This old gate is lying up against the side of my mother's garage wall. It's one of those "By 'eck they don't make 'em like that any more" gates and it really is a Thing of Beauty, nicely weathered with lots of rust to show its years. It was hanging across the entrance but the fixings to the stone gate posts were rusted through so we moved it before it fell off and caused an accident. It should probably be inside her garage rather than outside, as it's quite steal-able but it's a ton weight. Well, maybe not quite a ton, but it's too heavy for me to move on my own, so there it sits. The grass has grown up around the bottom of it so nature is slowly fixing it to the Earth once more.
 |
| Gate, at my mum's house, 2021. It was one of those 'end of roll' shots...Hasselblad, 150mm lens with extension tube. FP4+ film on MGV paper. |
You might notice some strange vertical lines running down the print from the top edge. They're not scratches - I think they are threads from spiders' webs on the gates.
I should take a shot of the walls of the outbuildings as they are equally Things of Beauty. They're just made from big old land stones, held together with mortar - although the mortar is more dust now, so I'm not quite sure what is holding them together any more. They are around 100 years old, possibly more. When I was young I remember the outbuilding walls being whitewashed every few years but that hasn't been done in very long time now, so the natural stone is showing through in places.
Most things seem to be made of inferior materials these days, though some materials are better than what they replace. Carbon fibre is lighter and stronger than aluminium for tripods, for example. Of course, carbon fibre is bloody expensive. Everything in my new apartment seems to be made of plastic-covered particle board. It's really crap.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see photos of the outbuildings. They sound very photogenic.
Gates seem to be mostly wooden or machine-made galvanised steel around here nowadays - there are very few people capable of ironwork. Even if you can find someone, I suspect the price puts most people off.
DeleteYup the manufacturers are happy to be propping up a throw-away society (sometimes re-cyclable but that doesn't come for free) as it means there will be lots of business for them. Furniture is the other thing - in my parents day they saved up and bought one dining table, one sideboard, one suite and they lasted for decades. Proper re-usability. I'm beginning to sound old...
I'll try for an interesting shot of the outbuildings.