Other than a couple of electric bikes, the only mode of vehicular transport I saw while walking to the end of Spurn Point was this Unimog all-terrain truck, which carries passengers from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust centre to the lighthouse.. It has to traverse the soft sands of the beach at the neck of the point until it can rejoin the remaining road that hasn’t been washed away by the sea. Here it is heading back north.
There are a number of trails leading from the beach, up over the dunes, and to the road. This one looks a little overgrown.
After crossing the road I stuck to the western side of the spit which is mostly flat, grassy terrain with a scattering of gorse and some bird-watching shelters overlooking the tidal mud flats of the estuary.
Given the length of the walk to the end of the point, it’s good to see a bench along the way. My telephoto lens has compressed the distance a little and it’s further to the lighthouse from the bench than it might appear in this shot.
Also present are the reamains of some WW2-era tank traps.
IAs I got closer to the lighthouse I made a number of photographs.
More to come tomorrow, including views from the top of the lighthouse!
Nikon F80, Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Fujifilm Acros. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.
One of the interesting things about the area around Dean Clough Mill in Halifax is the way that the inner city road system crosses the deep valley. Look one way and there are Victorian factory buildings and smokestacks, look the other and concrete flyovers criss-cross the sky like something out of a Judge Dredd story.
In places they contrast, such as in the first three images below – in fact the first picture is actually an alternate view of the famous snicket photographed by Bill Brandt, which I posted about a few days ago.
It’s a very interesting location to make photographs.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford XP2 Super. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Many pubs have shelters for their customers who choose to sit or stand outside the premises with their drinks, often in the form of gazebos or large umbrellas. The Hop Monkey in Halifax has taken things to a whole new level though, placing a shelter over the entire pub…
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford XP2 Super. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I had three or four un-shot frames of film following my the trip to Hull and I wanted to shoot them so I could get the roll of film developed. Four frames isn’t really worth a specific trip, so I decided to shoot them one morning after dropping my son off at work.
I thought the signal box at Kiveton station would be a decent subject as it’s not that far from where I was, even though I’ve photographed it before. Then, because I didn’t want to end up driving for miles, I took some shots of the M1 motorway. All three have turned out ok, although how interesting you find the motorway pictures I’ll leave to you.
I also shot a single frame of colour film on another subject, but I’ll post that another time.
Nikon F80 & Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.
A few weeks back I shot a roll of Agfa APX 100 during a trip to Lincoln. It was only as I went to rewind the roll of film after shooting all 36 frames that I realised I hadn’t set the ISO dial when I loaded the camera, and that the meter had been set to 400asa for every shot.
If I had been shooting Ilford HP5+ of something, I would have just push procesed the film -something I have done with good success in the past – and, indeed, I thought this would be my plan for the APX 100 too. Unfortunately, there is much less data available on push processing this particular film stock, at least beyond a one stop push to 200asa.
Asking around for advice resulted in a number of recommendations for stand or semi-stand development and, after looking into this further, I decided the semi-stand approach might be the best approach. However, as this would be the first time I’d ever attempted this method of developing film, and as I had an idea there would be some shots from my Lincoln trip that would be worth keeping, I decided that I would have a trial run on another roll of film first.
So, a week after visiting Lincoln, I took a shorter trip to the village of Whitwell and shot another roll of APX 100 at 400asa so I could test out semi-stand developing.
I have two developers to hand at present – Ilford DD-X, and Agfa Rodinal. As there was far more information available on performing semi-stand development with Rodinal, I opted for that. It also has the advantage of being much cheaper than DD-X. My research suggested that a 1+100 solution would be the best option, with a couple of extra millilitres of developer added to compensate for the push processing , so I made up a mixture of 500ml water, with 7ml of Rodinal (again, based on research online). This is more developer than I would need for a single roll of 35mm film, but I wasn’t sure how much extra developer to add to 300ml to compensate for the push as the online advice had stated a 500ml volume of water.
I’d also read that a pre-wash would be a good idea for semi-stand, so before adding the developer I gave it a soak in 20° water for 5 minutes, agitating it for a couple of minutes. I’m not sure if the agitation was necessary at all, but I didn’t think it would hurt.
