Tag: black and white

Digital · Photography

A day at Newark Air Museum

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I took a trip to Newark Air Museum today. This wasn’t my first visit (I think it’s my third), and I’ve posted pictures from the previous visits here on my blog, but today was the first time I’ve visited with my dad.

Actually, having said the above, it’s actually my fourth visit, because today was a second trip with my dad following an aborted attempt last autumn when we drove all the way there only to find out upon arrival that there had been a problem with the museum’s water supply and that it was closed as a result.

Thankfully, there were no such issues today (although I did phone them in advance, just to be sure!) and we got to wander around the place at our leisure for a few hours. My dad, now in his mid-80s, served his National Service with the RAF in the late 1950s, and I think he enjoyed looking around the place. During a brief chat with another gentleman of similar age, where he revealed that he’d been in the RAF, the other fella asked if he’s been a pilot! He was not, although he did ride a service-issued bicycle (which he crashed while racing one of his fellow servicemen one day, which resulted in him hiding the damaged bike until he left the service 😀 ).

It was a nice day out and I should try to arrange other such visits to similar places for us both, I think.

I shot a roll-and-a-half of Tri-X with my Yashica Mat 124G while there, but the pictures below are all digital pictures from my Ricoh GR III compact.

At Newark Air Museum
English Electric Canberra PR.7 WH791 (under demolition)
At Newark Air Museum-2
de Havilland Dove
At Newark Air Museum-3
Avro Shackleton MR.3/3
At Newark Air Museum-4
Handley Page Hastings T.5
At Newark Air Museum-5
English Electric Canberra B2 (Mod)
At Newark Air Museum-6
English Electric Canberra B2 (Mod)
At Newark Air Museum-7
Various aircraft cockpits

Ricoh GR III

Taken on 24 April 2025

Digital · Photography

Bars on the window

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Clear skies in Barcelona meant there was some gorgeous light about, although the narrow streets of the Gothic Quarter mean that this only falls on locations at certain times of the day. When you catch it though, it’s lovely.

Another misty day here in the UK today, so I got out for the third time in as many days with my Yashica Mat 124G and a roll of Tri-X. I’m hoping to start developing the three rolls on Monday.

Lamplight

Ricoh GR III

Taken on 20 December 2024

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Tucked around the back of the church

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I’ve photographed St Peter’s church at Elmton on a number of occasions before, and posted the results on the blog here, here, and here.

I decided to drive past again to finish off this roll of film, with a plan to shoot the church building with its low, squat tower, from a different angle. Ala, it wasn’t to be – the light wasn’t great and the fixed prime lens on the GW690 introduced limitations on how I could frame a shot, essentially meaning I’d have had excessive converging verticals, or the tips of gravestones poking into the bottom of the frame. In the end, I decided to take a picture of this small outhouse affixed to the rear of the building. The weathered door, and caretaker’s paraphernalia served to add a little interest.

Around the back of a church

Fujica GW690 on Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 17 August 2024

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

The end of the road

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I thought I’d treat myself to one of those clickbait titles similar to the ones I see on YouTube from time to time. You know the ones, where the person titles their video “My final post” or “That’s it. I’m finished.” or something else that gives the impression that their video making days are at an end but, upon viewing, it turns out that it’s “My final post… of November!” or “That’s it. I’m finished… Putting together this year’s calendar which you can buy from my SquareSpace site.“.

So in the spirit of that annoying tradition, today’s post is just about what I found at the end of the road I drove down in Whitwell, Nottinghamshire one day. In this case it was Whitwell railway station. The station today is a pretty simple affair – a couple of platforms, a footbridge, and some shelters for passengers. There used to be a selection of buildings at the station, but these were removed when the line was closed to passenger traffic sixty years ago (although passenger services would resume in the 1990s). The buildings were not lost however and were rebuilt at Butterley on the Midland Railway – Butterley heritage line as they were almost identical to the buildings that had originally stood there.

