The field in today’s picture had been freshly ploughed (although this corner at the edge is more churned, I think). The rich brown of the turned soil contrasted nicely with the scattered orange fallen leaves that littered the surface. I don’t think the shot would have worked without the pylons.
If you want to see what the field might look like as springtime arrives, I have a shot from the same location here.
Something good that happened today…
I went to the cinema to see Captain America: Brave New World after work today. I’ve been steering clear of any reviews and opinions as much as possible (although I had seen a few people mention that these weren’t favourable) because I wanted to form my own opinions without being swayed by others. I sometime wish for the simpler times where the entire world didn’t feel the need to be seemingly harshly critical of almost everything.
I enjoyed the film. It’s not the best MCU movie, but it’s far from the worst, and I had a solid couple of hours of solid entertainment, which is all I really want from this sort of film.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed, home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Three pictures of bits of fence on the Trans-Pennine Trail that I shot during a walk at the end of October. The weather wasn’t the best and I don’t tend to shoot (expensive!) colour film on days such as this, but it had been loaded in the camera a while before so I decided to make use of it anyway.
Something good that happened today…
After a run of pretty dismal, dull, grey weather – including yesterday where it also rained as well as being murky – today was a little brighter. Not exactly sunny, but there was a little structure in the clouds and occasional splashes of brightness where the sun found a way through the cloud. This provided an opportunity to go out and make some photographs. I didn’t have any great project in mind, and if I’m honest, my mind wasn’t really in the right place for it, but I got myself dressed an headed out anyway. In the end I shot 20 frames of the roll of Ilford HP5+. I’ll be interested to see how they turn out after I’ve finished the roll and developed it, but I had promising feelings about a lot of them. We shall see.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed, home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
A quartet of pictures I shot one morning on my way into the office.
Park Hill Flats are a notable (and some might say, notorious) landmark in Sheffield, being one of the major landmarks visible when entering the city by rail or by road down the main arterial route from the motorway.
When originally constructed in the late 1950s, / early 1960s they replaced older back-to-back tenement housing and gave the residents the luxury of their own private bathrooms and heating. Due to the construction on a hillside it was possible to reach every floor apart from the highest from somewhere at ground level and the wide frontages to the flats were wide enough for electric milk-floats to be driven, and the name “streets in the sky” was coined.
Over time, a mixture of poor maintenance, and rising antisocial behaviour and crime blighted the development. Over time it became more difficult to house tenants on the site. In recent decades, a part-privatisation of the development has taken place, with the blocks being gradually refurbished and improved into a mixture of upmarket housing, social housing, and business units, and there are now much improved facilities on the site.
Whatever your thoughts on the brutalist architectural design, the place is certainly striking, and for a photographer provides ample opportunities for interesting pictures to be made.
Something good that happened today…
I heard today that one of the people in our team impacted by the recent redundancies has secured himself a new role, so I’m very happy for him. He’s a great young man with a lot of promise and deserves every opportunity.
A very short walk from the Impressions Gallery in Bradford is a cafe called The Cake’ole (“cake’ole” being slang for “mouth” – the hole where you insert cake 🙂 ). I ordered a sandwich and a coke, and was very happy with both the food and the service. Next time I visit the gallery I’ll almost certainly pay a visit to The Cake’ole again too. Maybe I’ll try one of the nice looking cakes next time. I took the picture below while awaiting my sandwich.
Something good that happened today…
Back at work after the weekend on a gray and rainy Monday (it’s February in the UK, so this is perhaps to be expected). But I had another day that felt productive and that always gives me a satisfied feeling when the working day is over.
The photos shared today were taken when I visited the Impressions Gallery in Bradfordfor the photobook fair and the Cafe Royal exhibition.
I’ve only been to Bradford on a handful of occasions, and every visit has been for a specific purpose with little time to explore, but I think I will make some proper time to do so one day as there is a lot of interesting stuff to be seen.
