Several photographs of the fog signal station at Flamborough Head.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
Fog signal station
Tag: Film photography
Beyond the grass sea
I was struck by the way that the lighthouse looked like it stood beyond a rolling sea of grass in this photo. I did wonder about cloning out the lone figure on the left but then decided against it.
In other news, I’m currently scanning a roll of 135 Tri-X that I finished shooting at the weekend. As I often get drying marks on my 135 negatives (although, oddly, never on 120 negs…), even though I use distilled water and wetting agent for the final wash, I’ve taken to using a squeegee lately. This has worked fine all the other times I’ve used it, but this roll of Tri-X looks beset by scratches along most of its length, which is disappointing.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
Halfway up (or down)
A couple more pictures from Flamborough North Landing today, both showing the same building that sits above the lifeboat house about halfway down to the beach.
A few months back I remember being at the limit of my supply of new photos for the blog and thinking I’d need to dig into the archive. I’m now in the opposite position of having a glut of pictures that I’ve not even uploaded (or, in the case of about a roll-and-a-half, not even scanned yet) – approximately seven rolls of film’s worth of images. I’ll likely be shooting more stuff this weekend too, so the future stash of picture will grow further. At least it’s nice to know I have plenty of new photos to fuel the blog.
And maybe I can start to reduce the stash of film I have yet to shoot – I’ve decided to just dig in and get some of the film I have shot, rather than saving the nicer / rarer stuff for some unspecified special occasion that might never arrive.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .
Taken on 14 March 2022
Look at the sea (for 50p)
The seaside telescope is a regular sight at resorts across the land (and across other lands too – there were binocular-style telescopes all over the palce when I visited New York a few years ago).
While there is a sense of excitement about using the devices, my own experience has generally been one of disappointment. They are often somewhat unweildy to use, their movement stiff and heavy, and by the time you find something worth looking at the money runs out. If you’re a child, this is compounded by the fact that you have to be lifted uncomfortably by your parents in order to even look through the eyepiece, let alone maneouvre the telescope to point at anything.
And yet I like taking photographs of them, even if I don’t actually look through them.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
Taken on 14 March 2022
Flamborough Head lighthouse
There are two lighthouses at Flamborough Head. The original lighthouse was completed in 1674 but never lit. It stands at the edge of a golf course now with a Grade II listing.
The new lighthouse was first lit in December 1806 and remains in use today, although the last keepers left when the light was automated in the 1990s. As with its older sibling, it also has a Grade II listing.
Standing atop the promontory, the light can be seen from numerous places along the coast as well as, obviously, from the sea. Whenever I’ve visited places like Scarborough or, when I was younger, Filey, I would look for the light in the south as evening arrived. There is something evocative and even a little magical about catching that distant flash of illumination as the beam sweeps your position.
I took a number of pictures of the lighthouse on this trip, so don’t be surprised if they turn up here in the coming days. 🙂
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .
Taken on 14 March 2022
Flamborough Head
Today’s photograph is of Flamborough Head, a promontary extending several miles into the North Sea from the Yorkshire Coast on eastern side of England. Just the tip is visible in the picture. It is a landscape of chalk cliffs (the only such area in the north of the country), arches, sea-stacks and small sandy coves. Large areas beneath the cliffs can be walked at low tide and there are fossils to be had I believe.
Out at the end of the promontory sits the fog signal station.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .
Taken on 14 March 2022
Up above the waterline
This decaying wooden boat sits high above the waterline up the steep slope that leads down to North Landing at Flamborough.
Not living close to the coast – well, for the UK at least, where I believe nowhere is more than about seventy miles from the coast, although that doesn’t necessarily mean a lovely beach or anything, for some it’ll be a dingy mud-flat – er.. where was I?.. Oh, yes…
Not living close to the coast, scenes like this are a big draw. While I can quite easily find nice countryside, city centres, or industrial locations withing close reach, beaches, boats, and actual sight of the sea always offer some novelty. I went through two rolls of 120 film, and the best part of a roll of 135 during this trip to Flamborough, something I might have been harder pressed to do in my more frequently visited locales.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .
Taken on 14 March 2022
Fred Flintstone’s bowling ball
I spent some time trying to get a composition I was happy with here. The jumble of large chalk pebbles on the beach looked nice in the sunlight and I was keen to get a photo, but it took some effort and fiddling with the tripod. I still don’t think it’s the best I could have gotten, but I did like this distinctive looking rock with its bowling-ball type trio of holes on top. I’m not sure even Fred Flintstone would have scored a strike with this mis-shape though.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .
Taken on 14 March 2022
Boats at Flamborough North Landing
I visited the Yorkshire coast a few weeks ago, visiting Flamborough – specifically North Landing and then a walk along the clifftop path to Flamborough Head, where the lighthouse resides.
The two pictures in today’s post are from North Landing. This used to be the launch point for the Flamborough lifeboat and the steep concrete launch slide is a major feature of the walk down to the sand (it is just to the right of the decaying boat in the first photo). The lifeboat has now moved to South Landing and the ramp and boathouse are no longer in use – for their original purposes at least – although the boathouse now serves as a cafe and grille.
The walk down to the beach is quite steep and the sand is very soft, making progress across it away from the firmer ground of the water line quite an energy intensive process. The walk back to the top is pretty good exercise for thigh and calf too!
I’ll be posting a series of shots from this trip over the coming week or so.
This was the first roll of film that I converted with Negative Lab Pro and I’m pretty happy with the results.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .
Taken on 14 March 2022
Dry grass and blocked ears
I’m feeling a bit frustrated at present. Nothing to do with my photography, but all to do with my ears. Which are blocked.
I have a problem with blocked ears, and have done for years. Every so often they will get clogged up and I need to put in drops and visit the GP to get them cleared out. This is the case at present. I visited the nurse last week to have them syringed (after a couple of weeks of putting in olive oil drops), and had been really looking forward to getting my hearing back. Unfortunately, my ears were so clogged that the drops had only penetrated part way and the procedure left further wax deeper in my ear. On top of that, after I came out of the GP’s my hearing gradually became worse through the day – my right ear wasn’t too bad at first but in the evening I tried watching some TV programmes on the iPad with headphones – trying to listen to the TV in the living room as fruitless, with all the sound becoming a bit of a mush and any dialogue being very difficult to make out – and while the headphones on the iPad worked ok at first, after a while I felt my right ear gradually close up with whatever was still blocking much of it. So that was that.
I’m now putting drops in several times a day in preparation for round two with the nurse later in the week. Sigh.
That had nothing whatsoever to do with photography, but a photo you shall get nontheless. Not of the inside of my ears thankfully, but some dried grasses that I photographed a few weeks ago.
Olympus OM-2n, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins 20° .
Taken on 12 March 2022
