Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 / Zuiko Auto-T 135mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Leeds town hall
Tag: G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5
The pointy end
These shots required a bit of contortion on my part to try and get things lined up how I wanted, particularly the first image. The shape of the building and the water feature have been nicely rendered by the lens and, while not super-wide, the 28mm focal length gave a nice effect.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Beneath a walkway in a shaft of light
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Street crossings and fire escapes
We awoke this morning to find it had snowed overnight, with about a couple of inches covering the ground. This would have been a great time to go out and take pictures but, alas, as is so often the case when interesting conditions land in may lap, my time was spoken for – in today’s case to visit my dad and set up a new DVD recorder I ordered for him (he has a lot of old discs that he had no way to watch as is old machine no longer works), and then to visit my aunt and uncle to take up some gifts and cards for Christmas.
So photographing today’s snowy, misty conditions was largely out of the question. I did have chance to go out this afternoon but, after doing my visits in the morning and not getting back home until after one PM, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to do so. So now I have this vague sense of a lost opportunity having passed me by. Hopefully there will be more days like this (the conditions, not the sense of loss!). Even more hopefully, my time will not be spoken for and I’ll be able to take advantage of them.
As ever with these sort of “diary” posts, the pictures bear absolutely no connection to the words I’ve written. Both images were made in Leeds back in October on a a day where I did get the chance to make the most of the light.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 / Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Cranes and construction (and not knowing what to write)
If you’ve read this blog for a while then you may recall the occasional post I make where I moan about what a drag it can be sometimes to post every day (approaching five full years of consecutive posts now). Sometimes I just don’t have anything I want to say. Other times I have plenty to say but don’t have the time (or sometimes, the inclination) to put pen to paper (or, I guess, fingers to keyboard). Some days I’d just rather be doing something else.
I feel like I’ve been having a bit of a run of those days recently. That’s not to say that there haven’t been any longer posts – there have – but I feel like the frequency of the quick posts where I just fart out a sentence or two and have done with it has been on the rise.
I think this is a symptom of a wider issue I have where I feel I don’t have enough time. And this is true – I don’t. But it’s also true that I waste too much of the time I have doing things that probably don’t matter. Most often, this will be reading stuff online – not articles, features, or long-form pieces, but social media-type lightweight content. It’s like junk food – it’s very tempting, but it’s all empty calories.
Maybe there’s a new-year’s resolution in here. To stop wasting time with the stuff that doesn’t really matter – or at least cut back on it. In that half-hour I spend on Reddit (or wherever) I could have read a couple of chapters of a book, a good feature about something interesting and mentally nourishing, or maybe put together a longer blog post.
Ironically, as is always the case when I post about this stuff, I’ve written a lot more than usual, despite moaning about not having the time to do so.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Office space
A short post for a Friday evening. It’s been a stressful week at work (and next week isn’t looking much better) due to a task that I don’t really know how to approach just yet, and I can’t think of anything profound to write. I’m just going to try and kick back and play videogames and watch some TV.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Three bridges
The first two bridges pictured here carry Whitehall Road across both the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and the adjacent River Aire. The third photo depicts Monk’s Bridge which is now a “viaduct garden”, kinda like a miniature version of New York’s High Line I suppose. I didn’t venture atop the bridge to see the garden and only discovered that it was there when looking at a map later.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Canals and railways
A couple of pictures taken on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. These are very close to the canal’s eastern end where it joins the River Aire in Leeds city centre just below the railway station.
The canal was originally conceived in the 18th century, with construction beginning in 1770 and being completed forty-six years later (although it was subsequently extended in 1822). It runs for 127 miles and has 91 locks on it’s main line.
The second photo shows westbound rail tracks crossing the canal just after they leave Leeds railway station.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Twisted living
The sides of this building are actually perpendicular, but not through the eye of a 28mm lens pointed slightly upwards.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Bridgewater Place – a windy Dalek
Two views of Bridgewater Place, a residential and office building in Leeds, UK.
It stands beside the River Aire, alongside which I was walking on the day of my visit. The 32-story building was completed in 2007 and within a month of its opening had been nicknamed “The Dalek” after the race of fascistic aliens made famous by the Doctor Who TV show (because of the building’s shape, not because it contains fascists).
While crossing the road in front of the building I noticed some strange metal structures by it’s side. I didn’t pay these any heed, thinking they were perhaps some sort of architectural flourish. It was later that I discovered that they are actually wind baffles. You see, it was found that when the building was completed it was causing a significant wind microclimate with gusts being recorded comparable to hurricane speeds when the wind was blowing from the west.
These gusts resulted in a number of injuries and accidents, including a woman suffering a torn liver when being thrown into a wall, a pushchair containing a child being blown into the road, someone being lifted off their feet and deposited across the street, and most seriously, a man being killed when the wind caused a lorry to overturn on him.
As a result, a wind mitigation scheme was put in place, with various structural changes being implemented, as well as a re-routing of high-sided traffic on occasions when the wind speed was high. Although the architects were found not liable for the death of the pedestrian, they were made to pay over a million pounds to the council to cover the cost of the traffic measures that had to be put in place.
One of the wind baffles is just visible in the bottom right of the first image and there are warning signs next to the building telling of danger from gusts of wind.
Olympus OM-1N, G-Zuiko AUTO-W 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford FP4+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins.
Taken 14 October 2023.
Steel City Snapper photography 