This sculpture stands beside the City Hall in Sheffield City Centre. It’s named Women of Steel and commemorates the women who took up roles in the city’s steel works during the first and second world wars. I’ve photographed the statues on a number of occasions and they’ve featured in the blog at least once before (here).
My OCD brain at first showed alarm at the fact that I’ve both chopped off a bit of the closest woman’s arm, and also not gotten her in focus (I was shooting at quite a wide aperture), but my rational brain overrode the concerns because, frankly, it looks just fine.
The Christmas market is in Sheffield this year again – I don’t think it was there last year due to the pandemic lockdowns that were in place. The market has had quite a lot of complaints on local social media apparently (although I’ve learnt to try and avoid local social media lest I gnash my teeth to powder at the ignorance and general crappy attitudes that prevail). Apparently it doesn’t compare favourably to previous years, or in comparison with the markets in some other places around the country. Too many food stalls and not enough gifts and other non-edible gifts are amongst complaints I’ve heard.
I think we should be grateful that the current situation is allowing the market to take place at all. It might not be at it’s best (although it looked pretty much like every other UK Christmas market I’ve visited) but maybe let’s give it a bit of leeway given the current global situation.
It’s very rare to see these markets with snow present (apart from the fake variety) as it’s unusual that we get any before Christmas. Even though it was wet and slushy and mostly gone, it was definitely a little bit festive to see these seasonal (not really) weather conditions.
We managed to get out today for out family meal, my son having recovered from yesterday’s hangover. We chose an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant in the town centre and, while I didn’t eat too much, I still feel quite full now as I’m typing this. The plates in the restaurant aren’t huge – perhaps to reduce the amount of waste coming from people overestimating just how much they can eat – but I still managed four platefulls of food. The first was a plate of turkey and vegetables – a small roast dinner basically. The next two contained a selection of Chinese food, and the final one some dessert in the form of some apple crumble and custard, and a piece of pineaple pie.
After the food we went to a nearby pub for a drink, and there I tried some mango cider. I don’t normally go for sweet, fruity ciders, but this one was very nice and we might try and track dome down to guzzle over Christmas. Even my wife, who generally doesn’t consume any alcoholic drinks at all, thought it was very good too.
Somewhere we didn’t go was the Mecca Bingo hall seen in the picture in today’s blog post. This is another one of those places that I’ve photographed a number of times before, mostly because I think the chequerboard of numbers on the sides of the building make for an interesting picture.
This is the second version of this post. The first one was about how the short and gloomy winter days are getting me down somewhat this year, but it made for somewhat depressing reading, so I scrapped it.
The days can be very gloomy during the winter though – it’s just after 4pm as I write this and it’s almost fully dark outside. Normally this wouldn’t be the case for another hour at this time of the year, but we’ve got some heavy rain today and the clouds have blocked what little natural illumination we might otherwise have had.
We were due to go out shortly for a family meal, but one of my boys went out with friends last night and had a few celebratory drinks too many so we’ve had to cancel and re-book as he has had a hangover all day. With the wisdom of age I can easily preach to him about the foolishness of drinking too many beers and the price that comes with them, but I’ve got plenty of hangovers of my own under my belt from when I was young which prevent me getting on too high a horse. So the meal will take place tomorrow instead when hopefully we will all be in a fit state to enjoy it.
My other son will now be having some takeaway pizza instead which, from the look on his face when I told him, I think he prefers anyway. Not sure if the rest of us will have the same (or if Mister Hungover will want some – pizza is great at the end of a night out drinking, but I can’t remember if it maintains its allure the following day), but we shall see shortly.
Today’s picture is of Park Hill Flats, a sheffield architectural landmark that has featured here on the blog on a few occasions previously. I made this photo after the shot of the magick studio, and before the picture of the pigeons I posted yesterday. It was taken from the footbridge over the road and shot through the railings.
