Another year is about to come to an end, and it’s time for the annual look back at my favourite photographs. It’s a slightly curtailed post this year (although there are still twelve images featured – one for each month) for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve done my usual trick and procrastinted leaving me insufficient time to do a proper job and, secondly, because I’ve come down with a cold and don’t feel very well. A sensible person would learn from this and take measures to ensure this doesn’t happen again next year. But I can’t find a sensible person willing to write this thing, unfortunately.
So, here are my favourite shots from each month of 2022. As always, this is subjective and could change if I were to revisit the piece again. Some months were difficult to pick images for because I had more than one that I liked. Other months had quite slim pickings due to me not making as many photographs (when I broke my ankle in July, or in December where I’ve only finished one roll of images taken during the month).
I’ve wondered a few times about slowing down my daily output but I expect I’ll be here again tomorrow (and the day after that, and the day after that (you get the idea…)), starting a fifth full year of daily posts.
It’s the last day of the year, so time for a roundup of my favourite photos from each month.
January
I remember on the day we got this snow that I felt the urge to go out and make photographs, but also feeling quite cosy inside our warm home. My wife had a letter that needed to be posted though, so I went out. I wasn’t sure what camera to take, especially given the large, heavy flakes of wet snow that were falling, so in the end decided on the Holga. It’s plastic body and lack of any delicate components was a pretty safe choice given the conditions, but more than that, it’s cheap plastic lens once more produced a set of images that had a distinctive look that I felt really suited the day.
February
Back in mid-february on a cold and frosty day. remnants of snow still on the ground in many places, I went for a good long walk. I shot two-and-a-half rolls of film that day with the Yashica Mat 124G and my Canon Sure Shot Telemax. There are several that I like, but this one is my favourite – the power-lines, wonky fence, and potholed farm-track adding character to the scene.
March
March is a hard month to choose a photo from as there are several that I really like – I must’ve gotten out with the camera quite a lot that month (and I think it was when the winter Covid restrictions were lifted, allowing me to travel further afield again). The shot I’ve chosen is packed full of atmosphere, but the grainyness was unintentional. Most of the frames on the roll show far less grain but a couple – mainly shots with a lot of low-contrast fog – really emphasise it. I’m not sure if it’s a factor of the scanning or post-processing or a combination of things, but in this image I think it really benefits the picture.
April
In April the Covid restrictions were loosened to allow people to meet up outddors, so I went out for walks with my dad on a number of occasions, mostly taking a long looping path near to where he lives that traverses what used to be Orgreave pit and coking plant – the one that gained infamy as the site of the “Battle of Orgreave” during the miner’s strike in 1984. The area is now an area of parkland, gradually taking on natural growth as the years pass by, but the area to the north-west is now the site of the Waverley housing estate. This estage has been developing over the past decade or more now and is pretty big – effectively a district in itself, and new homes are still being constructed. This photo shows some of the work that was ongoing back in the spring, and I liked the “New Topographics” feel of the scene.
May
The firs half of 2021 was definitely top-loaded with photographs – my Lightroom catalogue has 232 images from May alone – a volume of output which would slip later in the year – but more on that when we get there… Again, there are many photo’s I could have picked from this month, but this one reminds me of the day it was taken most of all. You can read the full story here, but to say it was a relief when I got to the point when this picture was made cannot be understated.
June
The image here was made at the country park at Pleasley. As with Orgreave (mentioned above) this is another former coal mining area reclaimed to nature and outdoor pursuits. In this case though the mine workings have also been preserved as a museum. While I didn’t have time to visit the museum, I wandered around the park and made a number of photographs, including this one.
July
While I mostly shoot film, I do still have my old Nikon D3200 DSLR and a few lenses knocking around. One of the lenses is the 35mm f/1.8 DX. This is designed for use on crop-sensor cameras, but I’d read that it would also work on full-frame cameras with some mild-ish vignetting if the aperture is opened up. As the lens is small, light, and very sharp, I decided to give it a go with my Nikon F80 film camera. The vignetting was noticeable, but not distracting and actually gave a nice feel to a lot of the images. The main downside was that the auto-focus was very slow on the F80 for some reason, meaning a few shots were a little soft. This was my favorite image from the set.