As to why I drove to the end of the road, it was mostly to see if there was a good composition of the chimney at the nearby Steetley Dolomite works (you can see it just above the Whitwell railway sign to the right of the first picture). I think a longer lens might have led to a more dramatic photograph but, alas, a long lens the GW690 does not have. Instead it’s a shot of loads of things poking up into the sky. A bit mundane, but I kinda like it anyway.

Street furniture at Whitwell station

The second picture was another reason I drove down here. The lamps on this footbridge are just about visible peeping over the bridge crossing the railway tracks that I’ve driven across on a number of occasions, and I’d wondered if there was a picture to be had of them. This was the picture I got, although I think there may be better ones to be found if I revisit the place, possibly (again) with a different focal length at my disposal.

Footbridge ramp

Fujica GW690 on Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 17 August 2024

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Dolomite works

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The chimney of this dolomite works is visible from a long way away. I’ve driven past on a couple of occasions and taken photographs of the buildings, which are impressive and crusted with white dolomite deposits, although I’ve not attempted to see if the actual quarry workings are visible from the roadside.

The road and verge is also covered in a faint white sugaring of dust from the works’ activity.

Workings and chimney
Hiding behind a tree

Fujica GW690 on Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 17 August 2024

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Corn

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I came across the field of corn in the village of Holbeck when I went to photograph the church with my large format camera. I made note of its location and a short while later returned with my GW690.

Corn fields aren’t a rarity in the UK, but it’s far from a common crop, so finding a field where I had a good view of the stalks was a happy find.

Corn

Fujica GW690 on Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 17 August 2024

Digital · Photography

Battling the storms of a new PC

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I got a new PC this week. It’s not brand new – it’s my son’s old PC – but it’s still vastly more powerful than my old machine. It has the luxury of a solid-state drive being installed meaning it boots up fast and the applications I use are similarly speedy to get going. I swapped out the secondary storage drive for a larger capacity model, so I now have a lot of room to add more pictures too.

It’s not all smooth sailing though. I have my files backed up via a cloud service and it’s taken days to download all the files back onto the new machine. I’ve also had headaches getting Lightroom to play nicely with the catalog I exported from the old machine and, while I have my scanning software installed, as well as Negative Lab Pro, I’m having problems getting Epson Scan to work. A lot of people don’t seem to like Epson Scan very much, but I’ve always found it very effective when scanning B&W medium and large format negatives, so I would like to get it working if possible. I can fall back on Vuescan (which I use for scanning colour negatives and slide film anyway) and do the inversions in Negative Lab Pro, which I’ve tried and had good results, but it means getting used to a different workflow. I’m not sure if I can scan multiple negatives in a batch with Vuescan either (although I haven’t looked into it properly yet).

Anyway, hopefully the storm-clouds of getting everything configured to my needs will soon thin and I can enjoy the benefits of a faster PC.

A rare foray into digital pictures for the blog today, with the shot below coming from my Ricoh GR III. These sorts of clouds are very rare hereabouts, so I had to grab a picture when I saw them. I thought we might be in for a huge storm, but they just drifted by without much fuss in the end.

Stormy weather

Ricoh GR III

Taken on 7 November 2023

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Monochrome Ektar

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The colours on these two Kodak Ektar pictures were very strange and I couldn’t get them to look right no matter what I did in Negative Lab Pro, Lightroom, or Photoshop. So, in the end I decided to convert them to B&W, which has worked quite well, I think.

Tiddly-om-pom-pom
Tower

Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted to black and white in Lightroom.

Taken 1 July 2023.

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Covid-19 protection

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Even the Women of Steel statues in Sheffield city centre are taking precautions. Well, one of them is at least. The one on the left is showing blatant disregard for social distancing guidelines while not wearing a mask. Perhaps the anti-vaxxer movement has even found a hold in the staue community…

Finding some humour
In a public health crisis
You have to laugh, eh?

A sign of the times

Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.

Taken on 16 May 2021