iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

For the past 848 weeks, Sepia Saturday has offered themes that allow lovers of old photographs from around the world to share their favourite images. This month’s themes are working their way through the elements, and this week’s theme is “fire”. ...

100 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Those who know the town of Brighouse can have fun with this picture - which I must have taken sixty or so years ago - trying to work out where I took it from and what the various buildings, fading into the post-industrial mist of time, are. ...

100 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

It seems so long ago - almost another age. The colours and styles may have changed, but then, as now, we stood on the edge and looked out.

010 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

When I look back at the pictures I took of Halifax in the 1960s and ’70s - the town I have always considered home - several things stand out. The town had a greyness then that went beyond an over-reliance on monochrome photography. ....

191 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Sitting in a restaurant, whiling away the time while the others enjoyed their starters, I began playing with the reflections of the bottles behind the bar. ....

100 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

This is another of those scenes I kept returning to in the 1960s, and I have several versions of it in my negative archive. .....

130 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

This week, our weekly picture-postcard puzzle takes us to the United States. It is April 1906, and the writer simply tells us that his hand is still improving and that he is “here for the day.” .....

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Sometimes you simply go somewhere and take photographs - no theme, no agenda, no expectations. As a record of a day out, it works better than any 5,000-word essay: shapes, shades, and stories.

000 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I wish I could remember taking this photograph, but I can’t; after all, it was a long time ago. I must have been up Clifton way, looking down over the lower Calder Valley towards Brighouse. ....

140 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This 1947 photograph came into my care through family hand-me-downs and shows a retirement party at a Bingley mill in January 1947. It is not clear whether the person retiring is the man or the woman at the centre of the photograph, .....

100 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

When you’ve got a good subject - say, a fifteenth-century Grade I parish church - you need a good frame. What better frame for a church steeped in toil and industry than a nineteenth-century railway viaduct? ....

132 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Two adverts from Halifax newspapers 100 years ago paint an interesting picture of society in the 1920s. One advert is for new suits, available from Sam Stocks for £5.50. The other advertises a competition to win a new house, fully fitted with electricity, or alternatively, a cheque for £2,000. ...

100 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

It’s probably been sixty years since I took this photograph of the old railway sheds beside North Bridge in Halifax, and a lot has happened since then. The sheds have gone, replaced by a leisure centre that has since disappeared as well. ....

140 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This week’s postcard comes from the collection of my great-uncle, Fowler Beanland. It shows the Mechanics’ Institute in Keighley, a building with which he would have been very familiar. It was built in 1853, a few years before he was born, and burnt down in 1962, a couple of years after he died.

121 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Artificial intelligence can manipulate images in wonderful ways, transforming corporate headquarters into Dalí-esque fantasies and Victorian piles into Gaudí-esque dreams. However, you don’t need AI when a plate-glass office block can provide its own reflections on Bradford.

020 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This is another of my “little flakes of history”: a negative from the 1920s depicting an unknown trio who have clearly found something of great significance in the bushes. “Look at this,” they seem to be saying from a century ago. “Look at what?” we reply. So far, no answer has emerged.

000 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

At the start of a new month, I once again dive into my file of photographs taken over the last sixty or more years. Photographs make time stand still, and I see these pictures as little flakes of history. ....

100 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Now I go cleaning windows to earn an honest bob / For a nosy parker it's an interestin' job / Now it's a job that just suits me / A window cleaner you would be / If you can see what I can see / When I'm cleanin' windows.

020 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I took this photograph of the Royal Albert Docks in Liverpool yesterday while my wife was browsing a local gift shop. I sent it to my friend Jane, who suggested I use it for today’s calendar. The sky really was this blue, and the reflections really were this vibrant. It’s a grand place, Liverpool.

020 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Another way to cross the River Mersey is the method I’ll be using later today: travelling through the Mersey Tunnel. The Queensway Tunnel - the one I’ll be using - was constructed in 1934, the year before this fine old picture postcard was sent. .....

120 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Later this weekend, I will be crossing the River Mersey. To celebrate, here is a photograph taken during a trip across the river more than seventy years ago. Later this year, I hope to make a slightly longer water crossing to be reunited with my brother. ....

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Coming across this old photograph - which I must have taken forty or more years ago - I was initially unsure of the exact location, as most northern towns and cities had a Mount Zion Chapel. .....

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

The third element of my Dewsbury triptych is the rather beautiful Dewsbury Town Hall, built in 1886 by local architects Henry Hottom and George A. Fox. ....

120 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The second of my Dewsbury triptych celebrates that moment - which all photographers know well - when you suddenly catch sight of an alignment of objects or an idiosyncratic collection of shapes, and snap away with enthusiastic abandon. ....

120 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

When brothers Robert and William Machell built their new mill in Dewsbury in 1874, they chose to incorporate four finely carved stone portraits into the fabric of the handsome Cloth Hall Mill. ....

120 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I remember taking this photograph half a century or more ago, at a time when there was an outcry against TV aerials as despoilers of urban landscapes. I was always rather fond of them - there was an idiosyncrasy about them that is sadly lacking in their modern equivalents. ....

