June’s 52 Week Photography Project for Full Frame

Sorry to be late to the party. Is it OK if I join?

The Liver Buildings with Liver Birds on top as seen from the Albert Dock in Liverpool.

25 - Tourist in my own Town: This is my home town — or rather city — of Liverpool that I now live about 35 miles from. We’ve had periods of long separation, but I’ve reached the point where I enjoy revisits and it is somewhere that I keep taking visitors to. Albert Dock is a complex of dock buildings and warehouses in Liverpool, England. Designed by Jesse Hartley and Philip Hardwick, it was opened in 1846, but by the time I was at school in Liverpool — 1960’s — it was derelict and the dock itself a muddy rubbish tip.

Today it houses an outpost of the important Tate Gallery; the Merseyside Maritime Museum; bars, restaurants and cafes; The Beatles’ Story and loads of souvenir shops. In the photograph, the modern building is the Story of Liverpool Museum. Sadly, I’ve never visited when everything is open (!) but there is always enough to entertain my guests. BTW — we always take our visitors to the opposite bank of the river by car, then treat them to a ferry across the Mersey. It's the proper way for our guests to enter Liverpool.

Stereoscopic anaglyph created by the author, Stephen Bell.

26 — Old School: OK, I’m going for an old school way of image making that I have sometimes used. In my youth, and continuing to this day in an occasional way (!) is an interest in Anaglyph 3D, which is the stereoscopic 3D effect achieved by encoding two images in red and cyan. To see the result in 3D, one needs to place a red filter over the left eye and a cyan/green filter over the right. In the UK, we used to have sweet wrappers that would work, but cardboard ‘3D’ glasses turn up sometimes in books, magazines and curio shops. I’ve a small collection of images that utilise this technique, many of which have an astronomical theme (I’m an amateur astronomer) and I’ve lectured my local astronomy society about these.

As such it will be no surprise to you that I have and cherish an old Sony TV that will show Blu-ray 3D movies. I’ve about 50 such films, ranging from Jack Arnold’s “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1951) that needs the red and green glasses to the latest Marvel blockbusters that utilise shutter glasses.

Gwen full of life, on her swing. Photo by Stephen Bell.

27 — Life is Beautiful: Reach for that bucket! OK, so I didn’t become a father until I was 56. Myself and my second wife had a 10-year saga with IVF that contained a lot of sorrow. Our last throw of the dice was this young lady. She arrived with only one damaged ear and we are spending our life savings to send her to a private all-girls school where the small classes have allowed her to shine. Despite her hearing issues, she is a straight A or A* in every academic subject.

So here she is, and we will never know if the 30 months as a frozen embryo was what caused the solo ear situation or if it was just one of those things. She is the light of our lives. Although now she has reached 14, the teenage doldrums are upon us. We grit our teeth and everyone assures us that this will pass. Fingers crossed!

Photograph by the author, Stephen Ellis Bell. Sony A7r mk4 with Sigma ART 14–24mm lens.

28-Twisted: I went to visit the regeneration zone of Battersea Power Station in southwest London. Around the huge red brick mass of the power station building that is now a designer shopping mall are a number of buildings and hotels. I loved the tumbledown twisted appearance of these residential towers. The next time I stumble upon an architectural photography competition, I will enter this one and more from the series taken that day.

So that was fun. What’s planned for July?

Stephen Ellis Bell MA(ed) BA(hons) PGCE / Chester UK