally tried to take a swing at me, I dodged, he lost his balance, and it ended up as a girly slap to the side of my head. Unfortunately that’s just one of the hazards of shooting in the street, and most of the time time nothing to worry about. Still, always important to keep your wits about you. I then walked further down to the Embarcadero Center, and rejoined the bus tour. By this time the bus was heading for the stop where I had originally joined the trip, Union Square. However I decided to stay on board until the City Hall stop – I had seen this building when I passed the first time in the morning, and had worked out that the sun should be going down behind the building later that evening. Luckily my timing was good, and I arrived there with a couple of minutes to spare. I was happy with the resulting shot and it turned out to be one of my favourites of the day. I chose Big Bus Tours to drive me round San Francisco, and would recommend it to anyone who is in town for a short stay and wants to see the most of the city in one day. The next day I spent a bit of time wandering around the Mission District, which seemed to be heavily under construction along the main street. All of the shots in this post were taken with the Leica M-E, and either the Summilux 50mm ASPH, or the Summicron 28mm.There is something about derelict industry that has always intrigued me. It’s a combination of the thoughts about what happened when the installation was originally in use, the actions that led to the decision to close down or relocate the factory, and the progression of the facility since the last tenants departed, slowly getting taken over by nature, and local graffiti artists.
The same can be said for the location that these photos were taken in. A disused factory, on the outskirts of Breukelen, North Holland. This factory, an old aluminium factory, has been shut down for some years. At the end of 2010 the remaining machinery was removed, the internal walls were pulled down, the resulting rubbish left to decay, and fences were put up around the building to keep the graffiti artists out.
Of course, that didn’t work, and by squeezing through some small holes in the fence and clambering over some rubbish it is still possible to get inside.
Looks like we weren’t the first people to find those holes……
The photos in this post were shot using the 28mm Summicron lens, mounted on the Leica M-E. I also took some shots with my 50mm Summilux on the M6 body, but of course it always takes a bit longer to get films developed and scanned in, so it will be some time before those make it to my hard drive……