This is Holy Trinity church at Wentworth. The church was built by William Wentworth-Fitzwilliam in the latter part of the 19th century, and consecrated on 31 July 1877. It’s quite an imposing building, its steeple visible from miles around. I remember the first time I saw it years ago, viewed from the road to Hoyland to the north, and feeling my gaze drawn to the structure, a huge spike pointing to the heavens, and thinking that it felt like the location from an M.R. James ghost story.
The GW690 is something of a beast of a camera – it didn’t get the nickname of The Texas Leica because it’s compact, that’s for sure. As a result it canbe quite an awkward camera to use, despite its otherwise simple set of controls. I find it quite difficult to hold in portrait orientation and most of my missed shots, where there has been a degree of camera shake, have been when taking pictures this way. The camera has a second shutter release button on the front of the body to aid in taking portrait format photos, but I still tend to generate more of a wobble when using it even like this.
Thankfully the portrait oriented pictures I took on this day in Wentworth have all come out ok with the exception of one.
Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400. Shot at 200asa and developed at box speed by lab (in Xtol).
A couple more photos from Wentworth today and, let’s face it, there will be a few more day’s worth of Wentworth photos yet to come given that I shot three rolls of film there. All GW690 though, so not that many in total really.
The first one required crackerjack timing (c.f. Jack Burton) to avoid any of the frequently passing vehicles getting in the shot, but I’m not sure if I should maybe have cropped the right side a little. It was composed this way deliberately to avoid the clutter of parked cars and stuff further down the road to the left, but it feels a little unbalanced as a result..
I made a big pan of chicken and bacon soup earlier today to satiate my current need for a soft diet. The soup looked great when ready, and then I had to blitz it in the blender to get rid of any chunks. It looks nowhere near as nice now but, thankfully, it still tastes great. I had a huge bowl of it for my tea and feel pretty full now!
Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400. Shot at 200asa and developed at box speed by lab (in Xtol).
Yesterday’s trip to the dentist resulted in, as I expected, the removal of one of my teeth – an upper back molar. The experience was not a pleasant one. It didn’t hurt at all and, so far, I’ve suffered no real post-extraction pain either. The lack of pain does not remove the other sensations resulting from having a tooth removed however. I’ll not go into details here as people might not want the gruesome breakdown, but suffice it to say that it is a highly uncomfortable physical experience even without pain.
I’m now stuck with a diet of soft or liquid foods for a while, so I’ll be having soup shortly, and had porridge for my breakfast and scrambled eggs for lunch. No hot drinks for a few days either, and even my soup will have to be left to cool before I awkwardly eat it while trying not to get any in the tooth socket. This is more to protect the healing of the extraction site than because it will cause pain, I think. I’ll also start a regime of saline rinses after I eat today and will need to carry on with those for the next week or more. At least it being on the upper jaw means that gravity works to prevent stuff getting stuck in there a little
Hopefully the infection that caused my trip in the first place has gone with the tooth though.
Enough horrible dentistry stuff, so here’s a photo of Wentworth post office, cast in some quite significant contrasty shadow by the light and the film I used. It took me a number of attempts to get this shot as cars kept pulling up in front on a frequent basis.
Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400. Shot at 200asa and developed at box speed by lab (in Xtol).
Another GW690 photo from my recent walk around Wentworth. I’m posting early today as I have a dentist appointment later which might (probably will!) involve a tooth extraction, and I’m not sure whether I’ll feel like writing anything after that.
Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400. Shot at 200asa and developed at box speed by lab (in Xtol).
There is a rabbit lurking in this picture of a cottage.
The photo was taken on a visit to the picturesque village of Wentworth, South Yorkshire, which I visited a couple of weeks ago. I got quite a few photos I’m happy with. This is a good thing as I was shooting my GW690 which only gives 8 shots per roll of 120 film, and I shot three rolls. It probably costs the best part of £1 per shot, maybe even more in this case as I had a couple of rolls lab developed as I didn’t have time to do them myself.
I bought the GW690 over a year ago and I haven’t used it all that much – probably due to the limitations of only having 8 shots per roll rather than the cost, as it means I need to take a few rolls with me in the event that I find lots of things to photograph. It does take very nice pictures when used correctly though, and I hope to use it more this year.
Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400. Shot at 200asa and developed at box speed by lab (in Xtol).
I thought I’d sneak this random photo of as fence into the blog today. It was taken last Monday and is my entry for this months photo competition, with the subject being “broken”. It’s not the best shot ever, but it fits the theme. My planned idea of broken eggs was foiled by my not having enough spare time to set it up and take the photos. Ah well.
I went out for the day to Leeds today. My wife and her sisted hit the shops while I wandered around with my camera. I expected to get through a couple of rolls of film at least with the Yashicamat 124G but in the end only finished one – a roll of Fomapan Retropan 320 which has been sat in the freezer a while. I’ve never shot this film before and, based on a bit of research, overexposed it by metering at 125asa. I’ll get it developed in the next week and see how it looks. It’s not a film that seems to get a lot of love, so I’m interested in how it turns out.
Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400 (lab developed in Xtol)
This signpost sits beside an old wrought-iron footbridge over the River Don in Sheffield. The destinations are mostly areas of the city, but with a few places further afield. The sign pointing to Wales refers to the village of Wales to the east of the city, rather than the nation to the west of England. Interestingly, a variety of measurement types are used on the signs.
Someone on Flickr asked me what a “rod” was, so I looked it up. Today’s bit of trivia (and something I didn’t know before) is that a rod is equivalent to sixteen and a half feet. There are four rods in a chain, forty rods in a furlong, and three-hundred-and-twenty rods in a mile.
Postboxes are another of those subjects to which I seem to be drawn quite often. Usually it’s when I’m shooting colour film as I think that the bright red paintwork lends itself best to that format, but I have more than a few pictures in black and white too, as with today’s photo.
Colour would have worked well too, although the box was in shad so might not have “popped” in the same way as when illuminated, but this particular example has the added interest of a bunch of stickers pasted to its side – a mixture of random art and political messaging of varying persuasions. I made the picture with the lens wide open af f/2.8 as I wanted to remove the background clutter, but perhaps a little narrower might have better benefited the ability to read the stickers.
I’d planned to come up with a longer piece for today’s blog but then my eldest son and his girlfriend came to visit for a few hours, so I’ve not got the time now. Maybe I’ll farebetter tomorrow.
This picture was taken pretty much adjacent to the one that featured yesterday, this time looking up the path beside the river rather than down into the water.
Steel City Snapper photography 