A couple of duplicate photos today. Duplicates in terms of the subject matter, at least.
I shot both these same locations on my Yashicamat 124G on the same outing but, because I’d forgotten my tripod plate, had to shoot them handheld and wasn’t comfortable that they would be free from shake (or that the wide apertures I’d used might spoil the images). So I took the same shots with my Olympus Trip as well.
You can see the original medium format versions of the images here and here.
Two similar, but still different views of Blackpool Tower today.
Apologies for a brief post today – I’ve been out to do some photography this afternoon and it turned out to be a dissapointing experience. Things went wrong and I ended up making mistakes and feeling annoyed and sorry for myself as a result. And now I have a headache. 😦
I’ll probably provide details of the events in another post (assuming some of the photos turn out ok..).
The Big One was, for a couple of years, the tallest and steepest rollercoaster in the world. It opened in 1994 and was 213 feet tall. It has since been surpassed by a considerable margin with the current world’s tallest rollercoaster being over twice as tall at a stomach-churning 465 feet (Kinda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, USA).
The Big One was branded as the Pepsi Max Big One until 2011.
I’ve ridden on it once, about twenty years ago, when I went on it with one of my sons. It was a great experience riding it, but not the most comfortable of rides. Not as terrifying as the Wild Mouse ride that also used to be present in the Pleasure Beach.
A couple of shots showing the Sandcastle Waterpark at Blackpool, the UK’s largest indoor waterpark. It houses multiple attractions including the Masterblaster – the world’s longest rollercoaster waterslide. I wasn’t aware that such a thing even existed before writing this post! You can see a video of someone riding on it here on Youtube. I expect that the waterpark is a lot of fun but I’ve never been inside.
I’m not sure that my two black and white photos do the place justice, them making it look like a cross between an industrial plant and something constructed by the Empire from Star Wars!
The structure to the right of the first image is The Big One, the tallest rollercoaster at Blackpool Pleasure Beach. I may publish some more pictures of that tomorrow..
This giant mirror ball stands on the promenade at the southern end of Blackpool’s seafront. Erected in 2002, it is the world’s largest mirror ball with a diameter of six metres.
The actual title of the artwork is “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?“, named after the depression-era story by Horace McCoy (later turned into a Jane Fonda movie) that tells the tale of young people attempting to win a $1,000 prize by dancing until they can no longer stand.
Blackpool is famed for its glitzy entertainment, music, and dancing – including the famous Tower Ballroom – so the mirror ball is a fitting piece.
Two of the turbines making up part of Penny Hill Wind Farm lit up by the bright Christmas Eve sunshine.
Clear blue skies meant that this was always going to be somewhat minimal, with a lot of negative space. I took some effort to get just a thin strip of the roadside hedge into the bottom of the frame to ground the picture a little.
Another photo from my Christmas eve outing. I saw this scene as I drove past in my car but, due to the roads being narrow with no place to stop or turn around, I had to do a loop of several miles to bring me back to the same location so I could park up and go make the picture.
I think it might have worked well had I been able to face the trees head on, but there was limited space and my shadow would enter the scene if I positioned myself in certain places, so this was what I got.
Another photgraph taken at Ulley Reservoir on Christmas Eve. It was the first time I’d ever taken this road around the edge of the water and so I’ve never seen this viewpoint of the bridge where it crosses this part of the reservoir. I’m not sure if the water level was particularly high, or if those arches are designed to leave such little space beneath the roadway. No-one is going to be taking a boat under them, that’s for sure!
Again, due to my tripod-plate mishap, this was another picture shot at a lowere shutter speed and wider aperture than I’d have liked.
The only real photography I did in December (apart from the odd snap here and there) took place on Christmas Eve. The weather was bright and clear and I wanted to run a roll of film through my Yashicamat 124G which I had taken the lens off the week before in an attempt to remove some haze. The haze was between inside the rear lens element and I couldn’t remove it unfortunately, although I otherwise gave it all a good clean. This outing was to see if the camera was still working and hadn’t been destroyed by my meddling.
I went out with good intentions, taking a tripod and cable release with me in case I needed to shoot in lower light locations. What I forgot to do was to afix the quick-release plate on the bottom of the camera before I left the house, rendering the tripod useless. As a result I had to make quite a few shots on the roll at wider apertures or with slower shutter speeds than I would have liked. This was annoying as I wanted to make sure my attempted repair hadn’t affected the cameras focusing in some way, and any hint of softness due to camera shake or shallow depth of field would make this troublesome.
I think a few shots on the roll suffer in this way. Not terribly, but if I zoom right in I can see some softness. Other shots are plenty sharp however, so I guess the repair was successful (insofar as me not having broken the camera, at least – the haze is still present).
The shot shown here today is one from the roll and shows a view across Ulley Reservoir with a tower on the far shore – I presume this is used as part of the boating activities that make use of the lake.
Steel City Snapper photography 