Jayjayjjetplane

Something about churches just go right through me

The old entrance to the MG Rover car factory in Longbridge, Birmingham. The image shows boarded up brick huts surrounded by white steel railings, above which is an old red sign that says MG MOTOR UK LIMITED. On the right are three flags, a Union Jack, a MG flag and a Chinese flag, which denotes the latter day Chinese ownership of the MG brand.

The entrance to the former Rover conferencing centre at Longbridge in Birmingham. This is a two storey red brick building with large square grid patterned windows and a semi-circular double height atrium. The building is boarded up, several windows are broken and it is surrounded by steel safety fencing and several parked cars.

This is the famous Longbridge Round house, known locally as the Elephant House. This circular modernist style building is two storeys high and finished in white concrete and features concentric lines of small square windows and a narrow concrete overhang that angles up and down around the roof line as a decorative finish.

A large factory remnant, possibly part of the production trackline. This building is squarely angular which juts out from a huge concrete wall. The building is covered in faded pink metal panels and a line of dirty windows across the middle. There are pipes and steel railings attached to it and above, on the concrete wall, is a large green tank, partially hidden by a tree. The building looks very out of place as it looms large over a new road with parked cars and tidy amenity planting.

Austin, remains.

It's 20 years since MG Rover went under. The Longbridge factory, known locally as 'The Austin', was a vast site sprawling over Cofton Hill.
Two decades later, the Austin is mostly gone, replaced by housing & retirement duplexes. A few buildings remain here & there, if you look 👀

I made these images with a 250mm f5.6 mirror reflex lens. In the glittering autumn sunshine, out of focus areas
shimmer with donut shaped highlights, which I adore 🤩 It's not the easiest lens to focus, so it pays to take your time. But if you nail it, it's totally worth the extra effort 👌🏻🙂📸
#lumixs5

Autumn on Clent (with my ridiculous lens) 😋

The Clent Hills in Autumn is a magical place for a walk. The rolling landscape, gorgeous leaf colours & glorious light all combine to soothe the soul.
I'm fortunate to have a daughter who's happy to indulge my love for walking... continues ➡️➡️➡️

Nope, nor me! Looks right though! Cheers Buddy 🍻 👌🏻

TBF any of those baldies could be Phil Mitchell 🤣

Parked on Campus.

On my way home last night I spotted this snazzy little motor (with uber-cool pop up lights) parked up on Campus. No idea what the car is (if you do, let me know in the comments) but I'm pretty chuffed with how the black & white edit turned out 🤩

University of Birmingham, 2025.

Soulful Glass

Cleaning my camera lenses revealed an intriguing fact. Most of my lenses are analogue, manually focused glass.
Analogue lenses don't have that clinical sharpness that's typical of autofocus glass. I guess I prefer images to be softer, more soulfully rendered 🙂

#streetphotography

In between the heavy showers, the clouds scuttled away and 'the light' was just lovely, low, golden & warm. It angled between buildings, lighting up faces & landing in random pools on the pavement.
The images here are from our walk, with my usual focus on people in the City. Thanks for looking 🤩

Brum Illuminations.

Yesterday I met up for a long overdue catchup with some photography friends. The prevailing rain forced us to seek shelter & coffee ☕️ But we were soon lured back out by the dazzling autumn sunlight.

Photographers often get misty eyed talking about 'the light' (continues ➡️)

I was probably looking through several pieces of glass at a multitude of reflections in my brain 🤣

London in the rain.

Went to London with the most excellent @yo.nayson yesterday. It rained. A lot!

Despite this, we had a bostin time snapping around. In camera I used Lumix's Leica-inspired black & white film sim. The images are gritty but rather reflect the inclement conditions!

London, 2025.

Villa winning away at Spursy, how good does that feel? Two brilliant goals and a team playing with intelligence, grit and even a little bit of swagger towards the end. Fabulous performance from Unai Emery's Lions and so pleased for Emi Buendia.
#avfc

This.

Birmingham Fog

A quartet of images from an amble about the city yesterday morning. As per usual, I lost myself in the fog 🤩

Wonderful news!

patrick star from spongebob sits in a lotus position with the words positive vibes behind him ALT: patrick star from spongebob sits in a lotus position with the words positive vibes behind him

The biggest, bestest & most positive vibes from Sue & myself 🙏🏻

I probably should add that these are more recent pix, taken using a tilt shift lens (which gives a unique selective focus and blur effect).

Tunnel Visions.

One of my many little obsessions is tunnels & pedestrian underpasses. There's a lot of them in Brum, so many in fact that I once spent a year documenting all that remain from the 1960s. Later on, I was lucky enough to have this project published 🤩.

How big is that guy's head?!? 🤣

I am an optical delusion

They let any old riff raff in these days 🤪

My Ridiculous lens (ii)

My new/used 250mm f5.6 mirror reflex lens is ridiculous. It's difficult to compose & focus accurately; contrast is low & details are often mushy.
And yet.
This lens is extraordinary. The images it makes walk a thin line between artfulness & insanity.
I love it dearly 🤩

No, standard right side, but it was always slipping. I had to wrap a very very old donkey jacket around the engine during winter, otherwise the fecker just wouldn't start!

I learned on a CZ125 and then an MZ250. The MZ could hit 80mph going downhill with a tailwind, and it felt like it was literally coming apart at the seams. Bloody loved it.
Not allowed to ride anymore, too many near death instances!