My brother and me in King Edward's Recreation Ground, Willesden. Years later, I did a painting of this place.

I just bought a camera and this post is simply marking that fact, with the first (published) photo taken with it.

It’s a mirrorless Canon EOS M6 Mk ll, to supplement my ageing EOS 550D. I got a lens adaptor so can still use my nice prime lenses. This means it’s slightly bulkier than it could be, but is still very compact in comparison.

I found this photo in my image library. It has grown a nice, green, organic glitch within itself.

Moira Furnace is a nineteenth-century iron-making blast furnace located in Moira, Leicestershire, on the banks of the Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal.

It is a most important industrial monument, since it is remarkably well-preserved, and dates from a formative period of the Industrial Revolution.

Moira Furnace was a coke-fuelled, steam-engine blown blast furnace for the smelting of iron from local iron ore, with an attached foundry for the manufacture of cast-iron goods.

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The preserved furnace consists of the blast furnace, the attached bridgehouse, and the loading ramp. The blast furnace is the vertical structure with the blank arches at the lowest part of the site. The furnace within was supplied with raw materials (iron ore, coke, and limestone) by tipping them in through a charging port at the top, accessed from the bridgeloft. The loading ramp, which spans the Ashby Canal, allowed the raw materials to be raised into the bridgeloft, which comprises the top floor of the bridgehouse, the large building with the pitched roof behind the furnace. In the bridgeloft the materials were probably weighed and, maybe, mixed before being charged into the furnace.

When the furnace was fired the steam engine blower, now gone, forced a continuous blast of air into the bottom of the furnace in order to make the coke burn brighter and raise the temperature inside high enough to melt the iron (1,538 °C, 2,800 °F). The hot gases exhausted from the low chimney at the top of the furnace. When ready, the molten iron was tapped from the bottom of the furnace and run into moulds to produce pig iron.

Moira Furnace is one of the few remaining blast furnaces from this period of innovation - because it was a commercial failure. Had it been successful then it is highly likely that over time the site would have developed and the first furnace replaced.

Wikipedia

In the window of the Victorian Model Workshop, Ferrers Centre, Staunton Harold.

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*Beyonce’s Sandcastles - full lyrics

This photograph I took in Tooting from the top deck of a bus in 2015 seems to be getting a lot of views in my Flickr account.

It is of a woman having a cigarette in an alley just off Mitcham Road, by Tooting Broadway. She appears to be pregnant, is what it is I think.

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]]>Smoking womanjournaldocumentaryMiklos KissSun, 26 Apr 2020 16:15:00 +0000https://thesixthland.com/blog/2020/4/26/repost-edwin-hubble-discovers-the-universe5f7b05d3313fca3dd09e94ca:5f7b0b4ef33e0c309a508068:5f808c878d9d014b74305284 View fullsize
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To mark the Hubble telescope’s thirtieth birthday, I’m reposting this article from Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), as I like the image of the glass photographic plate above. It contains wonders not previously considered and marked a turning point in our understanding of the Cosmos. Alongside the original, I’ve inverted the image so that it’s easier to understand.

Explanation: How big is our universe? This very question, among others, was debated by two leading astronomers 100 years ago today in what has become known as astronomy's Great Debate. Many astronomers then believed that our Milky Way Galaxy was the entire universe. Many others, though, believed that our galaxy was just one of many. In the Great Debate, each argument was detailed, but no consensus was reached. The answer came over three years later with the detected variation of single spot in the Andromeda Nebula, as shown on the original glass discovery plate digitally reproduced here. When Edwin Hubble compared images, he noticed that this spot varied, and so wrote "VAR!" on the plate. The best explanation, Hubble knew, was that this spot was the image of a variable star that was very far away. So M31 was really the Andromeda Galaxy -- a galaxy possibly similar to our own. The featured image may not be pretty, but the variable spot on it opened a door through which humanity gazed knowingly, for the first time, into a surprisingly vast cosmos.

Change is good, generally. It keeps us from stagnating. The challenge of new ideas and new ways of doing things is good for our brains and drives adaptation and innovation. It underpins our evolutionary development.

In London, despite many years of imposed austerity and economic and social decline for the general population, property developers continue to be busy, avariciously gambling on unsustainable future growth that fails to account for the exigencies of the pivotal era we live in, by which I mean, the Climate Emergency in particular, but also, the social policies that are disenfranchising the working population, the rise of nationalism and so on.

New buildings continue to be built. Futuristic office buildings and luxury apartment complexes, so beloved of international investors, but which create sterile, private spaces we are only allowed to pass through because we are monitored with extreme efficacy by the biggest CCTV network in the world. Added to this is some infrastructure development, namely the prestige project of Crossrail - the Elizabeth Line, which has cut a swathe through the West End and outwards both east and west.

