Birmingham (January 2014)

This is the third post from a selection of photographs taken in Birmingham, in 2014. The previous posts feature the Library of Birmingham and the Selfridges Building and these are a few of the other photos taken whilst walking between those locations. The subjects are varied but the main theme is colour in the city centre, from reflections in the steel facade of the railway station, to the market in the Bullring, and the more muted tones of the statues in Victoria Square.

I have enjoyed looking back at this visit to Birmingham, processing a few images that I had forgotten about and some that I had never processed at the time. In the current virus lockdown it has felt like a virtual photography session following, through the photography, a route around the city centre. At the same time I have also started other similar virtual sessions from 2014 which includes the Peak District, the coast of Northumberland, and a fresh look at photographs from the Canary Islands (a virtual holiday!). 

Of course, none of this replaces actually getting out and about with the camera but there does appear to be light at the end of the lockdown tunnel, as the roadmap to the end of all restrictions begins at the start of March. I look forward to this happening but in the meantime here are the pictures from Birmingham in 2014:

Selfridges (January 2014)

In addition to visiting the Library of Birmingham in January 2014, I walk down to the Selfridges store in the Bullring. 

Selfidges has become an iconic landmark in the regenerated Bullring and city centre. Its distinctive design is an example of ‘blogitecture’, a movement in architecture for buildings with curved and rounded shapes (1). This is further emphasised by the 15,000 aluminium discs mounted on the external facade (2).

The whole building is impressive to view but up-close the mesmerising perspective of the flowing discs really caught my eye. 

Looking at all the images I can see that I played with this perspective from a number of different angles but only really processed one or two images in 2014. Now, as part of my lockdown re-processing exercise I have expanded the selection producing the following set of photographs. 

I can remember on the day stopping the photography when it rained but returned later just as it was getting dark. This added reflected light and colour to the discs and series of images that remained unprocessed at the time. The low light, noise from the high ISO, and an odd colour shift put me off in 2014 but I have now cleaned up the photographs to produced this additional selection:

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blobitecture

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfridges_Building,_Birmingham

Library of Birmingham (January 2014)

Similar to the previous lockdown in 2020, I have now started to run low on new photography to keep the blog going. 

My response last year was to delve into the photography archive which resulted in a series of posts from a trip to Scotland in 2013. The process turned out to be an enjoyable one and an opportunity to reprocess old photographs using current processes/software. With a fresh eye, I found many images that I particularly liked that had been previous forgotten or overlooked. By placing them into the blog I now have a better record of the trip and subsequently I have made a personal book from the photographs.

With that good use of lockdown time in mind, I have started looking at images taken in January and February of previous years, starting with this selection from 2014. 

The subject is the Library of Birmingham* who were kind enough to allow me to take some photographs shortly after they opened one morning. There were few people in the library which allowed me to explore the internal architecture without disturbing anyone. I used a small compact camera for all the shots and a relatively high ISO. As a result, I rejected many of the results at the time due to digital noise and some burnt out of the highlights e.g. the ceiling spotlights. Today, I am less fussy about these issues and prefer instead to concentrate on the compositions and the dynamic colours.

*Information about the building of the Library of Birmingham can be found here: