Tracks past the power station

August 24, 2020 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

Another photograph from near West Burton power station. This is a shot I’ve thought of making for quite some time and have looked at the location on Google Streetview to get an idea of the view. Unfortunately, Google uses super wide-angle lenses on it’s Streetview vehicles which makes it a little difficult to ascertaing what the view might be through a longer lens, and all I had with me on the day was my Zeiss Mess-Ikonta and Canon Sure Shot Supreme – both of which have fixed focal length lenses, with the Supreme’s 38mm being the widest.

Still, this opportunity arose mostly because this location is pretty close to North Leverton windmill, which had been my primary location for the trip, so I’ll chalk this up to a first attempt and will hopefully get out there again at some point to have another attempt, probably with a zoom lens to afford me some additional flexibility.

All things considered though, I like this quite a lot. My original thought was to have the cooling towers fully visible, but their hidden, but looming presence works well.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7 mins 45 secs @ 22.5°.

Taken on 25 July 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Power and pylons

August 23, 2020August 23, 2020 fishyfisharcade4 Comments

Long time subscribers of this blog will know that I enjoy making photographs of power lines. It’s a fascination that goes back to my childhood, probably borne out of watching the old Play Safe public information films that were screened on the television here in the UK warning of the dangers of overhead power cables and electrical substations.

I’m not obsessed by them, and don’t go out with the purposes of “pylon spotting” or anything like that, but I find the way they traverse the landscape quite evocative and find they make for interesting photographic subjects.

The three images presented here today feature not only pylons, but the source of their power as well in the form of power stations. After I visited North Leverton windmill, I drove towards the nearby village of Sturton-le-Steeple which is adjacent to the large West Burton power station. One of the public footpaths near the village provided a great vantage point to see the (still quite distant) facility. Another station, Cottam, is visible in the distance to the south in the final of these three photos. These, and other power stations, sit beside the River Trent from which I believe they draw water for cooling.

They are impressive structures, dominating the landscape from miles around.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7 mins 45 secs @ 22.5°.

Taken on 25 July 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Three more windmill photos

August 22, 2020 fishyfisharcade4 Comments

These three shots will probably mark the end of my North Leverton windmill photos for now. I still have a few more, but they’re quite similar to what I’ve already shown, so will probably stay in the archive for now.

I think these three are pretty nice pictures though (despite the over-developing problems) and the last of the trio is maybe my favourite of all the photographs I made at the location.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7 mins 45 secs @ 22.5°.

Taken on 25 July 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

A windmill, a door, and a door bell

August 21, 2020 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

Three more photographs of North Leverton windmill today (there will probably be at least a few more to come in future posts too). Today’s pictures were made with my Sure Shot Supreme compact. While it doesn’t provide the same detail as the medium format Zeiss I used for my earlier photos, the 38mm lens was a much better focal length for geting the whole mill in shot.

This next shot is my favourite of the three here. I like the simplicity of it, but there are nice details to be had if you look for them too – the shadow of the windmill’s blades on the left tof the frame, the shed to the right, plus the bell (and what appears to be some sort of cat-flap – although I could quite easily be wrong about this) on the door.

And finally, a detail shot of the bell itself.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7 mins 45 secs @ 22.5°.

Taken on 25 July 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Down a back street in Retford

August 20, 2020 fishyfisharcade1 Comment

Another photograph from my short stop-off in Retford after visiting North Leverton windmill. I was just wandering around looking for pictures when I spotted this back street behing the town hall building that looked like a nice shot.

Overdeveloped again (from the same roll as yesterday’s photo), but I think it works pretty well still.

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7 mins 45 secs @ 22.5°.

Taken on 25 July 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Man in an (overdeveloped) trilby

August 19, 2020 fishyfisharcade2 Comments

The first shot on this roll of HP5+. A roll that I’m pretty sure I’ve overdeveloped. From the point of hanging the negatives to dry I had a feeling something was amiss as they looked noticably denser than I might have expected. Once scanned it became apparent that the highlights were much brighter than they should have been and there was more grain than expected along with the loss of some fine detail.