Setting aside the larger social questions for a moment, I just wanted to mark the disappearance of two buildings that had a unique character, and are now gone. The first of these is a remarkable steel-clad, Brutalist building in Vauxhall owned by BT (above).

This has been replaced by a far less dramatic-looking and dismayingly typical, banal residential development, as can be seen on Street View.

On the south side of Blackfriars Bridge was a stone and steel-clad office building with 70s-style smoked glass windows. This is recently demolished and the site is currently being redeveloped. There is perhaps a possibility that what replaces is it might have some architectural merit. It is a prominent location which can be seen from across the river so it’s possible that it might be attention-seeking and quirky.

Lastly, I wanted to mark the disappearance of my favourite Chinese Takeaway restaurant, the Victory, on Mitcham Lane in Streatham. They had the best Sweet and Sour Pork, Hong Kong style, and I miss them.

The take away from all this (get it?) is that things change and that’s inevitable, but not necessarily a bad thing.

I need to say here that the world is downright unfair, both in nature and in the human world. We have been brutal and violent countless times throughout our history and continue to be a brutal species. But we shouldn’t have to be made to cope with the horrors that others impose upon us. It is their mental trauma and greed that is forced on others and can make huge numbers of lives miserable. This is what life is like for far too many people on this planet, and I really hope that one day we will stop and everyone has a chance to live well in peace and reasonable comfort.

But, while there remain whole populations who are kept in ignorance, subservience and relative destitution by damaged, power-hungry megalomaniacs in positions of power (whether leaders of governments, your boss or your parent), that sadly, isn’t very likely. Those in power are not motivated to change the current system, because exploitation and misery are too profitable and we humans have a great capacity for enduring suffering. It’s almost our default condition, but it’s also the model upon which our global economy is based. That is what has to change most of all because it cannot be sustained indefinitely. Just look at the damage we are causing to the planet. It’s the most powerful indicator there can be that this is not the best way of doing things for the good of the greatest number of people.

But, by narrowing down our focus to individuals and the day-to-day travails we all face in our relatively, or very, comfortable ‘western’ lives, there is always a path to navigate through the uncertainties and difficulties. There must be, otherwise, we would all just stop. We may lament the passing of the things we like and are comfortable with (even if they are not great for us), but new things come along and replace them, or supplement them, and that’s usually okay.

I used to resist change. I used to wallow in nostalgia and it dragged me down eventually (long story), and probably contributed to numerous episodes of depression. When things change, it can be difficult - even unpleasant, but in time a new equilibrium is reached and we find that we adapt and we can cope. That is our personal superpower and I’m slowly learning to use it as a tool to challenge the things in my life that aren’t ideal, as well as to cope a bit better with the random changes that regularly interrupt the flow. I sometimes look back and think, “why was I so worried, or upset? This new way is actually okay and I’m seeing and doing things I never thought I would.”

There are many people who are good and kind, who care and who will want to help you if you look for them. We can carry the past within us but our strength as a species is our ability to endure, adapt and make the best of things - whether that is one other person or thousands of us. We can live with that.

The photograph on the left is one I took of a decorative old water pump in the garden of Paycocke’s House, in Coggeshall, Essex in the summer. The painting the right is one I painted in 1986 called The blue conduit. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the painting I did many years ago.

For some reason, tubes and pipes and cylinders have always been something I’ve been interested in using in images. A photo I took just the other day is a good example (see below).

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]]>This (photo) reminds me of that (painting)documentaryvideoMiklos KissSun, 18 Aug 2019 16:19:00 +0000https://thesixthland.com/blog/2019/8/18/chewing-through-a-building-video-0445f7b05d3313fca3dd09e94ca:5f7b0b4ef33e0c309a508068:5f88768b6b60af48d22cbac9

Walking down Old Street on my way to work one morning, I happened to catch a glimpse of this fearsome machine taking down a building.

diorama
/ˌdʌɪəˈrɑːmə/

noun
a model representing a scene with three-dimensional figures, either in miniature or as a large-scale museum exhibit.

HISTORICAL
a scenic painting, viewed through a peephole, in which changes in colour and direction of illumination simulate changes in the weather, time of day, etc.

a miniature film set used for special effects or animation.

Sounds:

• Wind Howling by Bosk1

• Dark Ambience by patricklieberkind

• Ambience Creepy Wind by InspectorJ

• Train 2 by Xserra

It was a summer of good food and drink, simple labour, reflection and some loneliness.

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See also:

In the village in winter

At the beginning of February 2012, I went to a family gathering in Ösi, Western Hungary, to celebrate my grandmother’s 95th birthday. It was cold enough to quickly drain my camera and phone battery (at least -10C plus the windchill) so I mainly stayed indoors and took photos around the farm; in the house, the workshop, and around the back yard, with the occasional walk around the village.