SEVENTEEN MILES VIEW by GLEN LEIGH

Photo by Glen Leigh Photography

Sometimes a photograph is so striking that it just begs to be made into one of our Middlewich Diary mastheads. Such was the case with this astonishing image by Glen Leigh, who has contributed some excellent shots to us in the past, including some of passenger trains making their sedate way through the town.
Seventeen Miles View (a title taken from Glen's caption when he posted it on Facebook) is a stunning view across half of the Cheshire plain, taking in Middlewich church tower, the spire of St Wilfred's church in Davenham and, way out on the horizon, seventeen miles away, the imposing (even at this distance) bulk of the Fiddler's Ferry power station on the edge of the Mersey Estuary.
Glen hasn't told us (yet) where he was standing when he took the picture, but, from the angle of the church tower, we're guessing it was on top of the old ICI lime beds in Booth Lane.
There has some surmise as to how this effect was obtained. Is the image, perhaps, a compilation of two or three photos skilfully knitted together? Or is it, even more remarkably, just one single shot, taking in all those miles?
Glen lets us in on the secret:

To satisfy your curiosity guys this is just one photo, taken with an extremely long lens. The reason that far off distant objects appear close is due to lens compression (flattens perspective and bunches everthing up) which is the result of using long lenses...the further an object is away, the closer it appears in an image. 
Also the image was taken on the lagoons.....as to the precise location that would be a little more difficult to explain and very hard to see with the naked eye or wide lenses. Thank you for the interest

The photographers among us will be able to appreciate the technical skill involved in taking a photograph like this; the rest of us can only marvel at a composition many would have thought impossible.
An indication of the power of this photo, and the effect it had on us, can be gauged from the fact that from our seeing it on Facebook and  asking Glen for permission to use it, his sending us a high-resolution copy by email and the new masthead appearing took around twenty minutes.
Dave Roberts
Editor
26th March 2014

UPDATE (August 2017)

There was concern over the intervening years between 2014 and 2017 that the Fiddlers Ferry power station might be closed and demolished, making this photograph unrepeatable in the future. It's unlikely that when those massive cooling towers do finally disappear anything on remotely the same scale would be put in their place.
However, it has been announced that the power station will continue in use until at least 2019 to provide cover for the National Grid in the event of an exceptionally hard winter - something which by the law of averages is long overdue.

UPDATE (April 2020)
The power station at Fiddlers Ferry, opened in 1973, finally ceased operations at the end of March 2020. According to Wikipedia the closure dates were as follows:Units 2 and 4 ceased generation on March 7 2020. Unit 3 ceased generation on 18 March 2020 at around 2 pm.

So anyone wanting to repeat Glenn's amazing shot will need to move fast.

UPDATE (December 2023)
And now it's too late! It was reported on 1st December 2023 that the cooling towers would be demolished over the weekend of 1st-3rd December. So R.I.P. Fiddlers Ferry...

First published 27th March 2014
Updated and republished 12th August 2017
Updated and re-published 6th April 2020

Updated and re-published 1st December 2023

•