Member-only story
Photowalks: A Liverpool Stroll (Part 1)
A revisit to my hometown with my camera
I’m from Liverpool, but left at the age of 23 for a teacher training course in Manchester, some 35 miles east. I’ve revisited and indeed worked in Liverpool for a while, but never took up residency again. Now that I’m in my 60s, I’m actually popping over there a couple of times a year from my home near Chester.
On this occasion, I wanted to see and photograph Luke Jerram’s “Helios,” which is a seven-metre re-creation of the sun. At the moment it is on tour, hanging in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. I also wanted to try out a new lens, the 7 Artisan’s 10mm semi-fisheye on my full frame Sony A7r mk4. But of course I’ll also have my “standard” 24–105mm Sony G and the excellent Sigma 14–24mm.
Liverpool has two cathedrals, and this one — the Anglican, Church of England — is the largest cathedral in the UK. It wasn’t finished when I first visited at age 13 in 1968: the space where Helios is hanging was a building site! The cathedral was started in 1904, and finally finished in 1978. It’s very much a traditional red sandstone building of Gothic heritage and stands very tall on a hill overlooking Liverpool. The bridge (obscured in the image below) was the last completed part when I went there in 1968. It’s where I wanted to photograph from. I’d had an exchange with…
