I visited the seaside town of Hornsea earlier this week. It’s the first time I’ve ever been – most of my seaside visits to the east coast being either the Lincolnshire resort towns of Mablethorpe and Skegness, or the Yorkshire towns of Bridlington, Filey, Scarborough & Whitby, which are further north from Hornsea.
It’s not a large town and the seaside facilities are more down-key than the other resorts I’ve mentioned. There was a single arcade that I saw, but no sign of any fairground or other attractions that might attract younger visitors. The beach was nice, a combination of sand and pebbles punctuated by groynes, and the main part of the sea-front where the promenade sits, has a sea wall. The reason for this was quite obvious on the day I visited as, while not a stormy day by any account, the waves were striking the wall with some force when I arrived with plumes of white spay shooting up above the top od the defenses and blowing back onto the promenade area in places. Further north and south of the town where the defences are not present it was plain to see how the coast is being eroded by the waves, and the earthen cliffs had a crumbled appearance. Perched atop these cliffs were a number of caravans belonging to a couple of large caravan sites either side of the town.
I didn’t really explore the town centre itself, which is a little way back from the sea front, but what I saw looked nice and I did take a few photos before I left.
The photo today shows a shop close to the promenade, it’s window packed with the sort of things that you only tend to find in seaside towns, along with the requisite fishing nets, windmills, and ice cream signs (although oddly, given the name of the shop, no buckets and spades on view).
There will be more photos from Hornsea to come…
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I liked the look of this scooter parked outside this shop, especially with the helmet and standard lamp visible in the window. I’m less happy at the fact that I caught my reflection in the glass though. I’ll occasionally go for a self-portrait but, on the whole, I usually do whatever I can to avoid being caught in reflections when taking a photograph.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
According to the sign, this is Newark’s famous floating pub. I’m not sure of it’s sphere of fame – I’d never heard of it until I visited Newark the other week – but I expect it’s well known to locals and those able to visit it with greater ease.
Whatever it’s fame, it was an attractive subject for some photographs and I’m really happy with how these turned out, even considering the shortcomings of the camera I used.
Reto Ultrawide & Slim & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
From a shop window full of slippers in yesterday’s post, to one full of newspapers in today’s. It would appear that Ragazza has seen better times. It’s sad to see businesses like this – much better that they be thriving. Nontheless, I thought it made for an interesting photograph.
Reto Ultrawide & Slim & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Two different apsect of Newark market here today. A couple of pictures from outside in the market square where the red and white striped awnings on the stalls glowed vibrantly in the bright sunshine. The third shot taken inside the market hall in a shady, but nicely lit arcade. I’m quite pleased with the interior shot given the somewhat basic (and un-changeable) settings of the camera used – fixed f/11 aperture and 1/100sec shutter speed. The shadows are a little muddy but, on the whole, it’s an appealing photograph, I think.
As is seemingly the RETO UWS’s remit, one of the shots has been photobombed by my fingertip.
Reto Ultrawide & Slim & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Away from pictures of Flamborough now and, for a few days to come, on to some photos from a trip to Newark I took with my wife last month. Newark is a market town in Nottinghamshire, about thirty or forty miles from home. It sits on the River Trent and has the ruined remains of a castle. They have an English Civil War museum there which I would quite like to take a look around, but that will have to wait for a future trip.
The town centre hasn’t yet been fully homogenised by all the same chain stores that you find everywhere else, although they are certainly making inroads. As a result it’s quite a nice place to wander around for a few hours. I’m not a big fan of shopping unless I either have something specific I want to buy, or it’s a shop full of stuff I find particularly interesting, so a lot of the day was spent with my wife browsing inside the shops while I stayed outside and took photographs of whatever I found interesting. This suited me just fine. 🙂
The only film camera I had with me on the day was the RETO Ultrawide and Slim, in which I’d loaded a roll of Kodak Gold. I was chancing things a bit by using a 36exp roll – I’ve heard the slightly flimsy film advance on the camera can struggle with rolls longer than 24exp, but I’d decided to risk it. The film advance definately seemed to be getting harder to turn as I approached the end of the roll, but there were no catastrophic failures thankfully. I do wish I’d taken a different camera though. While the RETO UWS is fun to use, having seen the results, I can’t help but wish I’d used something with a bit more fidelity for a trip like this. I also managed to get my fingers (and even the camera strap) into the frame on several shots, a much worse ratio than my first roll through the camera where I think it only happened once.
