Another one of those exercises in black and white and straight lines. There should be a name for this kind of art. Dam art, perhaps?

The Sepia Saturday theme this week is old photos of even older photographers, and searching through my extensive (if my wife reads this, I mean very small) collection, I found this 1920s photograph. .....

I've always been attracted to this part of Halifax: the steep hills, cobbled streets, brooding mills ..... and, of course, the delights of the Shears Inn, whose stone-tiled roof features in this photo of mine from 40 or 50 years ago. ....

I've always had a fondness for old newspapers: give me a half-comfy chair and a pile of old newspapers, and I'm a happy man. If I can't get my hands on the originals, then the online British Newspaper Archives is an excellent alternative, and it has the advantage of a very effective search engine...

Some shapes are instantly identifiable: the distant sweep of the moor-lined hills and the grand lines of a dye-works chimney that had ideas above its industrial station. The whole scene viewed from a promenade that, even after global warming has done its worst, will never see the sea. ....

This is not so much the shape of things to come as the shape of things gone by. That unmistakable shape of 1980s cars, TV aerials, telephone lines stretched across streets - they all spell out the eighties. ....

This early twentieth century picture postcard has a fine view of Fixby Hall, which was one of the ancestral homes of the Thornhill family, but, by the time of this postcard, it had become the home of Huddersfield Golf Club. .....

The Victorian photographer, John Bell, promised "photography in the latest styles" on the reverse of his classic carte de visites. There is, however, something timeless about the face featured on the front of the card. I feel as if I know this lady, we met in the supermarket the other day.

Our Sepia Saturday theme this week is all about strange shapes, and the closest I seem to be able to get to it is this photograph from almost 100 years ago. I can only be sure about one of the six heads - and that is the third one down, which is my father, Albert. ....

Nostalgic Thoughts : When Greenwoods was on't corner, and Marks at top of town; when one day you could wait up, and next day you'd wait down. When sun was always shining, and it'd never, never rain ...... why did folk wear thick coats and rain hats, perhaps you'd care to explain.

There are no cars in this scene which always makes dating it a little more difficult. The clothes don't give many clues either: fashion takes a back seat to insulation when it comes to northern winters. ....

A POSTCARD FROM KEIGHLEY : Few things can provide a mirror to social history better than the humble picture postcard. On the one side you have the view, and although, as the 20th century progressed, these became more romanticised and stereotypical .....

CROOKES VALLEY, SHEFFIELD 1980 : It was due to snow today, but it is looking like heavy rain instead, so there will be no snowy scene to share. Never mind, here's one I took earlier. Forty-six years earlier to be exact.

The colours aren't particularly real, and you can't make out much of the scene (it was taken in Akroyd Place, Halifax). It is the lines, however, that are fascinating: the way they bounce your eye around the scene like a ball bearing in a pinball machine.

The photograph of Crown Street in Halifax is from a few years ago, and some of the shops have changed since it was taken. It is still raining however. Rainy days and Sundays - not to mention Mondays - always get me down.

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features a stylish 1920s car, so I thought I would give you both a stylish 1920s car and two stylish ladies from the same era. Both look very proud of their car and their lives, and so they should do. ....

So, what have we got? We've a bare-faced hillside and a quarried landscape. We've a mill or two, a couple of chimneys, and some terraced houses stacked like dominoes. We've Halifax sixty years ago. We've home.

I've always loved letters. Some folks like the melodic strokes of a good landscape; with others, it's the sensuous lines of the naked form. With me, it is a cursive "s" or a serif "a" that gets my blood pulsing through my elderly veins that little bit faster. ....

This particular photo seems to have acquired the title "Back Street In Stoke" at some stage over the last fifty years. My apologies to my friends in the Potteries for this somewhat underwhelming and unspecific title: .....

This is the photograph in the other side of the small brooch that must have been handed down from someone within the family. No young Edwardian beauty this one, but she is a woman of character, millstone-grit strong with an unwillingness to countenance nonsense of any variety.

It seems like a different era: an era of broken walls and spaces laid bare by slum-clearance programmes or enemy bombs. The church is the same; then it was plain Halifax Parish Church, and now it's a Minster. ......

I found this old brooch whilst sorting through a box of "accumulatae" (not sure if that is a word, but if not, it should be). I assume that it has come from within the family, and therefore the rather charming lady in the large hat is a relative of mine. ....

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week featured a postman delivering parcels in the snow, and my interpretation of the theme retains the snow but features a different kind of post. ....

....... You can mess around with Photoshop filters and AI edits until you are blue in the face (or green, or orange or polka dot striped) but you will never equal the originality and brilliance of a real artist. ....