Something good that happened today…
I went out for Sunday Dinner with my wife and had a very nice steak and ale pie served with chunky chips and proper mushy peas. All washed down with a pint of cider.
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a week or so now and have already posted a few pictures from this roll, but here is the bona-fide “Expiryment”.
This time around, I had a roll of Kodak Elite Chrome 200 which had expired in 2003. It’s not the first.time I’ve shot a roll of this film from this vintage, although I didn’t write anything specific about it at the time apart from how well I thought it had held up.
Given the nice results I got last time, I was fairly confident that I would have a similar experience this time around too. Alas, it wasn’t quite the same and, although the two rolls were the same brand, the same age, and had been stored in the same way since I acquired them, this time I encountered some problems.
My chosen method for shooting slide film is to expose it at box speed, no matter how expired it is. While expired reversal film usually benefits from extra light in the form of exposure, slide film seems to maintain its original narrow exposure latitude and any significant deviation from this will quickly result in blown highlights or crushed shadows. Of course, while the latitude may remain the same, this doesn’t mean that other things haven’t changed, and the dyes can degrade, resulting in colour shifts. This is what had happened with this roll.
Upon receiving the sheet of positives back from the lab they looked fine on initial inspection (holding them up to the window), but it quickly became apparent that all was not well when I began to scan them. A very noticeable purple cast was visible on the images, particularly where there were underexposed shadows.
Thankfully, despite the problems with the colour, modern technology is able to come to the rescue, and with some careful editing in Adobe Lightroom (mostly using he colour curves adjustments), I was able to remove the bulk of the purple caste and get relatively pleasing results. The image comparison slider below shows a good example of the before and after states of one of the images.
Some images fared worse than others, but none were a complete write off due to the colour issues – the ones I didn’t upload to Flickr were as a result of other, more mundane problems, such as soft focus or them just being photos I thought were uninteresting.
A selection of other shots from the roll are below, all after post-processing to remove the colour cast.
Overall then, while there was a definite issue present for this roll, it wasn’t insurmountable, and post-processing produced very acceptable results. I wouldn’t want to risk shooting film like this for something important, but for the fun of it, sure, and I still have plenty of expired rolls left (including some more Elite Chrome in both 100asa and 200asa variants). Further Expiryments to come…
Overall outcome: Partial success!
Olympus OM-10 & G.Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 on Kodak Elite Chrome 200 (expired 2004) . Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
One of the occasional pictures I post that I’ve used as an entry in the annual film photography competition I’ve taken part in for the past few years. The theme for this one was Games of Chance, and the shot was an emergency backup for another picture that didn’t work out as expected.
Something good that happened today…
I usually restrict the cats to downstairs when I’m working alone at home as they tend to make a nuisance of themselves. Today I decided to give them a chance.
They made nuisances of themselves.
Nonetheless it was nice to have them around. I might do it more often – maybe I’ll bring their beds upstairs so they can sleep in my office while I work.
St. Peter’s church stands in Trusthorpe, a village that sits between Mablethorpe and Sutton-on-Sea. The village just merges into the two other locations though with no countryside in between. Much of the land just behind the sea defences is now the home of a large caravan park, which can be seen in the bottom two pictures. If you look very closely at the second caravans photo, you can just see the tower of St. Peter’s poking up out of the treeline.
Something good that happened today…
I had a Jamaican salt fish patty for my lunch today. Never had one before and it was pretty nice.
There is a house behind that tree. You can just about make it out…
Something good that happened today…
I was told today that I’ve been successful in keeping my job, which is a huge relief.
The relief and gratitude is, however, considerably tempered by the fact that lots of my colleagues have not been so fortunate and will be leaving the team (and possibly the business) in the near future, which is horrible. I’ve been in that position myself, and it was awful. I expect that all of them will be able to find new jobs given the line of business we are in and their hands on experience, but it’s still not a happy situation for them to be put in through no fault of their own. They are all good people and I will really miss them.
Steel City Snapper photography 