Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
A maze of beautiful twisted oaks just below Wellington’s Monument on Baslow Edge. I don’t think I’ve got the best composition here – I’m not sure about the grassy area at lower left – but it’s a location not too far away, so plenty of chance for me to get a better shot in future.
Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 4 January 2020
I present to you today a couple of pictures of the “Anvil Stone” which sits atop Baslow Edge overlooking the Derwent Valley. I’m not sure if it’s name is official, or one of those things that has just fallen into common usage but you can certainly see how it gets the name.
It was blowing a gale when I first arrived, the wind swooping up the valley sides and buffeting anything close to the edge, so I took care where I stood atop the crags. It’s not a sheer drop along most of the edge (although surely high enough to be potentially fatal in a number of places), but it wouldn’t take that big a fall to sprain an ankle or break a limb or two (or smash delicate cameras!) if you were not to take care.
I entitled this second shot “Jawas” on Flickr as I found the shape of the rock form this angle to be evocative of the Sandcrawler vehicles they use on Tattooine. 🙂
Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 4 January 2020
This is the view from the edge of Lady Canning’s Plantation looking back towards Sheffield city centre, which lies around 4.5 miles away. It’s a nice illustration of how close you are to rolling countryside just a hop and a skip from town. The large block of a building that sits to the left of the image is the Royal Hallamshire Hospital.
I think I botched the exposure somewhat as the shadowy area of the wall is showing significant grain. I love my OM-1, but it’s relatively simple metering can sometimes fool me into picking the wrong shutter speed / aperture combo.
Olympus OM-1, Zuiko 28mm f/3.5 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 30 December 2019
A gap in the rocks at Over Owler Tor reveals the northern edge of the Derwent Valley.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 22 November 2019
Today’s post shows an abandoned millstone on the moors near Mother Cap.
These stones were all carved by individual masons who were capable of producing around 16 pairs of stones per year.
The market for these stones collapsed when white bread became popular in the mid 18th century. The gritstone that these are carved from would turn the flour grey, so french millstones that didn’t have this effect began to be used instead.
When their business disappeared, the masons fought back by destroying the French stones until eventually the military were brought in to put a stop to it.
The millstone lives on however as it is now the official symbol of the Peak District National Park.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 22 November 2019
This photo was taken on the edge of a small abandoned quarry, up on the moors near Over Owler Tor. It’s likely that gritstone was quarried here for the manufacture of grinding wheels and the like. You can’t see the quarry in the shot – the large boulder is atop the opposite side – but there was a significant drop just in front of my tripod.
The weather was gloomy, misty and damp on the day. Not what you’d usually get excited about, but I’d booked a day off for the trip out a few weeks in advance and had little foreknowledge of the conditions (although, it being November in the UK, I should have had a good idea). I did consider just staying at home, watching TV and reading books, but pushed myself to go out – I’d only have regretted it otherwise – and was glad I did. The conditions were still far from ideal, but the murk and low cloud are atmospheric in themselves and much better than the blanket of featureless flat grey that I’d seen when I got up that morning.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 22 November 2019
A couple of photos today that I took while walking on the moors around Over Owler Tor / Higger Tor / Carl Wark last weekend. I actually shot a couple of rolls – one Delta 400, and one Shangha GP3 – but I’ve only scanned the Delta so far.
I made a concerted effort to remember to use the mirror lock-up on the Bronica this time – a roll of Velvia I shot recently had resulted in a number of shots that were less sharp than I’d hoped, which I’d put down to camera shake caused by mirror slap. All the shots this time were nice and sharp – even those shot at slow shutter speeds (half-a-second and the like). The only downside was my lack of experience in shooting the camera with the mirror locked up. The process is:
If you forget stage 4 and wind the film on, the mirror remains in the locked up position until you take another shot. As a result of this I had a few double frames where I had to take a second, identical photograph (although I altered the aperture in some cases just for the hell of it) as it’s imposible to recompose while the mirror is up.
Anyyway… here are a couple of images of Mother Cap, a gritstone outcrop just below Over Owler Tor in the Peak District national park above Grindleford. It doesn’t look too big in the first image, but it’s a decent size when you’re up close – being maybe 20-25 feet high. The guy at the left of the frame was taking his own photos of the rocks when I caught him up, and was interested to see the view through the Bronica’s waist-level finder.
The second shot is a close-up picture of part of the the formation – this is the actual angle that the layers are at.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 22 November 2019
This hat shop in Manchester is striking in its own right, but I waited for a passser-by to give it additional interest. By chance I managed to get the chap in a pose not too disimilar to the classic Morcambe and Wise dance. He also has a carrier bag, Eric Morcambe style. 🙂
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 23 April 2019
Another photo from a recent trip to Manchester. The meeting I was attending finished earlier than expected so I had an hour or so to kill while waiting for the train I had a ticket for. So I went for a walk. I’d taken the Zeiss on the trip for two reasons: Firstly, I’d just had it CLA’d and wanted to test it out if I got the chance, and; Secondly, it folds down to almost pocket size, which is a wonderful feature in a medium format camera when you need to travel light.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 23 April 2019
Well, sort of…
On a recent visit to Manchester I arrived at Manchester Picadilly station to find a series of boards displaying the winning entries for the most recent Landscape Photographer of the Year competition.
There were some beautiful and striking images on show and I took a couple of photographs of people looking at them – this one from the balcony overlooking the ticket-hall area.
I’ve cropped it from the square original due to a winding error (I didn’t wind it on enough and got two slightly overlapping frames).
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 23 April 2019
Steel City Snapper photography 