After emptying the pre-wash water, I added the developer and agitated the developing tank with inversions for 1 minute. I then gave it a tap on the counter and left it to stand undisturbed for the next 30 minutes. After this first half an hour I gave it another single firm inversion, another firm tap on the counter to remove any air bubbles, and then let it stand for a further 30 minutes.
At the end of the hour I emptied the developer, used 20° water as a stop bath for 1 minute, and then a further 5 minutes in the fixer. After this I washed the negatives in tap water using the Ilford method, soaked them for a couple of minutes in a wetting agent solution, spun the reel in a salad spinner to remove most of the water, and then hung them to dry for 3 hours.
I was very happy to see nice looking negatives as I removed the film from the reels. They maybe looked slightly thin, but nothing to cause great concern and I was able to get results I was happy with when scanning and post processing the photographs.
The final results are pretty good, I think. There’s maybe a little more grain than there would have been had I shot and developed the film at 100asa, but it’s nothing I’m concerned about, and the images are sharp, have good contrast, and the highlights and shadows contain plenty of detail.
I don’t think I’ll use semi-stand development all the time, but I will certainly use it again in some situations. I’m already curious about shooting a single roll of film at different exposure settings, for instance, and I have a roll of Fompan 400 that I plan on shooting with my Holga sometime soon which I might develop as semi-stand.
Someone commented that this picture looked like the woman was fleeing from the small black car, like in a suspense movie of something, which I quite liked.
It wasn’t my intent to create such drama – I was simply photographing the large bridge and thought the jogger would add some interest. I probably just waited for her and the car to reach favourable positions in the scene before pressing the shutter button. A happy accident, I guess. 🙂
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I posted last week about my ill-fated attempt to photograph some light-trails for a photo competition entry. The following evening I made a second attempt and, thanks to removing the dark-slide this time, this one was successful. I made three exposures and like the one here the best (the first two are very similar to one-another, but you can’t see the mororway snaking into the distance as well as you can on this one).
I exposed the film for 8 seconds at f/22. I used a digital camera to meter the scene which gave me a 4 second exposure, but I had to factor in some reciprocity failure for the HP5+. I calculated it as requiring 6 seconds, but the ETRSi only had 4sec or 8sec setting, so I erred for the longer exposure and it seems to have worked pretty well.
If I’d had enought time to get ist developed before the competition closing date I’d have used colour film instead, which would have been much more effective, but beggars can’t be choosers and I’m pretty happy with the results I got in the end.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°
Just a few metres from the picture in yesterday’s post but facing the opposite direction, the morning sun was beginning to be snuffed out by cloud-cover when I took this photo. The trees are not glowing as much as they had been when I’d driven past on mornings with clearer skies. Nontheless, there’s still a hint of autumn in the leaves and I like the damp road and it’s slightly reflective surface. And it has a pylon. 🙂
Fujica GW690 & Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
The B6067 heading east through Aston to the east of Sheffield. This road used to form part of the the A57, which runs from Liverpool on the west coast of England all the way to Lincoln in, er, Lincolnshire to the east of the country. It lost this designation when the Aston relief road was built – part of a new route taking traffic more swiftly into and out of Sheffield city centre – which now bears the A57 name.
This stretch of road forms part of the route I would take to Mablethorpe with my grandparents (and sometimes my parents) when I was young. Even though it’s no longer necessary (and slower) to follow this section when I visit Mablethorpe on my occasional trips, I sometimes make the detour to follow it for nostalgia’s sake. It’s a much nicer section of road than the bypass.
Just past Aston Hall And a row of big houses The road heads out east
Today’s photo is of a stretch of the bypass about a couple of miles from where I live. Although I tend to refer to it as the bypass, it also has a colloquial name of “The Mad Mile”, probably because the stretch featured here is around a mile in length between to two roundabouts at either end and also, I expect, because some drivers feel the need to use it like it’s a racetrack. It used to have two lanes running in each direction without a central reservation, but was altered a few years ago to remove the extra lanes (except where it widens near the roundabouts) and add the chevron area in the middle. I believe, if my knowledge is correct, that the area should only be entered if necessary and it is safe to do so, but I often see drivers using it to overtake a whole section of cars.
The photo was made from the same bridge as the picturein yesterday’s post.
Traffic frustration Leads drivers to foolish acts A law to themselves
Steel City Snapper photography 