Tag Archives: Dorset

Good Friday

At Easter 2023 I spent a few days cycling in Dorset, exploring a few of my favourite places in the south of the county. Here is the first of a short series of articles on the each of the rides. On Good Friday I headed out east to explore some of the county’s literary and artistic associations.

Martyrs

In 1833 six farm workers in the village of Tolpuddle, Dorset, seeing their living standards plummet, combined together to protect their wages. They were prosecuted and transported to Australia. Tens of thousands of protestors set off from Copenhagen Fields (the later site of this clocktower) to petition for their return. Their campaign was successful and the men were freed.

On this day 22nd January

This photograph was taken on the 22nd January 2017 and was part of a project looking at what remained of the old railway that ran through the centre of Weymouth, Dorset. The line used to carry trains from the station to the dockside but no trains have run along it since the 1990s, and now much of it has been removed.

A photographic memory

I started taking photographs back in the 1970’s when I was in my late teens. My first “proper” camera where I could control exposure and focus, unlike the point and shoot Instamatic the family used on holidays, was a Zorki 4K, a communist Russian rangefinder loosely based upon the Leica. Later cameras included a ZenithContinue reading “A photographic memory”

The edges of Dorset

The road narrows, grass grows down the middle and the edges begin to crumble. Potholed and patched, the tarmac gives way to loose rubble and turns into a dirt track. Gradually it spills out into a wide expanse, before fading away into scrub land. The scrub itself clings on until the cliff edge and thereContinue reading “The edges of Dorset”

Photographing from the outside

My exhibition showed one view of the old railway line, possibly an outsider’s view, but there are other photographic projects that could be made of the boat train that used run through Weymouth.