Is art in danger of being undermined by Artificial Intelligence? Why slave over a canvas for endless hours attempting to achieve a dramatic interpretation of a pub at the bottom of an old cobbled street in Halifax when you can press a button,

I took this photograph of the canal in Huddersfield thirteen or fourteen years ago. I'm sure it didn't actually look like this; I'm sure there were more half-tones flying about. It's an impression, however, and it has some nice shapes and a few pleasing patterns. It's not real - but what is?

I don't normally go in for this clickbait thing or having adverts associated with my various online activities, but times are hard and we all have to make a living. ....

I took this picture of Hunger Hill in Halifax forty years ago. There are a few more trees about these days and some of the buildings have changed, but the snow is still here. .....

Bright sun and black ice, monochrome trees and wood-blocked paths: our dog took us for a walk down Shepherds Thorn Lane the other day. Thank you, Lucy.

Our Sepia Saturday theme this week is "Work In Days Gone By". Most of my family worked in the mills and factories of Yorkshire, but my Great Uncle Albert branched out and became a partner in a firm of motor body builders in Manchester. .....

This is a photo of mine from sixty years ago of a rural school in Ireland. I'm not sure exactly why I took the photo; maybe I just thought it was a colourful scene, or maybe I thought that it captured a changing world. I looked the school up the other day; it is long gone. .....

On the second part of our walk around Halifax in the 1930s, note the snow around Halifax Parish Church (nothing changes, does it?), and the black spire of the town hall punctuating the smoke-stacked atmosphere. .....

I'm inviting you to come and take a walk around Halifax in the 1930 courtesy of an old picture postcard from my collection. Or rather, half a picture postcard - the image is so full of fascinating detail I have divided it into two and you can see the second half tomorrow. .....

This is one of the old mills that line the Calder and Hebble Canal as it makes its way through Brighouse. It's like a practical demonstration of every kind of building method known to mankind. If there had been four little piggies in the tale, this is how the fourth piggy would have built his house.

I think this is somewhere in Halifax, and I believe I took the photograph sometime in the 1960s. My apologies for not being more exact and for not keeping a proper note of when and where these photographs were taken. I keep records now with endless metadata and geotagged locations.....

My love of images is very much a love of static images rather than moving ones. I'm not a TikTok type of chap; I've never been comfortable with films and videos. ....

My love of old photographs has led me to collect thousands of them over the years and share them with fellow enthusiasts throughout the world. One way in which I do this is via a weekly internet meme, Sepia Saturday, which I started way back in 2009. ....

When I was young, I became fascinated by a light I saw shining at night in the east. For a time, I flirted with a mystical or even spiritual interpretation, and then my brother told me it was a cinema and dance hall in Wyke. ......

It's the start of a new year, and I always seem to start with a photograph of Dean Clough, Halifax, or the surrounding streets and lanes. I took this particular picture back in 1970, a lifetime ago. Well, hopefully, a little less than a lifetime ago! Happy New Year.

And there goes another year, and with it another 365 daily calendar pictures that have taken us through 2025. And today's picture not only represents the 365th of the year, but also the 1,931st since I started this somewhat silly project back in the early days of Covid lockdown. ...

As we edge our way towards 2026, I can do no better than to repeat the sentiments expressed in an advert produced by the Halifax brewery, Richard Whitaker & Sons, 100 years ago: ....

I took these two photographs high up in the clock tower of the Crossley & Porter School, Halifax in the Spring of 1967. The first shows the workings of the clock itself; the second shows the view from the clock tower overlooking Albert Promenade. .....

I remember going into an old mill, Batley way. It had long been converted into a furniture warehouse or some such thing, but when you went up in the lift and where the bare stone walls still lined the rooms, there you could still smell the lanolin. ....

I've no idea who this is a photograph of; it came from one of those job lots of old photos I am so fond of. On the back of the print is written "Much love, Mother, June 1918". The sentiment is lovely and the features are kind and, indeed, rather beautiful. .....

It's 1967 - although it might have been 1966 - and it was the Halifax Charity Gala being held at Manor Heath. The precise location of the brass band, outside the tent of the Halifax Deaf Association, was, I am sure, not meant as any kind of criticism of their musical ability.....

A Happy Christmas to all my friends out there on the various social media platforms.

The photograph shows my wife, Isobel, meeting Father Christmas in 1953. Thirteen years later, she met me. We've spent the last fifty-nine Christmases together. It's the best present I've ever had.

The starting point for today's image was a 1920s photograph from my suitcase full of "found photos." It wasn't in very good condition, so I felt at liberty to "mess around with it" (the digital scan, of course, not the original photograph). ....

I can be reasonably certain of when I took this photograph looking over Halifax from New Bank because one of the other frames on the negative strip features an advert that references 1966. .....

I always thought that the M1 going over Tinsley Viaduct in Sheffield, with those majestic cooling towers in the background, made a good photo, and I photographed it again and again in the 1980s. .....