Penny Hill Wind Farm – Steel City Snapper photography

I had one of those situation where I had just a few shots remaining on a roll to be used. I generally prefer to finish an entire roll on the occasions where I’m taking lots of pictures, but sometimes it doesn’t happen, and I’m not the sort of person who likes to waste frames on subjects I don’t find interesting just for the convenience of using up the film.

So on this frosty morning I went out to shoot the four remaining frames (three of which can be seen below). The first two are at Ulley Reservoir, where the cold weather had formed a thin skein of ice on the water’s surface, and the third is at Penny Hill Wind Farm, which lies a mile or so up the hill.

Officially, these were my first shots of 2026, albeit not on a new roll of film.

Nikon F80, Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°.

Taken on 4 January 2026

A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk along a previously unexplored path. The route took me from Aston, a village / district on the easternmost edge of Sheffield, north over the fields towards Penny Hill Wind Farm, then cuting to the east to cross the M1 motorway on a farm bridge. From there, back towards the south, across the M1 at the busy Junction 31 roundabout, and through Aston again to where I began.

There will be a number of photos to come from this walk in the next few days and I shot both black-and-white and colour images. Today’s post features a quartet of photos from the first half of the walk.

This first image is the lane from Aston down to a farm at the bottom of the dip. In the distance, at middle-left, one of the large wind turbines at Penny Hill can be seen peeking above the trees.

Climbing the hill past the farm up to the top of the ridge brings the turbines into more prominence, as well as a mobile transmitter and another antenna of some sort over on the left of the frame – at night this one can be seen lit with red aircraft warning lights.