The reson for this, I believe, was my developing the roll on a hot day where controlling the temperature of the developer was difficult. By the time I was ready to start the process, it had risen from 20 degrees to 22.5, so I had to consult the Ilford compensation charts to see how that would affect the time. While the charts are very helpful, they only show compensations for whole degrees, so I made a best guess to put my time somewhere between those quoted for 22 and 23 degrees. I think I should probably have shaved another 15-20 seconds from the time.

I’ve managed to save pretty much every frame with some post-processing tweaks in Lightroom, but they’re not what I’d planned. Still, everything’s a learning experience, eh?

Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7 mins 45 secs @ 22.5°.

Taken on 23 July 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Moored on the Cuckoo Way

August 18, 2020 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

I took this shot while using up the final frames on this roll of Shanghai GP3. The walk along the towpath beside the Chesterfield Canal is known as The Cuckoo Way and can be followed from Chesterfield all the way to the point where the canal enters the River Trent, approx 50 miles away.

Although it was a very hot and bright day, the place where this canal-boat was moored was in shadow from the trees beside the canal towpath and I had to open the Zeiss to it’s widest aperture to get a decent shutter speed on the 100asa film.

I don’t normally shoot the camera wide open as it performs better when stopped down, plus the uncoupled rangefinder design can make it a bit of a best guess for fine focusing.

In this case though, the boat was far enough away for the focusing to not be too much of a concern and I quite like the way the lens has rendered the scene. It’s hardly some kind of “bokeh monster”, but has given a nice hint of seperation in the focus.

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Shanghai GP3. Ilfotec DD-X 1+9 10 mins @ 24°.

Taken on 31 July 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Another church – Grove St Methodist church, Retford

August 17, 2020 fishyfisharcade2 Comments

After mentioning yesterday that I seem to photograph a lot of churches, here’s another one. I didn’t realise that this was a church until just now, when I looked up the location on Google maps. On the day the photo was made, I just noticed an impressive looking building. I didn’t actually go around the front of the structure, where the purpose of the building would have been revealed, instead turning right and heading towards the town centre after taking the shot.

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Shanghai GP3. Ilfotec DD-X 1+9 10 mins @ 24°.

Taken on 25 July 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

North Wheatley methodist chapel

August 16, 2020 fishyfisharcade1 Comment

Another place of worship. I make quite a lot of photographs of churches and similar, despite rarely visiting them for their intended purposes. Despite this, I find them to be interesting locations, visually, cultually and historically, and they are often strikingly beautiful.

This chapel is in a village that I have driven past countless times in my life, but never before this occasion actually ventured within. The village (actually North AND South Wheatley as they’re pretty much joined together now) is skirted by the A620 Gainsborough Road, the route that I always take when visiting Mablethorpe on the east coast – a place I’ve been visiting since I was a young child. While it’s obvious that the village is there, it’s not a place that I, or my grandparents when they drove us as children, ever sought to stop off at.

While this was the first time I’ve ever visited the village, it was still a last minute decision while driving home from North Leverton windmill, and I didn’t really explore the place properly. There is a church, but I didn’t look there, instead taking a few photos down near the methodist chapel, which stands beside a small brook. Maybe I’ll visit again one day, or maybe this will have been a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I’ll simply go back to bypassing the place en-route to other destinations.

Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Shanghai GP3. Ilfotec DD-X 1+9 10 mins @ 24°.

Taken on 25 July 2020

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

North Leverton windmill

August 15, 2020 fishyfisharcade3 Comments

I mentioned my photos of North Leverton windmill a couple of days ago, so here are a few of them

The mill was built in 1813 by a collective of local farmers to grind their corn. It was also agreed that the mill would grind corn from other farmers and “industrious poor persons” for an agreed fee.

The windmill is completely without electrical power, relying on the wind to operate – although there are a set of engine stones for use when the wind is too low to turn the sails.

The windmill still sources locally grown grain to produce flour and animal feed, using traditional millstones to grind it.

I had a couple of cameras with me on the day – my Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & my Canon Sure Shot Supreme (plus my phone). Because of the hedges and fences that surround the mill, it was sometimes difficult to frame shots with the fixed focal length lenses of both cameras. Ironically in the next shot, I could have used a longer lens perhaps.

The final shot is of the cottage beside the mill, which had a group of chickens roaming about the place – presumably the source of the eggs in the photo I posted the other day.