A great place for SocDoc photography as it attracts all kinds of people from all over the world.

You can see more photos taken from Blackpool here.

Blackpool BMX'ers

Isn’t it incredible that you don’t need the world famous sights and locations to still bag a great picture?  I was road testing the Leica Summicron 35mm today and just snapped what I thought would be a test shot, not one to be kept, but I was wrong.

A simple portrait can reveal so much and really make you think about what we think about the people who we see on a daily basis.

I have inckuded the ‘throw away’ shot here, hope you like it.

I have been working at MUFC today on a very special day.  At 3.04pm on February the sixth 1958 A plane carrying the Manchester United Football team crashed killing 23 people, 8 of which were first team players.

On February the sixth, 2008, Hundreds of fans gathered at Old Trafford to remember.  I was able to capture some of the scenes at the stadium for this blog and you can see the slideshow by clicking here.

Any loss of life due to accidents is tragic however by remembering these people who died in Munich, it somehow felt that we were acknowledging many more innocent victims of disaster too.

Fifty years on

I have uploaded 33 pictures from this weekends Hope Unleashed tour.  You can view the slideshow by clicking here.

The most famous shipwreck in history occurred on April 15th 1912 when the massive ocean liner RMS Titanic struck an Iceberg off Newfoundland on its maiden voyage.

The ship represented the height of luxury and opulence and although the wreck was located in 1985 by Dr Robert Ballard, its ornate woodwork and luxurious decor had all but vanished. But that’s not quite the end of the story…

The Titanic was built as one of three ships with the Olympic and Britannic completing the fleet. The Britannic never really saw passenger duty and was converted into a hospital ship before being sunk by a mine during the first world war. The Olympic however, enjoyed event-free Atlantic crossings until the late 1930’s when she was decommissioned and broken up at a ship breakers yard in Jarrow.  Such was Olympic’s splendour that most of her lavish interior fixtures and fittings were not destroyed but sold and for the past fifty years, they have been absorbed into hotels, offices and even private homes, most people failing to realise the links between their furniture and the greatest trio of ships in history.

Back in 2005 I was granted behind-the-scenes access to photograph some of the artifacts recovered from the wreck of the RMS Titanic which lies two and a half miles below the Atlantic Ocean. Along with a local Maritime Historian, Stuart Lythgoe, we decided to re-unite some of these artifacts with those which were stripped from Titanic’s sister ship the RMS Olympic. By doing this, we could recreate the items in context and in a way that had never been done before.  We located different sections of Olympic’s fittings and pinpointed and cross referenced these with the relevant artifacts which had been rescued from the sea bed. We then digitally re-introduced these objects to create a single image which in some way, brought them back to life.You can see some of the photographs here or I have featured three below with appropriate descriptions.

“Thousands of pieces of debris have now been salvaged from the wreck of the RMS Titanic. This broken window from the first class lounge is one such piece.

The identical lounge suite from the Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic was bought by and installed in the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick.

Here, the Titanic’s window has been digitally reintroduced into the original frame from the RMS Olympic. The two ships were practically identical in fixtures and fittings so the broken window still fits perfectly.”

“The central balustrade of the Grand Staircase from the RMS Olympic can now be found at the White Swan Hotel In Alnwick.

By studying the original photograph and also photographing the rail in the hotel from exactly the same angle and distance, it has been possible to digitally re-insert it back into the black and white photograph which was taken fifty years ago.

This coloured section of woodwork can be found, in situ at the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick.

The Grey doors have been taken from a 1930’s picture of the RMS Olympic and behind them, the first class lounge fireplace can clearly be seen. This exact fireplace now stands behind the camera position here.RMS Olympic was the ‘twin’ sister ship of the Titanic and by locating the ships interiors, its possible to glimpse at some of the beauty of the ill fated Titanic which was never photographed in detail before sinking on its maiden voyage.”

Looking back on this project I have come to the conclusion that photography can be used in a wide variety of ways and photographs of historical importance were often initially captured for very different reasons. This series of photographs are different. Here I purposefully wanted to reunite the past with the present and create a document for history. I also wanted to create colourful, vivid pictures which are based around some of the greatest ships that have ever sailed.

2008 is a big year for evanellical Christians in the UK. Thousands of churches have committed themselves to a years worth of social action projects under the Hope 08 banner.

This website will catalogue a small amount of the work carried out in Greater Manchester. I will be photographing all kinds of events right accross the region and posting the pics on flickr and of course, on here too.

This will constitute a major project for both this website and my soc doc photography for the year.

Welcome to this new photoblog website! It features the work of Paul Hurst, a journalist from the north of England.

I have decided to combine my passion of photography with some of the core skills used by journalists to tell all kinds of stories to all kinds of audiences. I hope you enjoy your visit.

Stories will be added on a regular basis and full resolution photographs will be available for viewing on my flickr photostream.

All of the work featured is copyright (c) to Paul Hurst and I would respectfully request anyone wishing to use any of the photographs in any way whatsoever to drop me an email at pthurst@gmail.com with your request. Thanks.