Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
Like a Borg Cube descended to Earth, this angular structure sits adjacent to the River Don behind Savile Street. The circular “portholes” and horizontal bands break up what might otherwise be a plain and undistinguished structure. I like the way it looms in the picture both above and below the water.
Angular it stands
A monolith by water
Blue and grey tower
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Colorplus.
Taken on 9 May 2021
Not for me, at least. Seeing this photo has made me long for a nice Mister Whippee 99 with some raspberry sauce, but all we have in the house is a brick of vanilla that our freezer has probably turned into permafrost.
On hot summer days
An ice cream treat is fun ’till
It drips down your hands
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Colorplus.
Taken on 9 May 2021
The Ball Street bridge crosses the River Don a little upstream from Kelham Island and is immediately adjacent to Kelham Weir. The bridge dates to 1856 and was built by Milton Iron Works at Elsecar. The bridge holds grade II listed status.
The bridge is now only open to non-motorised traffic (although maybe motorcycles too). I believe that this is to manage road traffic around the area.
Red and green iron
Spanning the flowing river
Now blocked to traffic
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Colorplus.
Taken on 9 May 2021
Apologies to anyone hoping to see the beautiful island of Capri in this post. Instead you are going to get an infinitely cooler Ford Capri instead. It may not have the designer stores, millionaire’s residences, or crowded funicular railway, but who wants any of those when you can have a cool old car?
It’s the same car I portrayed back on 28 May, and these were taken at the same time with my Canon Sure Shot on a roll of Kodak Colorplus. I much prefer these colour photographs.
If you really want to see some colour photos of the isle of Capri, I have some of those too. 🙂
Orange paint fading
But not dulling the appeal
Of classic beauty
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Colorplus.
Taken on 9 May 2021
Two bandstands, both in Queen’s Park, Chesterfield – the same place I photographed the cricket field. At least I think they’re both bandstands – the second one is much larger and almost looks like a carousel with nothing to ride.
Perhaps in summer
The sound of a band may sound
Tiddly om pom pom
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Colorplus.
Taken on 25 April 2021
The Wicker Arches is a railway viaduct on the edge of Sheffield city centre. It was built in 1848 and the 41-arches span the Don Valley. Most of the arches are now blocked, with various businesses occupying the spaces, but the main arch across the Wicker, with decorative pedestrian arches to either side, remains a busy route into the city, and Effingham Road also passes beneath the viaduct further east. The arch beneath which the River Don passes now forms part of the Five Weirs Walk with the route taking the form of a suspended metal walkway named the Spider Bridge (it’s even decorated with large silver arachnids with illuminated eyes).
Passenger rail services across the viaduct ceased in 1970 when Sheffield Victoria Station, which was situated atop the viaduct, closed, and all rail traffic had stopped by the 1980s.
The phrase “as wide as the Wicker Arches” has been regularly used by people in Sheffield to denote someone who was a bit crafty or a smartarse.
When I was cheeky
“Wide as the Wicker Arches!”
Would come my mum’s cry
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.
Taken on 9 May 2021
Another victim in the declining pub trade in the UK, the Farfield Inn stands at the western end of Neepsend Lane at the bottom of Hillfoot Road, not far from the busy route that is Penistone Road. There used to be pigeon lofts on the steep hillside along this stretch but those, like the Farfield Inn, have fallen into dereliction, their skeletal remains vaguely apparent in the brush that has grown to take their place.
“Fancy a nice pint?”
Would once have been said by those
Who visited here
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.
Taken on 9 May 2021
A set of old iron gates on Mowbray Street in Sheffield.
Sometimes it can feel
Like I have nothing to say
Like today, in fact
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.
Taken on 9 May 2021
Finding old cars here in the UK isn’t easy, at least outside of car shows and museums. The MOT system means that most vehicles get sent for scrap before they gain too much age; the cost of keeping them road-worthy a barrier to long-term posession. Add to this the large-scale scrappage schemes that were brought into place when the use of leaded petrol was outlawed a few decades ago and the number of older-model vehicles is low. So, when I come across something like this Ford Capri parked on a street-corner, a photograph or two is almost obligatory.
The Capri was introduced as a Eurpopean equivalent of the Mustang apparently and it, along with the mark III Ford Cortina, always give me a sense of their being our versions of the American fastbacks and muscle cars.
Sometimes you can find
Old treasures left to be seen
On our street corners
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.
Taken on 9 May 2021
This is the cricket ground in Queen’s Park, Chesterfield. This photo was made on my first ever visit to this location, early one Sunday morning (the same Sunday when I took the picture of the Austin A90 featured in yesterday’s post). It’s quite a nice park, with a pond, bandstand, a glasshouse (seen to the middle right of this photo), as well as the cricket ground itself. I believe that the park extends with sports fields beyong the trees you can see in this picture. It’s pencilled into my mental list of interesting places to make photographs, should I be in the vicinity again.
Unexpected park
On a Sunday morning walk
Pleasantly perceived
Olympus OM-2N, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Kodak Tri-X Pan (expired 2003) . Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°.
Taken on 25 April 2021
