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Post boxes |
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This week's picture feature takes a look at Royal Mail post boxes. We've had all the Christmas cards and now is the time for thank-you letters (and bills), so this is a busy time of year for those familiar red boxes on our streets. The Royal Mail actually delivers an average of 80 million items every day of the year and it has been in business, astonishingly, since 1656. Some pillar boxes may look as if they've been around as long, but the first one appeared in 1855, reportedly an idea of the novelist Anthony Trollope. Now that the Royal Mail has lost most of its monopoly of postal services in Britain, the days of the traditional red box are probably numbered. Another part of our collective national identity threatened by the dead hand of commercialism and bogus "consumer choice". The pictures in this set were taken between 1982 and 2006 in London, Brighton and other places in England. |
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Last week's pictures featured wrecked cars |
| A drunken Chinaman drove down our street in the early hours of the morning the week before last and lost control, crashing into four cars and writing off three of them. One, unfortunately, was ours. So there could only have been one possible subject for the picture feature last week. It just had to be wrecked cars. It might not have been in the best of Christmas spirits, but then we could be excused for not exactly feeling very "Ho ! Ho ! Ho !". At least drinking and driving is a seasonal subject. Sadly. I bet the three wise men were comprehensively insured. |
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Recent pictures of the week |
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Crude graffiti was the subject of the picture set a fortnight ago. Marvellous word, "crude" - you immediately know what to expect with it. It's the language of the playground, but generally with added swear words. The insults are basic and the humour often of the toilet kind, but the best kind of crudity is hardly ever really nasty and unpleasant. It's just, well, crude. The pictures in this set were taken in Brighton and London between 2001 and 2006. You might also be interested in seeing two other related sets - the first on rude and offensive graffiti and the second on the F word. The weather for the first half of last month was pretty rough, so it seemed appropriate that the picture feature three weeks ago should have been about some Brighton storms in recent years. Nothing as dramatic as the tornado that hit Kensal Rise (of all places) earlier in the month, but the seas and winds on the South Coast can be pretty spectacular. A combination of gale and high tide tends to cause the most damage, as in December 2002 when the central section of the old West Pier collapsed into the sea and hundreds of people turned up on the beach to collect the bits. Global warming is going to increase the severity of winter weather in Brighton and everywhere else in Britain, so beach huts may not be the best of long term investments. The pictures four weeks ago featured t-shirts. Ubiquitous and humble garments, t-shirts are the fast food of the fashion business and sell in their millions. They are also, it may be surprising to learn, guilty of contributing to both global warming and the exploitation of the developing world. The manufacture, distribution and final disposal of the average t-shirt consumes 1.5g of fossil fuel, emits 4kg of carbon dioxide and sends 450g of waste to landfill. Over its typical lifespan, it uses up 65 megajoules of energy in washing, ironing and drying. Then, in economic terms, the Chinese workers who make our t-shirts get paid just 43 pence a day, while shops in the UK can charge £10 for each one. You see some pretty awful stuff printed on t-shirts, but the things themselves, it seems, are even worse. |
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About this site and picture library |
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There are now over 48000 images in the library and they can all be keyword searched from the picture search page. New or updated subjects include post boxes, wrecked cars, graffiti, storms, t-shirts, beards and lidos. The site has several ways to help make relevant and fruitful searches, including index pages for both subjects and events & places. There is also a useful search guide and information page. A good showcase of the type and range of photography available can be explored in the pictures of the week series. Published on the site since December 2001, this now totals more than 2400 images. Every week there is a set of ten pictures about a particular place, event or theme. Almost all the library's pictures are available for personal or commercial reproduction. Digital files can be delivered by email or CD, prices start from as little as £8 and there is further information on the prices and terms & conditions pages. You can also contact David Gray for quotations and availability for new photography commissions. |
