Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
I lieu of having anything else to talk about today, here are a few more pictures of autumn colour from last year. I doubt any will win prizes for their scenery, but the light was nice for each of them.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 25 November 2023.
This 16th century thatched cottage in the village of Old Whittington, which is now a suburb of Chesterfield, was once the location for a plot to overthrow the king of England, James II.
The conspirators were three local noblemen William Cavendish, 4th Earl of Devonshire, John Darcy, fourth son of the Earl of Holderness, and the Earl of Danby. Upon hearing that James had given birth to an heir who would be raised as a catholic, the men plotted to replace James with William of Orange, first taking control of the north before marching south to take the throne.
James fled before William’s approach and the result was a bloodless change of monarch.
Revolution House was formerly an inn named the Cock & Pynot, and the conspirators met there under the guise of a hunting party to concoct their plans. The building was converted to a private residence and, over time, it’s size was reduced. It is now a free-to-enter museum.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 25 November 2023.
I stopped the car when I saw this scene. It’s just some dry weeds in a field beside the road, but the colours against the autumn blue sky screamed out to me. I’m not sure what the floodlights in the distance illuminate, but I deliberately included them because they added a sense of mystery, or at least they did in my mind.
It’s another one of those photos that I just like without really being able to define why.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 25 November 2023.
It’s one of those days where I’m having a bout of writer’s block so, rather than try to force something, here’s a picture of a suburban scene. I liked the light, the colours, and the composition with the back of the red car peeking out beside the bungalow.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 November 2023.
One of the things I’ve decided I’m going to do this year is to broaden my experience of music. I tend to fall back on the same genre’s and artists that I know I like (and have liked since I was old enough to have an interest in music). I do like music outside this range, but it’s rare that I’ve bought (or listened) to any albums that fall away from my usual tastes.
So, to do something about this, I’ve compiled a list of albums that I have (mostly*) never listened to before – currently standing at almost three hundred strong – with the plan to choose one at random each week. I built my list by aggregating several “Best Albums of All Time”-type charts, removing the duplicates, and then adding in some other stuff that wasn’t on these lists but which I fancy listen to (I’ll probably keep adding extra titles as they occur to me). The full list covers a pretty wide range or genres and artists.
I set up a random number generator in Excel and assigned each album a number, and I’m using this method to choose each week’s selection so hopefully I’ll get a good mixture of stuff.
For week one of the endeavour the wheel of fortune certainly delivered, giving me an album in a genre that I’ve never considered listening to before: Gangsta Rap!
So week one’s album choice has been Straight Outta Compton by N.W.A.
Turns out that I actually like the album. There’s a real power to it, both in the emotional impact, and also the excellent production. There’s a lot of violent language, and quite a bit of misogyny (and some homophobia) in there too, which I’m not going to condone (although the profanity doesn’t bother me particularly and it’s easy to see how the music’s angry driving force was brought into being), but I’ve listened to the album several times during the week and even sought out the biopic movie too. I don’t like every track on the album (but that’s the case for most albums, if I’m honest), but the ones I do like are pretty great. Off the back of this, I’ve added a bunch of other rap albums to my list.
Tomorrow I’ll spin the wheel again and get another set of songs to consume. Who knows what I’ll get next time?
I chose today’s photo as it felt (very loosely) connected to the contents of the post, albeit not photographed in Compton. 🙂
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 November 2023.
Not far from where I live there are lots of remnants of the coal mining that was once a major industry in the area. Some of these are gradually becoming subsumed into the landscape, but some are more apparent such as the bridge seen in today’s pictures.
I went out on this day with the hope of getting some autumnal colours lit by the setting sun, but as I walked the sun dipped behind a bank of cloud on the western horizon and the bright glow disappeared. I thought about heading back home but, having been caught out in the past by a sudden resurgence of good light when it was too late to take advantage, I decided to wait a little longer.
After a while the sun descended below the cloud and cast some dim but pleasant light across the scene – enough to cast shadows from the bridge’s ironwork. I didn’t hold any great expectation for the photos, but I was pretty happy when I saw the scans emerge. The colour is more subtle than it might have been had the sun been un obscured, but the warm tones work really well, I think.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 November 2023.
The end of my first day back at work after Christmas and the New Year and, being honest, I feel I’ve achieved vey little. I have a piece of work I’m involved in that’s really dragging, primarily because I’m not sure what I need to be doing (and nor does anyone else), which is resulting in a somewhat aimless way of working.
Once I’ve figured out a way to pull it all together, I’m sure it will become easier, but for the moment it’s quite stressful and not really what I wanted to come back to after the break.
Hopefully storms are not brewing, as they appeared to be when I took the photo featured in today’s post.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 November 2023.
This was a very quickly grabbed shot while I was out with my wife. She doesn’t mind me taking pictures while we’re out, but I never spend the same amount of time setting up a picture or waiting for the right moment as I might do if I were out alone. Anyway, the light was nice on these two brightly painted takeaway restaurants and I had my Canon Z135 in my pocket, so I made a picture while I had the chance.
I need to start my planned diet in the next week, so takeaways are more likely to be the subject of my photography than my custom for a while.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 5 November 2023.
Just a couple of pictures of unusual stuff today. The first is a shot of a giant micro-organism – an e-coli bacteria to be specific – that was lurking within Sheffield’s Winter Gardens. This larger-than-life model is 90 feet long, apparently making it five million times larger than it’s actual size. At this scale you’d have no problem spotting if your food was contaminated, I guess, although I tremble at the thought of the chicken that it might have inhabited!
You can find more information about the sculpture here: https://www.lukejerram.com/e-coli/
The second picture is of another sculpture, a steel willow tree commemorating the victims of Covid-19 and the unsung workers of the pandemic. It was unveiled in March 2023 and stands in Balm Green Gardens, close to Barker’s Pool in Sheffield.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 21 October 2023.
This defaced and damaged phone box made for an interesting subject. I guess the neighbourhood watch wasn’t watching.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 21 October 2023.
Steel City Snapper photography 