Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 8 minutes @ 20°
Taken on 25 January 2025
A grand entrance
Tag: Peak District
Chatsworth trees
A quartet of trees I photographed while hiking around the grounds of Chatsworth House a couple of months ago.
I like the first of the four the most as it stands out against the sky and background. The second has a miniature fungal forest to add interest, although the light is pretty contrasty. Not as contrasty as the next shot though, where I deliberately metered for the highlights to throw the shadows into darkness. The final tree caught my attention as it looked like it had an old man’s face in right-hand branch of its trunk, although it’s a little difficult to see in the photo and looks a bit like the face of someone with Proteus Syndrome (the condition that afflicted Joseph Merrick, made famous by the movie The Elephant Man).
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 8 minutes @ 20°
Taken on 25 January 2025
Logpile
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 8 minutes @ 20°
Taken on 25 January 2025
Dark arch
Just up the road from the houses featured in the blog yesterday is a bridge which crosses Bar Brook, a small river (or, I guess, a brook!) which originates on the moors to the north of Baslow before it joins the River Derwent a little further downstream. The sunlight was casting deep shadow beneath the bridge, which I attempted to capture in this picture.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 8 minutes @ 20°
Taken on 25 January 2025
Baslow houses
Nice oblique sunlight and some interesting houses made for a nice shot at the beginning of a walk to Chatsworth House I undertook back in January.
I was umming-and-ahhing about going out with my camera today. The weather has been nice (it’s been nice for the last couple of weeks, in fact), but I wasn’t sure where to go, and I had some other stuff to do around the house but, in the end, I gave myself a kick up the backside and took a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. I shot an old roll of Tmax 100 with the Yashica Mat 124G and (hopefully!) should have some nice pictures to share. I do have a backlog again though, so they might be a little while appearing here.
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 8 minutes @ 20°
Taken on 25 January 2025
I’ve moved sites (well, sorta, sorta not…)
Yesterday I wrote about how I was upgrading my site and that I’d migrated all the posts, media, comments, and subscribers. That all went well, except for one thing…
My plan had been to upgrade my existing free WordPress site to the paid-for Personal tier, mostly to remove ads that visitors see, and also to take advantage of some of the additional features a paid site provides.
What I actually somehow managed to do was create a whole new site! While almost everything moved across ok, I soon realised that all my stats etc. were gone and I effectively had a brand new site, albeit fully populated with thousands of posts. I debated whether to just leave it like that – stats are not my primary reason for the site, far from it, and they’re not exactly earth-shattering in any case. But it niggled me somewhat that, even though all my previous content was there, it somehow felt like I was starting again at day one.
So, to cut a long story short, I cancelled the purchase of the new Personal site, re-directed all my subscribers back to the original free site, got a refund, and then did the upgrade properly. Now my pre-existing free site is correctly migrated onto the Personal plan level and all my stats are exactly as they should be. Next time I do something like this I’ll take more time to RTFM before clicking the button. 🙂
Hopefully, as a benefit, you should now be able to read this, plus any new and previous posts free from the scourge of adverts, and I can have a poke around the extra stuff I’m paying for to see if any of it is of use.
Following yesterday’s sunset, it feel’s appropriate to go with a sunrise for the launch of my new (although really mostly just the same old) blog.
Nikon D3200 & Nikkor 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 DX.
Taken on 2 November 2018
A millstone beside a tree
Another picture taken in close proximity to those posted over the last couple of days.
This is a bit of a “tripod holes” scene, and you can probably fine a large number of alternative (and probably better) photographs of the same location. It sits beside one of the main paths leading through Padley Gorge so, unless you take the path on the other side of the gorge, you can’t really avoid it.
Still, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. I’ve cropped in a little to remove some additional brightness where the grey and overcast sky was visible through the branches at the top of the scene.
Chamonix 045n-1, Schneider-Kreuznach Super-Angulon 5.6/90 & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 30 October 2024
Burbage Brook in Padley Gorge
Today’s picture was taken just a stone’s throw from the one I posted yesterday, but shot a year later. Thankfully the Kodak Ektar sheet fil, already expired by a few years when I loaded it into the holders, has stood the extended wait quite well, especially as it was just sat in my office and not refrigerated during this time. I wonder if we sometimes get overly concerned about the longevity of film if it’s not cold stored? I expect that, unless you’re in particularly adverse conditions, it will fare quite well at normal room temperature in a temperate environment.
Chamonix 045n-1, Schneider-Kreuznach Super-Angulon 5.6/90 & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 30 October 2024
Sometimes it’s not as bad as you thought…
Over a year ago, I wrote this post about a disappointing outing with my large format camera. You can read the post for the details, but the gist of it was that I wasted a sheet of very expensive 4×5 format Kodak Ektar by not paying attention and messing up the exposure.
I remember thinking at the time that I might as well just pull the sheet of film from the holder and throw it in the bin, such was my certainty that I’s messed it up beyond salvation. In the end, I decided to leave the sheet in the holder until I shot the remaining three sheets I had loaded on some other outing. It took almost a year before that next outing with the 4×5 Ektar came around.
Tempting fate somewhat, I returned to the same location – Padley Gorge – although the weather wasn’t particularly inspiring, it being a typical UK dull and overcast autumnal day. Nonetheless I decided to shoot the remaining three sheets I had loaded into my film holders. This being the first time I’ve shot colour 4×5 film, and as I don’t have the chemicals or equipment I’d need to develop the film at home (as I do with black and white), I had to find somewhere to send the film to be processed. I also had to locate a spare film box that I could use to send the sheets (they need to be sent in a light-tight container, usually a double box with a lightproof bag inside). It ended up being a month before I managed to post them out to the lab I chose, then another week to get them back.
When I saw the negatives, the original badly exposed shot looked a little thin, so I was expecting a bad result. Imaging my surprise when the picture you see below appeared from the scanner! It’s the best of the four sheets by far, I think. Yes, I’ve done some post-processing to make it look its best, but nothing too dramatic, and I’m extremely happy with the result. If you click the photo you can see the full-size version on Flickr, with all the lovely detail that a large format photograph provides.
There’s a lesson here about not giving up on things, even when they seem a lost cause…
Chamonix 045n-1, Schneider-Kreuznach Super-Angulon 5.6/90 & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 30 October 2024
An emporium and some of the things within (but no cloth cat)
This will probably mark the last of my Castleton trip photos, and it’s another shot of the Carlton Emporium, but this time with a glimpse of some of the things available for purchase within. I got strong Bagpuss vibes looking at this place – I wonder if a girl named Emily works there? 🙂
Nikon F80, Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Taken on 18 May 2024
Steel City Snapper photography 