Durham Archives - Ed O'Keeffe Photography

27 September 201420 May 2017

Traction Engine at Beamish village

Another photograph of a traction engine at the Beamish museum. Taken outside the Annfield Plain Industrial Co-Operative Society store in the main village itself. There’s a lot of tourists around but one of things I like most about this photograph is the lady driving this huge steam powered vehicle. These vehicles were used from around 1850 and were precursors to the modern tractor. Used on farms they were self propelled steam engines that could pull heavy loads. In the UK there are a number of steam fairs that people can see these massive machines in action.

23 December 20117 May 2017

Holly and Red Berries

Taken in the north east of England on a trip up to County Durham these bright red berries really caught my eye as I was walking around with my camera. Even though it was March it felt as though it would make a very festive photograph. As you can see from the shadows, the sun was shining directly onto this holly. The only thing missing from this image is a light coating of snow.

5 August 200828 May 2017

Eggleston Hall Gardens Angel Replica

There have been a couple of times I have gone to this photo thinking, “it is about time I showed this photo”, but for some reason I never got around to editing it. This image was captured in Eggleston Hall Gardens in Country Durham. At the time this was taken I was planning to visit the real Angel of the North up in Gateshead in the following months. Unfortunately we were leaving the gardens at the time this was taken, so I didn’t go any closer to the sculpture that this, but from what I remember of the day it was about 6-7 feet in height. Nowhere near as tall as the original Angel of the North.

10 January 200828 May 2017

Side of Barnard Castle, County Durham

When I was looking for signposts for Barnard Castle last spring I was expecting a castle but Barnard Castle is the name of the local town as well as the town’s castle pictured above. I don’t think that makes this ‘Barnard Castle’s Castle’ but it did confuse me at first. I wanted to publish this photograph because of the fantastic textures on the side wall. It was founded by the Norman’s in the 12 century and was a lovely ruin to walk around with lots of open space and interesting stair cases and a great view looking south away from the town centre. The way the path comes in from the bottom left corner makes look towards the two lamp posts and then to the stone work in the castle walls. Certain photographs like this are very difficult to showcase online as the quality of the downloaded image (even when clicked to see a larger preview) is around 6x less then the quality of the original file that came out of the camera, so sharpness and general quality suffer greatly.