August
August’s film photographs are mostly from three trips – one to a steam-rally in Cheshire, one to Bakewell in the Peak District with my wife, and another trip with my wife to London. Looking at the photos in Lightroom against the ones on Flickr there are loads of shots that I never uploaded. This one I did though, and it’s here as a reminder of the day we visited Notting Hill to see the Portobello Road market. The market was notable by the fact that it was very underpopulated on the day in question – this is what you get for visiting during a pandemic I suppose.
September
Again, the only film photos from this month are from a couple of day trips, this time to Mablethorpe and to another steam rally in Cheshire (I visited both these steam rallies as the ones close to home had been cancelled this year, but also because a bunch of folks from an online photography forum I’m a maber of were atending too). This shot was from my annual day-trip to Mablethorpe though. The ice cream wasn’t intended to be offset, but I forgot about parallax when focussing on close objects (it was held at arm’s length). In the end it was a happy accident though as I quite like the way it is framed.
October
So, we reach October and the first month where I made no film photographs at all. The reason was that we had a new kitchen fitted in September and them moved straight into having the whole upstairs of the house re-decorated and re-carpeted. This meant that not only were most of my cameras boxed up while we shifted furniture in and out of rooms, but that when I did have the opportunity to go out and do some photography, I was too tired to make the effort. I did not enjoy October very much.
November
And if October was bad, November was the worst. On the 13th our young cat, Stan, was hit by a car and lost his life. Most of my posts in November following this sad event were about my grief over his loss and were the first time that I posted digital photos on here. I found that speaking about how I felt – literally pouting out what was on my mind – was helpful and therapeutic. I did take a few film photos at the start and very end of the month though and the one below is the one I like best. Perhaps its somewhat melancholy air suits the month in which it was made.
December
And so we reach the final month of 2021. Again, not many photographs were made this month and, of the ones that were, I still have a lot of them to either upload or even develop yet, so they won’t see the light of the blog until 2022. Of the ones I did upload though, this shot of a wet rhododendron bush in the back garden is the one I like best.
Well that’s the roundup done for another year. I hope that 2022 brings better times for the world and that we can start to come out of the pandemic. Whatever may happen though, I wish you all a very happy new year. See you in 2022!
It’s that time of year again when my feed becomes full of everyones review of the year-type posts, and it’s interesting and inspiring to see the work that people have produced as well as their thoughts on the past twelve months.
I’m not going to warble on too much here about the shape of the past year – you’ve all lived through it and know the name-of-the-game, plus, if I’m honest, I’ve left writing this post to the eleventh hour and am running out of time. That’s me – Mister Organised! 🙂
But suffice to say, I’ve known better years, and I think the thing to do now is look forward to better times to come. So here’s to a happier and less “interesting” 2021!
Below are my own selction of favourite photos made this year. If I were to pick again another day, in another mood, these might mostly change to something else, but as a snapshot of my favourites as of today, here they are…
January – I’ve often commented on my blog how much I love a misty, foggy day for photography, and so my first image from 2020 falls right into this bracket. Early morning at Rother Valley Country Park, a short walk from where I live but somewhere I don’t visit all that often because it feels like I’ve seen it all before. Shots like this one serve as a reminder that even the most familiar locations can still throw a beautiful image our waty if we take care to look for it and make the most of the conditions.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 AF & Ilford HP5+. Lab developed. Taken on 22 January 2020
February – A gloomy, rainy day walking around Sheffield city centre with my F80 led to me making a few images of people partially obscured by the condensation covered windows of buses. I’d planned on making more images in the same vein but, so far at least, I haven’t managed it yet.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF-D & Ilford HP5+. Lab developed. Taken on 16 February 2020
March – Regular readers of my blog will know that I have an affinity for power lines and electricity pylons as photographic subjects. Not as record shots – I don’t find them that interesting – but because I find there is something appealing and evocative in the way they cross the countryside, leading to some far destination – perhaps to power a TV, or boil a kettle for some unknown person’s cup of tea. This was from my final pre-lockdown roll of film and was developed by the lab the day before it closed for a few months. From this point on, almost all of my black and white film was developed by myself.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Plus-X (expired 2008). Lab developed. Taken on 22 March 2020
April – While this is supposed to be a selection of favourite photos from the year, this one is chosen more as being indicative of the situation we found ourselves in during most of spring. The UK was under a national lockdown, non-essential retail was closed as were schools. There were shortages of hand-sanitiser, latex gloves, pasta, and even toilet-rolls. The freedom to roam was largely removed except for work (where it wasn’t possible to do so from home), shopping for food and other essentials, to provide care for the vulnerable, and for exercise. The latter option was when most of my photography took place, carrying a camera when I went for local walks, grabbing opportunistic images where possible. As I write this, I’m pretty sure we may be headed back into a similar set of restrictions soon as the second wave – predicted (but perhaps not properly planned for) – takes hold.
