There is something about old clock towers that makes you look up.

Perhaps it is their height, their architecture, or simply the strange idea that a building has been quietly measuring time while generations of people have passed beneath it.

During my journey through Wales, this tower immediately caught my attention.

Not because of colour.

Not because of dramatic light.

But because of its character.

The stonework, the narrow openings, the pointed roof and the delicate details at the very top seemed to belong to another rhythm — one much slower than the world moving around it.

And that is exactly why I chose black and white for this photograph.

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🕰️ Removing Colour, Keeping Time

Sometimes colour helps tell the story.

Sometimes it gets in the way.

Here, I wanted the photograph to be about shape, texture and age.

Without colour, the rough stone becomes more noticeable. The architectural lines become stronger. Even the clock face seems to gain importance, almost as if everything in the composition was built around those two hands.

There is also something timeless about monochrome photography.

A colour image immediately belongs to the present.

Black and white is less certain.

Was this photograph taken yesterday?

Twenty years ago?

Much longer?

Of course, the camera knows the answer.

The image doesn't have to tell us.

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📷 Looking Up

Travel photography is often associated with wide landscapes and famous viewpoints, but some of my favourite photographs begin with a much simpler action:

looking up.

While walking through an unfamiliar place, architecture becomes part of the experience. Towers, windows, doors, old walls and small decorative details reveal something about the people who built them and the communities that grew around them.

This tower was one of those moments.

I stopped.

Changed my perspective.

And allowed the vertical structure to dominate the frame.

The large amount of open sky was intentional. It isolates the tower from its surroundings and gives it room to stand almost like a portrait.

A portrait of a building.

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🧭 A New Photographic Journey

This photograph also marks a change of scenery in the images I will be sharing here.

After many photographs from the Azores, the next posts will take us through Wales — a land of mountains, castles, stone villages, dramatic coastlines and, inevitably, unpredictable skies.

I travelled there with the same curiosity I always carry with my camera.

Not simply looking for landmarks, but for those smaller scenes that make a place memorable.

This clock tower was one of them.

And perhaps that is one of the pleasures of travelling with a camera:

you leave home searching for new places...

and return with fragments of time.

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📷 Photo Notes

Series: Wales Through My Lens
Genre: Travel & Architectural Photography
Subject: Historic clock tower
Style: Black and White
Composition: Vertical perspective • Architectural symmetry • Negative space
Focus: Stone texture • Geometry • Clock face
Mood: Timeless • Quiet • Historic

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"We travel through places, but sometimes it is time itself that becomes the subject."