Michael's Vision & Mission

Then I remember that what matters is the prioritising - start with the studies, then the photography, then the podcast, and if I have time.

Learning my craft and developing a bank of material which can be used over and over again for different purposes is far more potent than rushing to brain-dump ill-informed and ill-thought through opinions on whatever the latest transient scandal or saga happens to be.

We will never solve deep-rooted problems until we go deep in understanding them. We cannot spread good ideas until we have refined them and can communicate them to different audiences. It's easy to be tempted to run in to join the fray as we see the world around us going to pots, but like St Paul the Apostle, we must first learn to hang fire and go through the training in order to be truly effective.

Here's the thing...

Wishing everyone a happy, blessed, and peaceful Christmas... 🙏

I've been rather quiet on the social front of late, but that's no slacking on my part - I've been heads down, bringing a project to fruition that's taken me far longer to achieve than I'd care to admit...

But there's nothing about it that's not been in the open for some time now, because I've been perfectly frank about it in some of my posts. But in case you've missed the mention, and are wondering what on earth this crazy bloke is doing, photographing trains, then buildings, then fairground rides, here's the facts.

One of the biggest drivers of my photography is the development of a multimedia blog & podcast, Michael's Mission, exploring the role of heritage and traditional values in building up great places. Having taken up the art of photography at the start simply to capture the memory of the places I'd been to and the sights I'd seen, I very quickly realised the power of the art to capture and convey stories of places, and the amazing ideas being implemented to improve them. I had always been accustomed to value our manmade heritage - the beauty, sturdiness, and craftsmanship of the relics of the past. In part, this was due to being raised by an older generation that had seen the changes in the world, the degradation of beauty and quality, and in part it was because I was brought up with strong Traditionalist Catholic values, that placed an emphasis in the social sphere on the wholistic upliftment of mankind by creating a political, cultural, and economic environment that met the entire needs of individuals and families, and it pained me to think that these needs are not being met by the sort of places most people call home.

I wanted to change that, and that's why I got into the world of digital content creation. And though my approach and strategy have changed wildly since I first got started in 2018 - 2019, my commitment to exploring traditional values and their relevance in the modern world, educating and inspiring people to take their own parts in this great enterprise has never waivered.

And that's why I'm so stoked to have my first installment of Michael's Mission out for publication. It's clunky, janky, messy, and far longer in the making than I'd care to admit, but it's coming out in written form on both WordPress and Substack on Sunday 6 July at 12pm UK time, and will premiere on YouTube the same day at 3pm UK time. And once that first episode is published, I'll be working in the coming week on getting the podcast set up on all the major audio listening platforms, so it'll become available there too.

In the meantime, I hope it will be just the beginning of an ongoing journey of creating content to fill what I see as a pretty big void in world of social media, blogging, and podcasting - the confluence of the traditional societal and economic values of Corporatism, Distributism, Classicism, and Neo-Traditional Urbanism. For my part, I believe in these values because they square most firmly with the traditional teaching and practise of the Catholic Religion, but these are values that hold on their own - one should not need to be Catholic to recognise their value, and indeed, there are many non-Catholics who do. That's why I'm trying to reach as broad an audience as possible by my presence on various platforms, but my work on each platform, especially my main web platforms of WordPress and Substack will be different. My WordPress site is my main website, home to my merch and print store as well as a lot of lighter content to appeal to everyone from the enthusiast to the diehard entrepreneur, while my Substack is intended to be more intellectual, dedicated exclusively to longform articles going more in-depth into key topics. But Michael's Mission will span both, as the central core of my content strategy.

Subscribe now on my main WordPress site to get all the latest business and enterprise news, or on my Substack to get more in-depth insights and analysis, and I hope you'll be ready to join me when that first installment drops on Sunday!

I'm still slowly working my way through editing all the still images, from Warley at Statfold, but just by way of a hint of what's currently going through the sausage machine, here's the three photos I took of the model that was probably my greatest reason for going - a static display model of Brunel's experimental atmospheric railway. This used steam power to pump air out of a tube running between the rails, into which was inserted a piston connected to the train through a slot sealed off by continuous valves. The piston which would be pushed along by the difference in air pressure, pulling the train along. Unfortunately, however, the system's underpowered specifications, combined with continual malfunctioning of the continuous valve system led to the mechanism benig abandoned. It does, however, illustrate the incredible ingenuity and innovation of the 19th century, even if some if not many innovations ultimately proved impractical, not entirely unlike some of the crazy ideas we see floating around the tech space nowadays.

Solemn Requiem Mass at the SSPX Chapel of St Michael the Archangel in Burghclere, Hampshire, England for Bishop Bernard Tissier de Mallarais on Saturday 19 October 2024. 🙏

I think a lot of newer generations of Traditional Catholics can easily fail to appreciate just how crucial a role Bishop Tissier played in establishing the traditionalist movement within the Catholic Church - dare I say that without Father & later Bishop Tissier, we would not have had the historical giant that was Archbishop Lefebvre. I did know some of the well-known stories, such as his involvement as one of the first nine seminarians who went to Abp Lefebvre during the initial upheavals in the 1960s, and of course his later consecration as a bishop, but there were also many stories of his ongoing support to the Archbishop both in the early days of the Society, and later in the lead-up to the consecrations of which I was personally unaware until after his recent untimely passing.

Thanks be to God for such a wonderful man!

My latest YouTube video features a collection of images and footage from the Weston-Super-Mare Model Railway Show at the Priory Community School back in January 2024. I can't quite place my finger on why, but this was honestly my most enjoyed exhibition so far, with a fun mix of main line and branch line/industrial settings covered, and generally some very satisfying models to stand and watch.

All photography & videography was shot by myself and available for download and reuse in other creative projects subject to the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, crediting me (Michael Alford) as the original author of the footage. Individual images and footage clips are available for download from my dedicated photography website.

Finally released my stock footage compilation from last year's model railway exhibition in Swansea, featuring some fantastic models including Box, Overlord, and Allenby, with all imagery downloadable for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution License, crediting me as the author.

Dipping my toes into some urban planning photography passing through the Showell Park housing estate on my way to photograph last Friday's steam railtour. I know a lot of New Urbanist types have a lot of criticism for such housing estates, and so do I; however, I do find these neo-traditional housing estates interesting as an urban planning solution, because they do make an impressive effort to create an aesthetically pleasant environment for people to live in, with plenty of green space. Coming from South Africa, I have a lot of time for shared communal green space as a place for people to spend time and children to play.

I’m passionate about bringing to life the charms and challenges of yesteryear with the aid of modern digital photography, but why? And how?