Canon Sure Shot Telemax & Ilford Delta 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°. Taken on 11 April 2020
May – It was the month of my ill-fated initial foray into 6×9 medium format with a Zeiss folder that had an unfortunate alignment problem that caused the images to be soft at the edges. It was also, at the end of the month, release from the lockdown, granting freedom to travel a little further afield for photography. The image I’ve chosen is a definite favourite from the month and one that perhaps symbolises the new found sense of freedom and promise that I felt.
Yashica Mat 124G & Shanghai GP3 (expired). Ilfotec DD-X 1+9 10mins @ 24°. Taken on 22 March 2020
June – I’d had this roll of expired Ektachrome knocking around for a while and decided to take it alon on a walk around Dale Dyke reservoir. My main camera on the day was the Yashica Mat, but I took along the Zeiss Mess-Ikonta to shoot the slide film. I didn’t really have high hopes for it based on my previous roll of expired E6, but the roll came out pretty nicely. On it was thsi picture of what looks like a tiny palm tree, but is just some bracken. I’m still not sure if it was just stuffed there by a passerby, or if it had taken root atop this piece of wood. I’m erring to the former though – those rocks look distictly “placed”.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Kodak Ektachrome E200S (expired 2003). Lab developed. Taken on 22 June 2020
July – I took a drive out to North Leverton windmill, a location I’d not visited before and which (until I did a search for “windmills” online) I didn’t know existed despite having driven a road only a mile or two away on multiple occasions. I took a number of close shots of the building, but this one from a neighbouring field is my favourite, I think.
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 45 secs @ 22.5°. Taken on 25 July 2020
August – This replica of the classic Ford Gran Torino from 70s TV classic, Starsky & Hutch, was parked in the market square of Chesterfield when I went for a wander around back in august. I’d just started using the Grain2Pixel plug-in to convert my colour negatives at this time, and it made a great job of this Kodak Gold.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Taken on 31 August 2020
September – Another month, another roll of expired slide film. Ektachrome again, but a different emulsion this time. I was enamoured by the colours I got from this roll – a subtle, pastel, Portra-like set of tones. It’s often said that flat blue skies do a photo no favours, but in this case I like the look very much. There’s a subtle graduation that works well against the light brown bricks of the building.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Ektachrome 100 EPN (expired 2008). Lab developed. Taken on 14 September 2020
October – Yet more expired film – you might think it was all I shot! I made quite a lot of autumnal shots this year but this stands out as a strong favourite. It was made in the Limb Valley on the outskirts of Sheffield on a day where I was testing both the expired film AND my recently acquired 50mm f/2.8 MC Zenzanon lens. Both performed at and above expectations. I nearly didn’t go out on the day either. I’m glad I did!
Bronica ETRSi & Fujifilm Superia 100 (expired 2008). Lab developed. Taken on 28 October 2020
November – A beautiful foggy morning in early november saw me out with the Bronica and the 50mm lens again. I pushed the HP5+ a couple of stops to give me some extra versatility in the dim light and was very happy with the results. I made several photos of trees in a small plantation (immediately behind me in this shot), but this frame showing the river disappearing into the mist with a stand of teazels in the foreground is the one I’ve picked.
Bronica ETRSi & Ilford HP5+ (@1600asa). Ilfotec DD-X 1+9 13mins @ 20°. Taken on 7 November 2020
December – The biggest surprise of the year, photographically, was the set of results I got from this little Fuji point-and-shoot. I’ve mentioned this before, but it was a car-boot sale find and cost me just £1. The roll of film from which this frame is taken was already in the camera when I bought it. I wondered if it might be partially exposed, but it turned out to be unused apart from a few fogged frames at the beginning, and this shot was made on a beautifully lit morning early this month at Rother Valley Country Park. Who needs expensive cameras!
Fujifil DL-270 Zoom Super & Kodak Colorplus. Lab developed. Taken on 4 December 2020
So there you go. Twelve favourite shots from each month of 2020. I wish a very Happy New Year to you all!
Steel City Snapper photography 