Fernlea garden centre has been doing business in the village of Maltby-le-Marsh near Mablethorpe for as a long as I can remember. I have a vague memory of my grandparents buying some plants from there one time when I was a kid – the caravan site where their caravan was berthed was in the same village (and still is, although considerably changed from how it was when I used to visit).
Each year when I visit Mablethorpe I drive through the village and see the garden centre. Unlike the caravan site, it seems remarkably unchanged (in my memory at least) from all those years ago, and whenever I go past I have a slight worry that it will no longer be there and another little piece of my life’s history will have gone. It hasn’t happened yet, thankfully, but this year when I drove past I decided to stop and take a couple of pictures so that, in the event that it ever disappears, I’ll still have a picture to remember it.
Yashica Mat 124G and Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
These pictures are from the same roll of Fuji Pro 400H as this pictures I posted yesterday. Unlike those, the light leaks on these were unrecoverable (by my level of skill, at least, although I suspect anyone else’s too).
I think the problem was caused by keeping the roll of film in the camera for two long. I shot a single frame when I visited Hull back in August but, because the film advance wheel fell off thew camera after that shot, it meant that I wasn’t able to shoot any more frames that day and only got around to shooting more in September, before finishing the final four frames in October when I went on my annual day-trip to Mablethorpe.
I shot all those during the journey, three in Gainsborough, and the final picture in Legbourne, and it’s the first of the Gainsborough pictures, and the Legbourne picture shown below.
It was after taking the picture in Lebourne and removing the roll of film from the camera that I became aware that I had a “fat” roll, the film and backing paper wrapped much more loosely around the spindle than required, meaning that light was able to get to the film when I opened the camera back. I put the roll somewhere dark as quickly as possible but not matter how fast I might move, it’s still slower than the speed of light, so the damage was done.
It’s a shame these two photos were damaged in this way as I think they would have been good pictures (I’ve since returned to Gainsborough and re-taken the first, but the weather conditions were different and the plume of steam wasn’t there, so I don’t think it will be as good). Still, despite the obvious issues, I still liked the results enough to post them on my Flickr account. I think the first one could make a pretty decent album cover!
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I posted some pictures the museum and bandstand a few weeks back, but those shots were in black and white and shot on my Fujica STX-1. But I also took some medium format colour pictures of the same scenes (though different compositions) with my 1950s Zeiss folder. So here they are.
Zeiss Mess-Ikonta 524/16 & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Today’s shots were also taken with my GW690, although on a different roll of film: Some Kentmere 400. Unlike the Fomapan 400, there were no defect on this roll, plus I avoided any potential bromide drag by using standard development with regular inversions. I’ve shot a couple of rolls of Kentmere 400 now and both times I’ve found it gives quite bright results and I have to drop the highlights a little. Not sure if it’s a feature of the film, or the way I’m developing it.
The first four shots were taken around the tip of Spurn Point showing the beach and dunes beside the estuary opening. In the shot of the dunes you can just make out an old sea fort dating back to the first world war in the distance. There are two forts: Bull Sand fort, and Haile Sand fort. I think the one in the picture is the former. The structure in the fourth shot is the sea traffic monitoring station. I’m not sure if it’s still manned at all, but the radar is active and the tubular antenna at the top of the building was constantly rotating.
The next four shots are of groynes and other sea defences, or what remains of them at least. These are no longer maintained, with the land now left to natural forces. You can see the battering that the man made defences have taken from the tides. I particularly like the final shot where pebbles have been jammed between the boards of a groyne by the force of waves and resulted in what reminds me of some sort of aquatic abacus.
Spurn Point is a location I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. It’s a spit of land that extends from the Holderness coast in Yorkshire into the mouth of the Humber estuary. It is a slender piece of land three miles in length, widening at it’s southern tip, but being less than 50 metres wide at it’s narrowest point.
At times during its recorded history, storm tides have breached the neck, cutting off the tip and forming an island. The last breach was, I believe, back in 2013 which destroyed the single road to the tip making it passable only by foot or all-terrain vehicles (such as a Unimog truck that ferries tourists to the lighthouse and back).
The Holderness coast, and Spurn, are subject to significant coastal erosion (spurn being the beneficiary of the material eroded from further up the coast) and this has affected the geography of the location over time with various settlements lost to the sea in past centuries.
Spurn has been used for a number of purposes over it’s history, including coastal defence, lifeboat station, and the location of lighthouses and traffic control for shipping passing in and out of the Humber. It is now owned and managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and attracts a large number of visitors keen to experience the creatures, particularly birds, that make their homes there.
There are two lighthouses still standing on Spurn, both now decommissioned – Smeaton’s high light, and Walker’s low light. The Walkers lighthouse stands in the mud flats to the west of the strip of land, it’s light aparatur removed and replaced by a water tank. Smeatons light stand on the land of the spit and is open to tourists, and you can climb the narrow staircase to where the light was once installed. Other noteable structures include the lifeboat crew houses, which are also empty, the tall shipping control tower with its still active radar, the old lifeboat jetty, and various structures remaining from wartime.
I made pictures with three cameras across four rolls of film, so I’m going to split them into batches. This first set were shot with my Fujica GW690 (Texas Leica) on Fomapan 400. Sadly, the pictures were affected with a defect giving a lot of white speckles on the final images. This was also compounded by bromide drag when I developed them, although I’ve Photoshopped the worst of this away. Despite these setbacks, they still have a certain charm to them, I think.
As happens most years, I went into town on the day of the annual Classics on the Moor car show in Sheffield city centre. I took my Yashica Mat 124G with me and shot a couple of rolls of film, one black and white, the other colour. Here are the black and white images.
The same owners and cars are often present at the event, so some of these cars will have undoubtedly featured on the blog before. The little Fiat 500 certainly has.
Castle Hill overlooks the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield and has served as a settlement for more than 4,000 years. The remains of ancient hill forts can be found there, but the most striking feature now is Victoria Tower, a considerably more recent addition, dating back a mere 126 years to when it was opened in commemoration of the then-queen having sat on the British throne for 60 years.
The tower is 106 feet tall and you can climb to the top (or near to the top) for a small fee. There are a number of landings with seats at various levels of the tower for the weary climber to regain their breath. The bottom picture was taken from one of these, with the distant (and considerably taller, at 1,047 feet) Emley Moor television transmitter visible through the window.
One of the interesting things about the area around Dean Clough Mill in Halifax is the way that the inner city road system crosses the deep valley. Look one way and there are Victorian factory buildings and smokestacks, look the other and concrete flyovers criss-cross the sky like something out of a Judge Dredd story.
In places they contrast, such as in the first three images below – in fact the first picture is actually an alternate view of the famous snicket photographed by Bill Brandt, which I posted about a few days ago.
It’s a very interesting location to make photographs.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford XP2 Super. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Steel City Snapper photography 