Despite having lived in the city for five decades, I’d never visited the cholera monument in Sheffield until the day I made these pictures. I’ve seen the monument on many occasions, it sits on an elevated piece of land next to a small wooded area named Clay Woods just a few minutes walk from Midland Station, and is visble from many parts of the city, and on this day I decided I’d finally take a closer look.
The monument was erected in 1835 to memorialize those who lost their lives in the cholera epidemic that struck the city three years previously. Over four hundred people lost their lives and the majority of them were buried in nearby grounds.
The memorial was partly destroyed by a hurricane(!) in 1839, and has been struck by lightning on a number of occasions, including having it’s top section removed completely following a strike in 1990, and was only completely restored in 2006.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC, and Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
I bought myself a new (used) lens for my Bronica ETRSi in July – the Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC. While I had 75mm and 50mm lenses for the camera, I was missing something that gives a bit more reach. The 150mm is around a 90mm full-frame equivalent I think, so a short telephoto and probably decent for portraits (should I ever make any!).
I was slightly wary about the MC designation, which places it as an earlier model, the same as my 50mm f/2.8. The 50mm is decent, but doesn’t feel as sharp as my 75mm, and I wondered if the 150mm would be similar. However, online reviews suggested this was no the case, and the few pictures I’ve made with it certainly look sharp enough. I got quite a good deal on the lens which, although the aperture ring is a little stiff, is otherwise in really nice condition.
The picture today was one of the first I shot with the lens (I had hoped it would have arrived in time for my trip to Ingoldmells and Skegness, but it came on the same day while I was out).
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC, and Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
A couple of extra Skegness photos, seperated from the rest mostly because they’re from another roll of film that I started that day. They’re amongst my favourites from the day though. And there’s a dinosaur in one of them. 🙂
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE, and Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Following on directly from yesterdays Ingoldmells post, todays piece features photos from Skegness (or Skeggy for short. Or, amusingly, SkegVegas).
It took about 20 minutes to drive to Skegness from Ingoldmells, a trip I punctuated with a visit to a fish & chip shop for some dinner (dinner is what we call lunch in my part of the world. The evening meal isn’t “dinner”, it’s “tea”, but not the drink. Sorry to cause confusion!). After that a short drive into the centre of the town to get parked.
As a child it felt like Skegness beach was huge. It seemed you had to walk through a veritable desert of sand before you would reach the se. These days however, it laps around the end of the pier, and the pier isn’t even as long as it once was! I expect this is a result of the work that has been carried out to combat coastal errosion in this part of the Lincolnshire coast. Mablethorpe, for isnstance, used to have groynes all along its beach, but these are now buried beneath feet of sand that has been dredged from offshore. I guess it makes for a nicer beach, but it also seems to have lost some interest in the process.
When staying at my grandparent’s caravan in Mablethorpe, we would occasionally have a day trip to Skegness. Skeggy is much bigger than Mablethorpe and has a lot more entertainments, including the pier, and a good sized funfair in Bottons Pleasure Beach. I think, for my grandma, the much greater selection of shops was also undoubtably a lure.
On the day of my visit I walked along the promenade area above the beach before venturing onto the sand to take a few pictures of the back of the Pleasure Beach. From there I wandered to the pier, back through the Pleasure Beach itself, and then onto the main road that runs between the beachside entertainments and the town itself.
While the weather had improved a bit by the time I arrived in Skegness, it was still largely overcast, and I was disappointed that I didn’t get the sunshine and blue skies that I think would have made the colour film work better. As always here in the UK, you get the weather you’re given though, and it’s a case of making the best of it.
One of the things I like about the seaside, is the architecture – the arcades, the food stalls, the touristy stuff. It’s kitschy and sometimes a little worse for wear, but it has a special charm to it and I sometimes wonder if there’s a school of architecture dedicated to designing such structures?
Nobody was enjoying this Altitude attraction when I was there. Maybe the wind was too high or something? Someone was “enjoying” the log-flume though. 🙂
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE and 50mm f/2.8 MC lenses, and Fujicolor Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Back at the end of July I took a daytrip to the seaside, visiting the Lincolnshire coast resorts of Ingoldmells and Skegness. The two places are just a few miles apart, with Ingoldmells just north of Skegness.
