FALLING SOMEWHERE AS RAIN

The hardest part of photography for me is always subject. I can amass all kinds of kit or apps to take photos, but without something to shoot, it’s all so much dead weight. I tend to rely on holidays or days out to get the best from my hobby, as even though the area I live in is semi rural, there’s only so many photographs of fields I can take. I work in a large university on the outskirts of town and it’s hard to find time to get away and be creative, so I was very surprised when a colleague pointed out a shortcut through the campus to a small wooded area right next door. Although I have worked nearby for several years, I hadn’t realised the place was so easily accessible. ‘Ruff Wood’ is a small area of mixed woodland, donated by a local landowner at the turn of the 19th century. I always assumed it was just that, a small wood, but in actuality, it’s the site of an abandoned quarry, which provided stone for some of the large houses in town. When I visited Ruff Wood, I was amazed to fi...

An impromptu visit to Southport beach, armed only with my iPhone and a spare hour. Without suitable footwear, I was confined to the sea wall and a thin strip of dry beach, but various apps such as FIMO, Blackie and Hipstamatic gave some satisfactoty results.

Having grown up in Liverpool, I have seen the city change and evolve over the last sixty years, developing to meet the demands of modernity and change, but each new wave of improvements or extensions seems to break across an implacable bedrock which refuses to relinquish its shape to the tides. No matter how many new buildings and constructions spring up on the seven streets, the original fabric of the yawning seaport still manages to hold fast amongst the jetsam of commerce. Near one of the Northern entrances to the main city and on the grounds of the newspaper offices, is a vast sculpture, celebrating the city’s vital role in opening up the New Worlds in the eras of exploration and trade. Erected in 2006, the ‘Face of Liverpool ’ is a massive steel lozenge perforated by a circular hole holding a steel ring like the mount for a globe. The circle serves as a frame or a portal to the Mersey estuary and the docks and the surrounding dais is marked with a message in morse code. The wh...