I knew I had to get a photo of these pigeons as soon as I saw them. If I’ve counted right, there are one-hundred-and-eighteen of them perched on the overhead cables (including the two in flight). Normally when I see something like this they’ll all fly away before I get chance to take the picture, but on this occasion I was blessed with a flock tolerant of my presence. I guess city pigeons are generally quite accepting of people though, and they were pretty much out of reach up there on the wires anyway. I suspect that, had I dropped some fod on the floor, the whole lot of them would have descended!
The tram has a slight blur as I wanted to maximise my depth of field, so had to use a slower shutter speed (I think it was 1/125s, but it might have been 1/60s.
I’ve just eaten my tea not too long back. Tea in this case, for those unfamiliar with the term outside the drink, is vernacular for evening meal, or dinner, if you like. I think it’s a largely working class use of the word, but it’s what I grew up with and what I continue to use. I don’t think I’ve ever used the term dinner. To confuse matters further, dinner is what I call the midday meal – lunch to posher folks than I – again a standard working-class thing I think (although I do use lunch sometimes too).
Anyway, I had fish for tea today, and got a couple of pieces out from the freezer this morning. Normally I would only have a single fillet, but these felt somewhat small, so I got out two of them.
I should have just gotten one.
While not huge, there was definitely more fish there than I needed (although not too much to eat!). Anyway, I made some batter and shallow fried them and had them with some mushy peas. Very tasty they were too.
Anyway, on to today’s photo – another frame from the roll of Ortho Plus. This one took a bit of post-processing to get it looking how I wanted as it looked very dark and drab on the initial scan. I think the editing has introduced some noise, and it looks almost digital if you zoom right in. It looks better than it did though.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Ortho Plus 80 . Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5 mins @ 20°.
On my wander through the woods at Clumber Park the other week I came across this log frame besde the path. I’m not quite sure what it is, but suspect it’s likely some form of nature conservation set up. The inside of the frame was filled with logs, many of which were showing signs of decay and growths of fungus and the like, so I think it could be to provide a habitat for small mammals and invertebrates. I could be wildly off the mark with this though – my knowledge of conservation and woodland management is not at an expert level I’m afraid.
It’s another frame from the roll of Ortho Plus I spoke about a couple of days ago, but in this case the sun was managing to peek through the cloud cover and provide a bit more light and, as a result, it’s not got the dour, dark look of some of the other pictures.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Ortho Plus 80 . Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5 mins @ 20°.
I bought a roll of Ilford Ortho Plus film, oh, well over a year ago and it’s been sat in the fridge ever since. Until about four weeks ago that is, when I loaded it for an abortive trip where I forgot a vital piece of equipment. So, after we’d had all thge renovations and decorating done, I managed to get a day to go out and make some photographs. As is my luck, the weather was mostly less than ideal on the day – the dreary slab of overcast that tends to sap my enthusiasm. But it was a chance to go out, so I took it.
I decided to head out to Clumber Park, a National Trust property about 15 miles away, near the town of Worksop. It’s a place I’ve been many times, and somewhere I like to go to see some autumn colour. Alas though, I think I pretty much missed the best of the colour this year – or at least the days that would have highlighted it at it’s best. I packed the Yashicamat along with a somewhat ambitious five rolls of film (including the already loaded Ortho Plus). Unlike the previous time I’d taken out the Yashicamat with this roll of film loaded, this time I took my tripod!
I wandered around the park for a few hours, eventually shooting the full roll of Ortho Plus and also a roll of HP5+ before heading home. I developed Ortho Plus the following day (the HP5+ roll is still sat waiting for me to get around to it) and noticed some very dense looking negatives. I’m not sure if this is normal or, perhaps more likely, due to the fact that my Massive Dev Chart app managed to reset part way through the development meaning I had to quickly try and get back on track on the fly. While I think I was still pretty close with the timings, I was probably at least 10-15 seconds out. Maybe this impacted the process.
