Tag: Olympus XA3

35mm · Film photography · Photography

West Burton A power station

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West Burton power station, or rather stations (as there are two on the site – West Burton A and B), sit alongside the River Trent in Nottinghamshire. West Burton A was a coal-fired station, one of only three remaining in the UK in 2022 when it was due to be decommissioned. Due to energy uncertainty caused by the Ukraine War, the station was kept open a further year, before decommissioning took place in 2023.

Demolition of the site has commenced in 2024 and is planned to be complete by 2028.

Living by a power station

While I’m glad that we are moving away from environmentally unfriendly coal-fired power stations, I shall be sad to see the structure go. The station can be seen on the horizon from many tens of miles away, including the hills of Sheffield, my home city, and also the Lincolnshire Wolds to the east and it a feature of the landscape that has been present my entire life. It also serves as a visual marker for the River Trent which I always counted as the midway point on trips to my favourite seaside town, Mablethorpe (it’s actually closer to Sheffield than Mablethorpe, but let’s not split hairs… 🙂 ). It will be strange when it has gone.

West Burton A

There have been attempts to preserve the cooling towers as part on the nation’s industrial heritage, but I believe these have been unsuccessful. While West Burton A will go, West Burton B – a gas-fired station – will continue to operate, and the West Burton A site has been announced as the proposed location for the UK’s first nuclear fusion plant.

Powerstream

I hope to visit the site whenever I get the chance to get more photographs before it disappears (or changes) permanently.

The way across

Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 18 February 2024

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Mud

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I went for another hike today, picking a circular route from the Ordnance Survey app that looked like it could be interesting. The full route was around seven or eight miles. I didn’t make it that far though…

I’ll post more about it in a future post but, suffice to say, it’s not a route to take when it’s been raining. The entire part of the walk I managed was claggy with mud, in some places impassable without wellies, and I ended up with wet feet. On a positive note, the hiking clothing I’ve bought recently held up nicely, even when it rained.

The picture below was from another outing a few weeks ago. The ground was muddy in places then too, but not like today!

Zigzag waterway

Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 18 February 2024

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Brick barn

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I’m claiming this to be a barn, but I really don’t know. I guess, looking at the doors (and also at the taped -electric? – fence) that it could be also be a stable or something?

What it definitely is, is photogenic. Old, weathered, buildings usually are.

Brick barn

Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 18 February 2024

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Bypass graffiti

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Another short post today. I have been out shooting a lot of new photos though! I’ve decided that I’m going to do a lot more hiking this year where the purpose is the walk as much as the photography. I plan on writing about these hikes and illustrating the posts with pictures I made during the outing. I’ve got pictures from three walks in various stages of development, scanning, and publishing, so they will be appearing on here at some point. More about this when I have the first post ready to go!

Get off my cloud

Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 11 February 2024

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Writer’s block

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I’ve been struggling to find things to write the past week or so. Or, in some cases, I’ve had something to write, but not the time to do so. Either way, a lot of my posts of late have been pretty short. This has happened before (and my posts are rarely particularly verbose anyway), so I expect the situation will self-correct at some point. I guess it’s just a side-effect of daily posting.

Anyway, today is not really any different, so here’s a picture of a tree for no reason at all. 🙂

The other side of the fence

Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 11 February 2024

35mm · Film photography · Photography

A line of trees

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Another shot made possible by having the XA3 in my coat pocket. I did have my Fujica GW690 with me on the day, but that had already greedily eaten all my 120 film in it’s limited eight-shot stomach. So the XA3 came to the rescue for any other pictures I spotted.

I honestly didn’t know if this would be a nothing shot at the time I took it. I spent a bit of effort to make sure the trees all had separation (as much as possible, at least – there’s a background tree hiding behind one of the foreground ones), but the scene didn’t look all that inspiring to the naked eye. However, seeing it appear in black and white, I realise what it was that had caught my eye, and it’s one of the best pictures from the day. There’s something about the way a camera renders a scene that can make it different, and more interesting, than what was seen with the naked eye. The opposite can be true as well, of course, but in this case the camera captured it better.

A line of trees

Olympus XA3 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°

Taken on 27 January 2024