Today’s picture is kinda random, but I liked the arrangement of these colourful slippers in this shop window. While my finger didn’t get into the frame on this occasion, my shadow has crept in at bottom right.
Reto Ultrawide & Slim & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I suspect, like many people, I was pleasantly surprised when Kodak recently revealed the re-introduction of it’s Kodak Gold emulsion in 120 format. I’d long wished that Kodak or Fuji might relaese one of their consumer emulsions in this format, so was glad to hear of its imminent release. I was also pleased to see that it would retail for less than it’s other colour films although, given the skyrocketing cost of C41 at present, it still sells for more than Ektar did not so long ago. Nevertheless, I decided to treat myself to a pack of five rolls.
My pack of film arrived in the mail at the start of the month and, last weekend, on a sunny spring morning, I decided to go out and see what I might photograph on a roll of it. I didn’t want to go on a big day out, so decided to head to the botanical gardens in Sheffield with the intent of maybe getting some pictures of the plants in the glasshouse.
After arriving I took a picture of one of the university buildings on the street where I parked my car. It’s not the best picture, but the colours caught my eye.
The next image was of a house with a cuppola near the entrance to the botanical gardens. This shot I’m really happy with. I like how the cuppola is framed nicely with the tree branches, and also the conifer is similarly framed on the right of the image. Plus the light was great.
It was at this point that I discovered that the gardens don’t open until 10am, so I had some time to kill (it was only around 9:20am when I got there). So I decided to walk up the street beside the park and then head over towards Endcliffe Park instead. On this street I noticed a vintage motorcycle and got another photo. I’d have liked to open up the aperture to get more separation of the bike from the background but, even with relatively slow 200asa film, the light was too bright and as the Yashicamat has a maximum shutter speed of 1/500sec, I had to stop it down further to avoid overexposure. It’s a pity about the bins, but what can you do?
Just up the road from the bike was this house with a brightly painted door that I liked the look of.
Close to Hunter’s Bar roundabout, just below Endcliffe Park, is a row of attractive old houses largely hidden from view by large shrubs, but I was able to get a nice angle on them. Again, the light was lovely, and I like the church tower that peeks up behind them in the background.
Just inside the park is this lovely house. It’s the arts-and-crafts style park pavilion and lodge building, dating to 1891. The building has Grade II listing status.
I took a walk up Rustlings Road which runs beside the park – making several photos along the way with my XA3 that I had tucked away in my jacket pocket – before then wandering back through the park itself along the footpath. There are a couple of millponds here – evidence of the area’s industrial past – where I remember catching small fish in a net on a day out with my nan back when I was little. The ponds are filled with water from Porter Brook which runs down the valley before joining the River Sheaf in the city centre close to the railway station. Near the bottom of the park, where the large playing field is, sits a cafe. It was very busy on this sunny morning with many people sitting outside in the seating area across the path.
And finally, after leaving the park and walking up Brocco Bank, I finally arrived at my original intended destination – the botanical gardens. By this time I only had a single frame of the Kodak Gold remaining to be shot, and I made this picture of the gatehouse.
All the pictures were scanned on my Epson V550 flatbed using Vuescan to create RAW DNG files. These were then converted to positives with Negative Lab Pro. I’m still getting the hang of NLP, but I’ve got a group of settings that seem to be producing quite nice results for Kodak Gold (although I do still tweak them further in Lightroom afterwards).
I’m happy with the results I got from this first roll of Gold in 120 format and look forward to shooting more of it.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
It’s Friday. Work is done for the week, so time for a shower and some relaxation (ha!). Maybe catch the final episode of The Haunting of Bly Manor and drink a beer.
Not that this photo has anything to do with any of that whatsoever. I just liked it for today’s post and didn’t really have much else to say. 🙂
Most disabled-parking spaces are marked with the usual yellow paint staight onto the pavement. This one, however, looks like a sprite from a 1980s videogame, which is cool. 🙂
Today I present a photo of the University of Sheffield Student’s Union building…
…and a literal stone’s throw away (as can be seen by the looming Hick’s Building looming in the background), and also conveniently for the students, a bar…
Steel City Snapper photography 