photo contest – Steel City Snapper photography

As I mentioned the other day, I needed to get a photograph that met the “magical” theme for the film photography contest that I’ve been taking part in this year. So today, I went out and made a few pictures that I hope will allow me to enter something suitable. They’re a pretty literal take on the theme, but I’ve not had the time or (mostly) the inclination over the past couple of weeks to do anything else. Anyway, I hopefully have three photos to choose from – I’ll try and get them developed tomorrow in order to meet the deadline on Tuesday.

The weather has so far been pretty awful this weekend. The UK is being battered by storm Arwen, which has brought strong winds, cold temperatures, and lots of rain and snow. Some parts of the country have been reporting gusts of up to 100mph and, sadly, there have been some deaths as a result of the conditions. We woke this morning to lower winds than we had overnight, but with a coating of slushy snow. Had it not been for my need to get a photo for the competition I’d have been very likely to have stayed tucked up in the house where it is nice and warm.

At the last minute I decided that I’d wear my hiking boots while out. My wife and son were heading into town, so I got a lift from them and was dropped off at the location for my picture-taking. As soon as I left the car my feet were submerged in inches of cold, waterlogged slush. Had I worn my trainers then my feet would have been soaked and frozen within a matter of minutes I think, so I was grateful for my boots. This was my first trip out with a camera since we lost Stan a couple of weeks ago and, if I’m honest, my mind wasn’t fully on the task. Nontheless, I still shot 11 of the 12 frames of medium format film in the camera, and will use the final frame tomorrow – possibly a portrait of my dad if the weather isn’t too bad and he visits in the morning. If my dad doesn’t visit, then I might photogrph my backup prop for the photo contest instead – a £2.99 Harry Potter eraser that I bought from Blackwell’s bookshop. I think most of the photos on the roll will be quite mundane, although one is of a big flock of pigeons perched atop tram power cables which I’m quite interested to see.

My son (who came into town with us) was supposed to have had his second Covid vaccination this morning but we received a message saying the appointment had been cancelled – presumably due to the bad weather – so we’ve had to re-book that for a couple of weeks time.

Another photo of Stan to close off the blog. This was his idea of helping me get on with work by trying to fall asleep in my arms. Love him.

I’ve spoken on this blog before about the film photography competition that I take part in. It’s run on a photography forum I’m a member of and is a friendly contest, with no prize other then the pleasant feeling of being the winner. I’ve not won the contest before, although I’ve finished up near the top on a number of occasions. This year, with two months still to go, I’m currently in the lead and have a reasonably good chance of prevailing if I make and enter good photos. My problem at the moment is that I don’t have an entry for November yet, and there are only five days left to do so.

After losing Stan, my mind has been far away from photography over the past couple of weeks and, if I’m honest, it’s still not really there yet now, but I don’t want to drop out of the contest at this stage. It doesn’t matter at all if I do or don’t, but it would still feel nice to win, or even just complete the course. And if I’m sucessful and manage to win, it can be for Stan.

So I now need to find a photograph that meets the theme of “magical” in the next few days – including getting it developed and scanned. I have an idea of something I can do, although I’m not sure how good it is – it feels a little obvious – but it might be a case of needs must. I could use a photo I’ve taken throughout the year and try to finagle it to fit the theme – this is allowed in the rules – but I’m not sure anything I have comes close to being a good fit anyway. Whatever I decide though, I need to get on with it.

My emotional state is continuing to improve day-by-day, and there’s now more of an underlying sadness to how I feel, rather than the pain that was so prevalent at first. I fully expect it to flare back up again from time-to-time – grief is like that, it never really goes away, you just learn to live around it, but for now I’m feeling a little better than I did.

Stan never liked riding in the car when we had to take him to the vets, but he would always hop in the car when he saw the doors open – usually when we were unloading shopping. He once got locked in the boot for a couple of hours when he’d jumped in without being spotted one time. These are the memories that I will treasure (although I wouldn’t ever condone shutting cats in cars!).