I scanned the roll and was pretty disappointed with the results. Not only were the results dark and drab looking, there also seemed to be quite a lot of veil flare on a number of the frames. This might be because, despite remembering the tripod, I still forgot the lens hood for the camera. I’ve noticed similar flaring from the Yashicamat on other occasions, although it’s not consistent and I often get full rolls where it doesn’t appear at all (whether the lens hood is attached or not).
The other reason for my disappointment probably stems from my ignorance of using orthochromatic film. I think I got it muddled up and thought the trees in the shots would look quite lively. In actual fact, the film doesn’t register reds and other warm tones, reducing them to dark grays and blacks instead. This meant that, while the autumn colour wasn’t at its best, there was still enough of it present to make my photos look pretty sombre.
All-in-all it wasn’t what I’d hoped for but, as I say, it’s my ignorance at fault here. I’ll maybe try a roll of the film again at some point, I just don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to do so.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Ortho Plus 80 . Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5 mins @ 20°.
I thought I’d take the time today to post the picture I’ve entered for the “magical” theme in the photo contest I’m taking part in. It fits the theme, certainly, although in a rather literal way, but it’s probably not the picture I’d have hoped to get under different circumstances. As I said yesterday, I was up against the ticking clock with the deadline for entries on the 30 November. As I’ve not been in any sort of mood for doing any photography over the past two weeks, it was very much a last minute dash to get something in before closing.
I had though about going inside the shop and perhaps picking up some props to photograph at home as a still-life or something, but they were closed yesterday (it’s normally opened on Saturdays I believe, but there was a sign on the door apologising because they were having some new flooring fitted). So my only option was a shot of the shop from the outside. The weather was very gloomy due to the snowy and stormy conditions we’ve been having, so the light wasn’t great, but on the plus side, the billboard on the side of the shop fitted the theme perfectly too, so that little bit of synchronicity was welcomed.
All-in-all I could have done better in different circumstances, but it is what it is and certainly better than dropping out of the contest. I still want to win it for Stan! 🙂
An iconic symbol of traditional British seaside resorts, the chair in this photo was nowhere near a beach – it was for sale on a stall with a wide array of memorabilia and brik-a-brak.
I like to look at stalls and shops selling this sort of stuff. Occasionally they’ll have something I’m interested in purchasing (camera gear probably), but they are also a treasure trove of nostalgia and unknown stories. Wher did this deckchair come from for instance? Was it taken from a seaside beach at some point, or was it purposely bought for someone’s garden, or perhaps to take on days out so the cost and hassle of hiring a chair might be avoided? Similarly the Bahamas calendar hung up beside it? Who bought it? When did they travel there? How did it end up on this stall? (although I fear I know the answer in most cases…).
Often you will find children’s toys, whether abandoned as they grow out of them, or perhaps lost, like something from a Toy Story movie. Sometimes things that you might expect no-one would buy, such as the plastic radiotherapy mask that was also on this stall – whoever that belonged to, I hope they discarded it as part of a full recovery.
When I was a child I would watch Bagpuss on TV. For those unfamiliar with the show, it was a children’s programme about an antique shop owned by a girl named Emily. Within the shop were a number of children’s toys including stuffed animals, dolls, carved wooden bookends, a “marvellous, mechanical, mouse organ” and the eponymous Bagpuss himself, a pink and white saggy old cloth cat. In each episode, Emily would bring a lost item to the shop and the inhabitants would awaken (“When Bagpuss wakes up, all his friends wake up”!) and they would examine the item, someone would tell the charming tale of it’s history, and it would be mended (by the mice) and placed back in the shop window so that it’s owner might find it again. It was made by a British animation studion called Smallfilms who made a number of similarly nostalgic and charming shows. The creators of the shows were Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, both of whom are sadly no longer with us, but whom countless grown-up children carry a small fond part of in their memories.
Stalls such of this always remind me of Bagpuss a little.
A saggy cloth cat Brings back memories of youth Now I’m saggy too
Yashicamat 124G & Shaghai GP3. Lab developed in Xtol.
Steel City Snapper photography 