I liked how this post box was nestled in snugly between the trimmed hedge, gatepost, and wall.
Usually postboxes will have a tab showing the collection times, which this one doesn’t, which made me wonder if it’s been repurposed as a letterbox for the property, but then I expect it would cause considerable confusion and result in the owners of the property getting lots of mail that people had posted.
It’s probably just missing the tab. 🙂
Fujica STX-1 & X-Fujinon 50mm f/1.9 FM on Agfa APX 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5mins @ 20°.
The pictures I’m sharing at present are the result of one of my occasional rambles around town. These trips are usually pretty aimless beyond a rough route plan, and even that is subject to change at short notice, with me just going whichever way looks like it may be interesting.
The city centre undoubtedly has a whole range of things to photograph, a great many of which I will not have noticed or considered photographing before, but at the same time it can feel over-familiar, so it’s a matter of just walking an looking for things to catch my eye.
The shots today are gathered purely because they all feature a splash of red (maybe fuchsia in the second picture), whether it be a post box, or a Chinese restaurant.
There will be a similar mix of stuff in the coming days’ posts.
Olympus OM-10, Zuiko Auto-S 35mm f/2.8 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
There’s something of a trend for British post boxes to wear knitted hats of late. The trend apparently began around Christmas in 2012 but has then expanded to take in all sorts of other festivals and reasons.
The name for the “hats” is “post box toppers” and the activity of making and placing them is “yarn bombing”.
This is something I learned today when I decided to post this picture. 🙂
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
There is something that attracts me to photographing post boxes. It’s not hard to figure out – it’s the vivid red that does it. I photograph them in black and white sometimes too, but colour really works best.
This one dates back to the reign of King George, so would have been erected sometime between 1936 and 1952, when he died and new boxes tok on the ER markings denoting Queen Elizabeth II.
It also has a sticker on it advertising a march and rally seeking justice for the events that took place at the Battle of Orgreave during the miner’s strike in June 1984.
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
When we had a day of snow a couple of weeks ago, I made the effort to go out and make some photos. I had an excuse to go out as my wife had a birthday card that needed to be posted, plus it was a chance to get in my allowed exercise too.
I pondered which camera to take out, taking consideration of the fact that none of them are particularly weather-sealed. I wondered about the Zeiss folder at first, as I could easily drop that into a pocket, but the thought of big, wet flakes of snow landing on the bellows gave me pause. In the end I decided on the Holga. While I doubt it’s in any way water-sealed, it’s almost entirely plastic, so as long as I put it back in my bag between shots, I reckoned it would be ok.
The Holga gives very little control beyond zone-focusing and the ability to switch the aperture between f/8 and f/11, but that limitation also makes it very easy to use. I knew I’d keep it at the f/8 aperture setting, so it was just a matter of estimating the distance, framing the shot, and making the picture. The Holga is a genuine pleasure in this regard.
I walked around for about an hour and fired off all twelve frames on a roll of HP5+ and I think I have a decent number of keepers from the bunch. The fixed 1/100s shutter speed did a great job of capturing the movement of the falling snowflakes. As the day was heavily overcast (as you might expect during snow!) I decided to push the roll a stop during development, which I think was a good choice.
As the lockdown (and the demands of my Couch-to-5K plan) are limiting the chances to get out with the camera slightly, I’m rationing the photos a little, so they’ll be spread out over the next few days while I develop another roll of film I’ve shot and, hopefully, get out and make some more images this weekend.
Out posting a card Off to a friend of my wife On a snowy day
A few weeks ago I posted a couple of photos of pillar boxes (or post boxes if you prefer) that I shot on some Fuji Velvia 100 and which exhibited vividly saturated reds. Today I have a photo of a different pillar box, this one dating from the reign of Queen Victoria – hence the VR insignia on the front. A quick bit of Google research points to this being a VR Penfold model.
Once again, the slide film has delivered vivid reds. While I’ve tweaked the contrast a little which might account for some of the rich colour, I’ve not touched the saturation of vibrancy controls at all. It looks pretty much like this on the original transparency too.
Olympus OM-2n, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Kodak Ektachrome 100 EPP (expired at some unknown date).
Given Fuji Velvia’s penchant for rich saturated colours, I couldn’t help photographing a couple of red pillar boxes with it.
Scanning this Velvia 100 took a bit of trial and error to get the colours and tones correct. My initial attempts resulted in slightly flat looking images, lacking in that brightness that you see when viewing a transparency in natuaral light, so I had to create a Lightroom preset to make the necessary adjustments required. Even then, however, the scans still had a very warm cast to them. A little research revealed that scanned Velvia 100 is sometimes nicknamed Redvia due to the red tones in the shadows. It might be possible to remove this in Lightroom, but I found it easier to set up an action in Photoshop to use a curves layer to drop the shadows in the red channel. They look much closer to the original transparencies now, but retain those saturated tones that the film is known for.
I’ve been really pleased with the results from this roll (and the fact that the OM-2n’s meter has proven itself to be dependable even when metering for something as finicky as slide film). I hope the other four rolls I have will be just as satisfying.
A bunch of photos that I made on a big looping walk from Thorpe Salvin a few weeks ago. I’ve posted several photos from the same walk in previous posts here, here, here, here & here.
These are all from the second roll of film I started during the walk, some expired Fuji Superia 100. It expired 12 years ago but has been cold-stored and it still looks great. I sometimes overexpose it slightly, but it looks good shot at box speed too, as can be seen in the photos here.
It’s a bit of a random selection of some of the things I passed while walking and I’ll post them as they come, without any commentary.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008). The last shot was with my Sigma 105mm f/2.8 OS HSM lens.
Steel City Snapper photography 