Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
Just a pair of brown leather boots, for sale outside a shop in Castleton. Think of this as product photography. 🙂
Yashica Mat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed, home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 18 May 2024
Yashica Mat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed, home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 18 May 2024
Back on the 26th September 2021, I wrote a post marking my one thousandth day of consecutive posting. Today, a little under three years later, marks the two thousandth.
I always find milestone posts like this to be difficult. They’re the sort of thing that would normally be celebrated – in that way that we humans seem to like celebrating things that reach a certain, nicely shaped, number. I’m quite a modest person though, so shouting out about my achievements isn’t something I relish or feel particularly comfortable about. I would probably have had greater success in some aspects of my life had I “bigged myself up” a little more, but I’ve always felt that my achievements should speak for themselves, and not be reliant on too much self promotion.
So here I am, having posted without fail for the last two thousand days, and instead of a party, it’s more of an acknowledgement. I reached a big number, and tomorrow I will surpass it (and why will my two-thousand-and-first post be less worthy of celebration anyway?).
It might be nice if I had some sort of special “2,000th post” image that I’ve saved for the occasion, but I don’t, so I’m going to use a picture I took on a trip to Castleton back in May. It shows a gap in a drystone wall part way up Cave Dale. It feels somehow optimistic in tone – a gateway to whatever might come next, I suppose.
Yashica Mat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed, home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 18 May 2024
Following on directly from yesterdays Ingoldmells post, todays piece features photos from Skegness (or Skeggy for short. Or, amusingly, SkegVegas).
It took about 20 minutes to drive to Skegness from Ingoldmells, a trip I punctuated with a visit to a fish & chip shop for some dinner (dinner is what we call lunch in my part of the world. The evening meal isn’t “dinner”, it’s “tea”, but not the drink. Sorry to cause confusion!). After that a short drive into the centre of the town to get parked.
As a child it felt like Skegness beach was huge. It seemed you had to walk through a veritable desert of sand before you would reach the se. These days however, it laps around the end of the pier, and the pier isn’t even as long as it once was! I expect this is a result of the work that has been carried out to combat coastal errosion in this part of the Lincolnshire coast. Mablethorpe, for isnstance, used to have groynes all along its beach, but these are now buried beneath feet of sand that has been dredged from offshore. I guess it makes for a nicer beach, but it also seems to have lost some interest in the process.
When staying at my grandparent’s caravan in Mablethorpe, we would occasionally have a day trip to Skegness. Skeggy is much bigger than Mablethorpe and has a lot more entertainments, including the pier, and a good sized funfair in Bottons Pleasure Beach. I think, for my grandma, the much greater selection of shops was also undoubtably a lure.
On the day of my visit I walked along the promenade area above the beach before venturing onto the sand to take a few pictures of the back of the Pleasure Beach. From there I wandered to the pier, back through the Pleasure Beach itself, and then onto the main road that runs between the beachside entertainments and the town itself.
While the weather had improved a bit by the time I arrived in Skegness, it was still largely overcast, and I was disappointed that I didn’t get the sunshine and blue skies that I think would have made the colour film work better. As always here in the UK, you get the weather you’re given though, and it’s a case of making the best of it.
One of the things I like about the seaside, is the architecture – the arcades, the food stalls, the touristy stuff. It’s kitschy and sometimes a little worse for wear, but it has a special charm to it and I sometimes wonder if there’s a school of architecture dedicated to designing such structures?
Nobody was enjoying this Altitude attraction when I was there. Maybe the wind was too high or something? Someone was “enjoying” the log-flume though. 🙂
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE and 50mm f/2.8 MC lenses, and Fujicolor Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Taken 28 July 2023.
Posh looking modern homes in Little Kelham. Front gardens are limited in scale though…
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 5 February 2023.
I’ve wandered around Kelham Island in Sheffield to take photos on many occasions and I still manage to find things I’ve not photographed before. This view east through Little Kelham is one such composition. The skyline will no doubt look different again before long once the cranes in the distance finish their work.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 5 February 2023.
Behind the fence and trees flows the River Don. Across the river stands New Testament Church of God (formerly Holy Trinity Church). The chimney and large brick building to the left of the frame is Aizlewood’s Mill, which I wrote about the other day.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 5 February 2023.
There’s a definite appeal to these block-like houses. It’s like someone has taken a cube of fresh clay, imprinted a brickwork pattern, and then cut perfectly angular upenings into the material. Despite the very up-and-coming nature of this part of town, I’m not sure I’d want to live in a home that people can walk so close in front of, and I’m unsure if they have any sort of green space such as a garden (although it could be atop the flat roofs for all I know). Photographically though, I find them very attractive.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 5 February 2023.
So says the graffiti art on the wall beside this derelict building.
I seem to have got quite a lot of grain on this roll of Fuji Pro 400H. More than I recall seing when shooting it previously. It’s been develepoed at the same lab, and shot with the same camera as my last roll too. The main differentiator is that these were scanned on an Epson V700 rather than the V550 I’ve used previously. I’m not sure if that’s the cause though.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 5 February 2023.
This building is Aizlewood’s Mill, now a business centre, but originally used to mill grain harvested in Lincolnshire to the east. The building was directly adjacent to Sheffield’s first railway station, making offloading of the grain a case of carrying it across a bridge from the goods yard and straight into the mill.
The building was constructed in 1861 and remained in industrial use until the 1960s. The building was sold to Sheffield Co-operative Development Group Ltd for £1 in 1985, leading to it being re-developed for current use as a business centre.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 5 February 2023.
Steel City Snapper photography 