I’ve already posted a picture of this place a couple of days ago, but that was just the section seen at the left side of this wider view, I’m not sure when this building was constructed. It has an art deco look about but I suspect it to be a much more recent addition.
The bold reds and bright whites of the paint stand out in lovely contrast agains the blue skies. It’s on days like this where I most enjoy shooting colour film.
Olympus XA3 and Kodak Colorplus (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa)
A fairly straightforward street photo for today. It works, I think, because the arcade is closed and the blue shutters are down. Had it been opened then the figure would have been lost amongst the background. Lots of blues and a nice burst of colour from the sign look quite nice.
We’ve been hit by storm Eunice here in the UK today, and the southern counties received two red weather alerts, the most serious we get in this country, and not something that happens very often. Wind speeds of over 100mph were recorded in parts of the country. Being a couple of hundred miles north of the worst of it, all we’ve had here is a quite blustery and rainy afternoon. Some of the trees I can see from the house were swaying quite wildly but I’ve not noticed any damage from the limited vantage points I have from looking out of the windows.
A large part of the population seems to have been fixated on this YouTube channel, which has been showing planes landing (or attempting to land in some cases) in the high winds at London Heathrow airport. It had 185,000 viewers when I took a look earlier!
Olympus XA3 and Kodak Colorplus (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa)
I use the Grain2Pixel Photoshop plug-in to convert colour negatives. I’ve found it can be a bit finicky on certain film stocks – Portra for instance – but it always seems to do a great job with Kodk Colorplus, producing lovely saturated colours. I’m not sure how accurate these are to the film’s profile (and who really knows when scanning?) but I like the results very much. In scenes like this the reds leap off the picture.
Olympus XA3 and Kodak Colorplus (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa)
On my trip to Cleethorpes I made a number of pictures around the railway station. While I’m not a railway enthusiast in the sense of being interested in trains especially, I do find that the locomotives, carriages, rolling stock and the infrastructure that surrounds them makes for evocative photographs.
I like how this picture came out. It reminds me of something that might turn up in a set of old mounted slides or something, despite being a contemporary scene and being shot on colour negative film. It wouldn’t have worked anywhere near as nicely without the great light though
Olympus XA3 and Kodak Colorplus (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa)
At the end of January I took myself off for a day at the seaside town of Cleethorpes. It was a nice day with vivid blue skies and plenty of bright winter sunshine. There wasn’t much in the way of warmth however, not helped by the fact that we still had the tail-end of Storm Malik creating blustery conditions. However, this being the UK in wintertime, I was glad enough for the bright day and wore enough clothes to keep the chill at bay.
I didn’t have any particular plans for the day other than to take a bunch of photographs at an off-season seaside town. I knew that most of the attractions would be shuttered up for the winter, but that was kinda the point – to see it in the times when it isn’t full of holidaymakers and day-trippers.
I’d parked up right on the promenade. Unsurprisingly there were plenty of spaces to choose from – almost all of them in fact, and after buying a ticket I decided to head north to the end of the promenade where the beach heads on up to Grimsby. The wind was bitingly cold, but my jacket kept me warm, and I kept on my gloves unless I wanted to make a picture. Despite the fact that most things were shuttered, the big amusement arcade was open and I went in for a bit of warmth and a quick game on an old Galaga machine that I found lurking in a corner.
I had three cameras with me, which might sound like overkill, but two of them (the Olympus XA3 with which today’s photos were shot, and my digital Ricoh) are both tiny and easily pocketable. Only the OM-2n required a bag to carry it and a couple of extra lenses.
The photos in todays blog are of the small funfair on the beach. It’s not much of a funfair – just three rides – but I think it’s pretty much all that is left in terms of these sorts of things at the resort. There used to be a small theme park to the south of the town with some actual thrill rides, but that closed years ago. There were also larger rides including dodgems and a waltzer inside one of the buildings on the promenade, but I believe that it’s now an indoor market. This small cluster of beach attractions consists of a big-wheel (sans carriages at this time of year), a helter-skelter (all locked up), and a kiddies rollercoaster (missing its train, again because no children are around to ride on it in January). Despite their inactivity, they still made for colourful pictures in the bright sunshine though.
The old expired roll of Colorplus (which came with the XA3 when I bought it early last summer) has come out a treat.
Olympus XA3 and Kodak Colorplus (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa)
My plan to get more film developed today has not borne fruit, so for now it means I’ll have to dip into the archive to find a shot (for today at least – I still plan to get another roll developed tomorrow). The good news is that it wasn’t procrastination at fault, but the fact that I went out with the camera this morning and shot a couple of new rolls. I was using the ETRSi, so that should mean 30 more potential shots to feed the fires that keep the blog going.
Today’s photo then is from late spring last year, made during a daytrip my wife and I made to Bridlington, a seaside town on the Yorkshire coast. I thought that I’d posted this one before, but looking through my posts I can’t see it on here. It’s one of my favourites from this roll too.
A couple of photos of the church at Eckington, St. Peter’s & St. Pauls. The church dates back to the 12th century, although with later additions to the structure.
I’ve pretty much exhausted this roll of film now and need to get the next one developed, which I hope to do tomorrow. Otherwise it’ll be back to dipping into the archive again.
Olympus XA3 & Kodak Tri-X Pan (expired 2003 – shot at box speed and pushed a stop in development). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
When so much has moved to “big box” retailers in the home improvement field these days, it’s nice to see a more traditional independent store such as this ironmongers in the town of Eckington. Shops like this are far more interesting to visit, often with a mazelike set of corridors packed will all manner of stock from a wide range of suppliers. They’re so much nicer than the clinical feel of the large stores.
Olympus XA3 & Kodak Tri-X Pan (expired 2003 – shot at box speed and pushed a stop in development). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
I’ve spoken a few times recently about the odd marks on this roll of expired Tri-X Pan. I believe it expired in 2003, although that’s really a best guess based upon the fact that it came with some rolls of other film which were all dated that year. Given its age I perhaps shouldn’t be too surprised that defects have appeared, although I’ve shot older film than this (and a number of rolls of this same film from the same batch) without issues, so it’s not necessarily a given fact.
Anyway, I’ve been editing the marks out of the pictures in Photoshop for the most part, but this one resisted my efforts – or at least to an extent that I was satisfied with any restoration that I’d attemped – so I decided to leave it as it is. I’ve not removed any dust spots and there’s even another defect at the left side of the frame where the negative took some physical damage, possibly as a result of my struggling with the curliness of it!
Despite the marks on the image, it quite works with the scene I think. It maybe adds a little character.
Olympus XA3 & Kodak Tri-X Pan (expired 2003 – shot at box speed and pushed a stop in development). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
A photo I took on a walk around Eckington just before Christmas.
Shortly before I took this photo, a day or so prior (it might even have been the evening before) one of my sons went to a birthday party held at a cricket club that is located about half a mile up the road on the left in this picture. It was extremely foggy on the evening – pretty much a wall of blankness in front of the car as soon as the streetlights were left behind. While I love fog as a weather condition where photography is concerned, I’m definitely less inclined towards it when it comes to night driving…
Olympus XA3 & Kodak Tri-X Pan (expired 2003 – shot at box speed and pushed a stop in development). Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°
Steel City Snapper photography 