It was the popularity of Skegness – a town that took on the somewhat telling catchphrase “It’s bracing!” – that led to the creation of Ingoldmells (pronounced Ingamells) as a resort, although the settlement had been there for centuries, with the parish church dating to the 12th century. In 1936, Billy Butlin opened his first Butlin’s holiday camp in the village, although it would soon close temporarily due to World War II when it became a shore establishment of the Royal Navy, given the designation HMS Royal Arthur.
Post war, the area developed further into a holiday location. East Lindsey District Council estimates there being nearly thirty-five thousand caravans across the East Lindsey Coasy, incorporating Skegness, Ingoldmells, and the towns further north such as Mablethorpe, with an economic value of over half-a-billion pounds!
It seemed slightly grim that some of the caravan parks were surrounded by barbed-wire topped fencing and, at one point when I ventured into an area to get a picture of caravans with the roller-coasters in the background, I was quickly approached by a member of staff enquiring what I was doing, so I guess some people must get up to no good sometimes.
Ingoldmells is dominated by caravan parks with the focal point being the seafront area and the Fantasy Island theme park which has a variety of rollercoasters and other rides for thrill-seekers young and old. Fantasy Island also has an open air market, with a variety of vendors, all dwarfed by the park’s two big coasters.
The seafront and nearby streets are home to a varety of arcades, food outlets, and seaside bucket-and-spade shops.
I didn’t get the best weather on my visit, it being overcast for the most part (although it did brighten up a little in the afternoon when I moved on to Skegness) and even a little rainy, which is not my favourite scenario for shooting colour film.
At some point while I was there I sheltered from the drizzle and I must’ve disturbed a spider’s nest as, for the next hour, I would occasionally feeling something crawling on me, each time it being a small money spider. Being concered about the extent of this “infestation” I even put my phone into selfie mode so I could check that I didn’t have a swarm of the things crawling unnoticed on me. That might have been embarrassing / horrifying, depending on your feelings about arachnids!
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE and 50mm f/2.8 MC lenses, and Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
A farewell to Blackpool with the last three shots from this roll.
I’ve been very happy with the look this roll of JCH Streepan has given me. Very fine-grained for a 400 ISO film, and lots of contrast. I’m not sure how it would work in less flattering light, but in these conditions it shone.
Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
For a considerable amount of time through my life, I believed that Blackpool Tower had been constructed as a prototype for the Eiffel Tower in Paris. I’m not sure where I gained this belief, although I suspect it originated, as so many long-held and unquestioned beliefs do, in the school playground. Some believable kid probably told us in a sage and wise tone about the origins of the Eifel Tower being in a Lancastrian seaside resort. This unremebered child didn’t offer any explanation as to why Gustave Eiffel had decided to come to the windy north west of England to test out his design. Or perhaps we simply believed that he had copied the Blackpool Tower (the reality is that Blackpool Tower was inspired by the Eiffel Tower).
Whatever the case, I never event thought to question any of this knowledge until much later in life whereupon at some point I guess I suddenly had a random realisation that it was all a load of bullshit.
I had similar beliefs about the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle being a prototype for the Sydney Harbour Bridge as well, although, in that case, the builders and designers of the two bridges were the same, and the Tyne Bridge predates it’s larger Sydney version by a few years.
Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
I photographed this artwork (officially titled “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?“)last year during an autumn trip to Blackpool and posted about it here, but the two photos I’m sharing today were from a visit this year, back in July – we went back again because we had a complimentary room.
There are a lot of public artworks around in the UK – I think there may be requirements on developers to install such things when the build new projects, but many of them feel somewhat arbitrary. This one though, is there for its own sake and it’s quite a spectacle up cloese.
Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Another quick post today as I’ve spent several hours driving to pick up my wife and sister-in-law from the airport, so I’m just going to drop this picture of Blackpool North Pier in here.
Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
A couple of weeks back I posted a picture of Blackpool’s “Comedy Carpet”. The Comedy Carpet formed part of an £87 million redevelopment project around Blackpool promenade and seafront.
Among the other new features added are the Giant Spoons, although these seem to be much more commonly referred to as the “Tulips”. These things are huge and must be well in excess of 100 feet tall and are quite the sight to behold, especially when you are stood right beneath them and they are swaying in the wind on their flexible stalks. There’s something slightly unnerving about them, like they’re a part of a Martian tripod from The War of the Worlds, or something.
I cropped the image to a 6×7 format to remove some uninteresting sky.
Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
