Bradford Eye

Manchester Road Snow Pictures

The 80s were a period of long winters and heavy snow falls, Bradford not being not far from the Pennines (the hills than run up the west side of the country) meant that the weather coming from the east was kept in the area of the east by the the Pennine Hills. I lived at the time with my family on Rooley Lane at the Bankfoot end just by the Red Lion pub (see World Cup 2010 pubs for recent picture), working in the city centre as manager of Bradford Camera Exchange Market St. To be honest I've always been happier in winter, I'm not a sun worshipper and have always felt that extreme weather offers more opportunities for dramatic pictures and it was with that my decision to leave the car and walk into the city to take pictures on the way was born. Around that time (1984ish , never was good at keeping records) my equipment was a Nikon F3 with an Md4 motordrive fitted with lenses raging from a 24mm f2.8, 35mm f2 and 85mm f2. I was not happy using zoom lenses due to there limited aperture range. Many occasions meant that I used my favourite little micro compact, the Olympus XA, in my opinion the finest little compact camera of the 80s, and what a camera, 35mm f2.8 lens 10 seconds to 1/500th of a second shutter speed and a coupled rangefinder to boot. The camera had a stupid wrist strap which I changed for a long thin one meaning I could wear it on my shoulder with my suit jacket (yes we wore suits to work) leaving it hanging down inside the jacket. This was not always the way in winter as I usuall had my Berghaus Kang over my jacket meaning it slowed me retrieving the camera for a quick candid picture but in summer it was a lethal combination as I could retrieve the camera take the picture and drop the camera knowing the inside strap would catch it and no one was any the wiser as to if there was a picture taken. To walk down Manchester Road in th e 80s in a bllzzard would afford you some strange looks from passing traffic but I soon got used to it. I never went anywhere without a camera as indeed now, I used to say to the customers that life and events are happening everyday, discouraging them from just being weekend photographers.

The launch of the home PC was the saviour for all the pictures I'd taken over the years, coupled with a Primefilm 3650 U film scanner and Photoshop, life, re playing with my negatives became a little easier and certainly alot easier than sloshing chemicals all over, maintaining temperature making contact strips, dodging etc. I could spend a matter of hours in the office and produce more work in a night then I could do over many months in a conventional darkroom. to rescue these old negs from the loft, meant that I could think of the possibilty of a website also. It's not the finished article, but its getting someway to where I would like it to be.

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