130 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Is there anything better than an old picture postcard - with a dramatic scene of waves breaking over the Blackpool seashore on one side and a cryptic message on the other The card appears to have been sent by my grandfather, Albert Beanland, to his brother, Fowler Beanland. ...

120 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

At the outbreak of World War II, my father (on the left in the photograph), who was in a reserved occupation, joined the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). He always claimed that LDV stood for “look, duck and vanish”. ...

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A cobbled street of almost mountainous proportions, gas lamps casting light over a greyscale scene, and washing lines stretching from side to side like cut-price bunting: this was Claremount, Halifax, in the late 1960s. ....

221 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I've only ever worked in a mill as a holiday job while at university - really, I was just playing at it. But I am the son, grandson, and great-grandson of mill workers. Threads of yarn bind my genes together, and bobbins form the bones of my ancestry. ....

111 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm not quite sure how I acquired this photograph. I don't appear in it, and it isn't my school. None of that matters, however: the scene rings more bells than a school clock. ....

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

There is a pleasure in collecting old photographs of unknown people. They are people who long ago departed this world, leaving behind only a few fading family memories and the occasional faded photograph. We get to shine a light on these forgotten faces and imagine what might have been.

48314 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I must have taken this photograph almost sixty years ago. It’s grainy, low in contrast, tired, and of dubious quality. I asked AI to improve it, and it produced a version that was shiny, sharp, and so, so wrong. This is the Halifax I remember. Perhaps I, too, am grainy, tired, and of dubious quality

150 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

“Sorry I could not see you this morning” was the brief message from FW to Mr S. Mellor of Leeds in July 1903. The choice of picture postcard is an interesting one: not only does it depict a fine Victorian building, but it also happens to be my old school. ...

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I have no idea who this group of women is or why so many of them are dressed in a similar style. You can speculate to your heart’s content and still probably come nowhere near a convincing answer. ....

210 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Just one of the many decorative plaques found outside the truly magnificent Black Friar pub on Queen Victoria Street in London. The decorations inside are even more spectacular, making the pub an essential stop for any visitor to London. ....

120 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I saw this lady at the Ferens Gallery in Hull. I asked her permission to take the photograph and she voiced no objections. She is Georgie, the wife of the artist Arthur Joseph Gaskin (1862-1928). She is rather beautiful.

030 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Skegness, 1982: Out there somewhere lies the sea. Somewhere behind us is the land. Between the two stretches an endless series of sand-filled boundaries - land and sea, sea and sky - inhabited by that hardiest of annuals: the seaside holidaymaker.

011 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This is another example of my somewhat imaginative use of captions to mask the fact that, after the best part of fifty years, I can’t remember exactly where I was when I took this photograph. ....

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I think I may have used this photograph of mine before for my daily calendar, but never mind - it is well worth a second outing. It shows Halifax Borough Market more than half a century ago. ....

130 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Was Connie staying at the Midland Hotel in Bradford? What examination was she due to take on the 3rd of April? Did she pass? Questions, questions, questions. These days, it would be a WhatsApp message, with the answer on the next line. .....

110 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

The problem with modern AI-driven photo-restoration apps is their need for perfection. Faces become as fresh as regenerated daisies, and clothing appears dry-cleaner pressed. Old photos need blotches, smudges, and indistinct patches. .....

130 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

In these parts, we erect tall monuments to civic pride, elaborate steeples as testaments to divine redemption, and monolithic chimneys in praise of the God of Industry. Egypt may have the pyramids and Athens the Acropolis, but Halifax has the Corona Chimney at Dean Clough.

040 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

As I continue to work my way through hundreds of old negatives - the legacy of a lifetime of photography - I valiantly try to categorise and organise the shots by attaching precise descriptions and accurate keywords. ....

120 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I am of the opinion that you should never let a month go by without including at least one photograph of Burdock Way in Halifax. This majestic concrete structure, soaring over the Hebble Valley, provides an urban backdrop of endless dramatic lines and sultry curves. It is road as art.

020 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

It’s the 1st of September, and all the shops will be getting ready for Christmas. Before we condemn this as another twenty-first-century excursion into the realms of cheap commercialism, take a look at this advertisement from the Halifax Evening Courier from exactly 100 years ago. ....

130 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Realising that I hadn't chosen an image for today’s calendar by 10 p.m. last night, I turned to a committee of friends I was sharing a drink or three with and asked them to choose a photo from my archives. ....

130 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Where do seaside fairground rides go during the winter? They sit in storage facilities, waiting for the sun to shine, waiting for the music to start again.

010 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Albert was the only member of the family to leave Bradford behind - the factories, the mills, and the smell of lanolin. Rose Ellen was wedded to the future but drawn to the past: Victorian in a post-Victorian world. Ivy would see so much, yet miss out on even more. Pictures from the family’s past.

020 0

Alan Burnett @abfixby.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I've always believed in looking up as we walk through a town or city to admire the architectural wonders that so often surround us. Equally, however, it is worth looking down - especially if, like me, you are a fan of drain covers. ....

140 0