A new year has arrived, so it’s traditional to come up with some resolutions you intend to follow in the coming twelve months.
Mine are, in no particular order:
Lose weight
Get fitter
Become more focussed at work
Try not to procrastinate
Listen to more music (I aim to try and listen to a new (to me) album each week
Try to go on more dedicated photography outings
Clear out some of the stuff I’ve hoarded
Let’s see how I get on with them…
Today also marks the start of my sixth year of daily blog posts. I sometimes think about stopping posting every day, but I guess I’m not ready to give it up just yet.
I don’t tend to celebrate New Years Eve. I haven’t gone out on New Years Eve since before my eldest son was born three decades ago and we’ve never hosted or gone to any New Years Eve parties either. I generally stay up until the year turns, wish any of my family members who are awake (my wife has usually retired hours before midnight) a happy whatever year it is to come, and then go to bed. Some wine will be drunk and some snacks consumed.
Ideally there would be something entertaining to watch on TV but, it would seem, there is rarely anything other than middle-of-the-road music and entertainment programmes being broadcast on the main terrestrial channels, none of which hold much appear. I think that TV schedulers must assume everyone is out at parties, or wants to see the New Year in with the blandest programming available. There will be a short break at midnight when everyone sets off fireworks (although only the ones in London tend to be televised and, let’s be honest, watching fireworks on TV loses some of the impact anyway. At 1pm local time today the news showed the fireworks in Sydney, Australia which went on for TWELVE solid minutes). Then the shows continue.
I might see if I can find a movie to watch.
I looked through my recent photos but couldn’t see anything that particularly suited a New Year’s Eve theme, so instead here’s a picture of a vintage bus that I spotted after I visited the My Brutal Life exhibition a couple of months ago. Someone was getting married, so the bus was bedecked with ribbons, as was a similarly vintage VW Beetle parked just out of sight to the rear of the bus. Hopefully the happy pair will enjoy their first New Year as a married couple.
A Happy New Year to you all, and I hope 2024 is a good one!
A new camera arrived in the post today. I say new, but it’s both used, and also a camera I already own, so not even new “to me”. It’s another Yashicamat 124G TLR.
I’ve had my current Yashicamat 124G for almost seven years, and it’s a favourite to use. It was my first proper medium format camera (I had a Lubitel 166 Universal before this, but the Yashicamat really surpassed it in terms of quality). Unfortunately my current camera has some haze in the taking lens. While this doesn’t always have an impact on the photos, sometimes it does, producing the occasional image with a foggy, low-contrast look. As I like using the camera a lot, I decided it would be worthwhile finding a replacement without the optical issue.
Just before Christmas I was alerted to a sale at a film camera supplier here in the UK and they had a very nice model there with 10% off, so I took the plunge. The new camera looks in very tidy condition (although my original model is hardly looking rough), so I’ll have to find the time to put a roll of film through it to make sure all is well. After that I’ll look for a new home for my old camera as, despite the haze, it’s still very capable.
It certainly isn’t ready for the bin (a feeble link to today’s picture, I think you’ll agree…).
As another year comes to a close it’s time for my annual selection of favourite pictures, one from each month. As is always the case with these things, the list is based on my thoughts in the moment and the selection could easily change if I were to pick them yesterday or tomorrow.
Looking back through the year I was curious as to which camera has been used most for my photography. I thought there might be two or three contenders for the prize but, in actuality, there was a clear lead in the shape of my Bronica ETRSi, which has been used to shoot sixteen rolls of film in 2023. In distant second place was my Yashicamat 124G with six rolls (including one I developed today and have yet to scan), and then a tie for bronze between the Olympus Trip 35, and the Fujica GW690. I wonder which camera will be most used in 2024? Tune in this time next year!
January
Fujica GW690 Kodak Gold Converted to B&W in Lightroom
I struggled to get colours I was happy with using Negative Lab Pro for this roll. It usually works very well, but this roll was having none of it, so I resorted to a monochrome conversion.
Fujica GW690 Kodak Portra 400 NC (expired 2007) Lab Developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
November
Canon Sure Shot Z135 Kodak Gold Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
December
Yashicamat 124G Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 10mins
I expect that December’s picture might be changed as I still have a bunch of other stuff to develop and scan, and there may be shots amongst those that I prefer.
So that’s another year’s round-up. Now onto 2024! Have a happy New Year everyone.
Back in October I visited the My Brutal Life exhibition in Sheffield. The exhibition featured a variety of pieces from various artists, covering photography, painting, collage, poetry, and film, all linked by the theme of brutalist architecture.
The venue for the exhibition was the Moore Street Electricity Substation, itself a notable brutalist building that sits just on the edge of the city centre. While the substation is in active use, one of it’s floors is empty. This floor was originally intended to hold the equipment that would provide electricity to two foundries and a car factory that were never built.
It forms an impressive space – effectively a large concrete emptiness with no source of natural light at all – that was perfect for this exhibition. I had seen a number of the pieces on show previously – something that’s bound to happen when you visit local exhibitions featuring local artists and of local subject matter – but others were new to me, or at least not seen before by myself in person.
One of the artist’s featured was Jen Orpin, a Manchester-based painter who has produced a number of works featuring roads and bridges, notably concrete spans across motorways. I first came across her work in a feature in the Guardian newspaper and her compositions of brutalist bridges crossing mysteriously empty stretches of road caught my eye. There’s a photorealism to the work that evokes recognition and a sense of otherworldliness. You can see example of her work on her website: https://www.jenorpinpaintings.co.uk/
Although the exhibition space was far too dimly lit for me to take film photos (I had no tripod), I did take a number of pictures of the staircase that needed to be ascended to reach the exhibition space (126 steps!) and of the substation itself, which you can see here in this post.
There was little information to be had from this booth given that there was no-one inside. That, coupled with the prison-like bars, made me smile and I made the picture. It’s a little like the phrase used on the satirical Scarfolk Council site: “For more information please re-read“.
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.
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.
Steel City Snapper photography 