Just a couple of pictures of unusual stuff today. The first is a shot of a giant micro-organism – an e-coli bacteria to be specific – that was lurking within Sheffield’s Winter Gardens. This larger-than-life model is 90 feet long, apparently making it five million times larger than it’s actual size. At this scale you’d have no problem spotting if your food was contaminated, I guess, although I tremble at the thought of the chicken that it might have inhabited!
The second picture is of another sculpture, a steel willow tree commemorating the victims of Covid-19 and the unsung workers of the pandemic. It was unveiled in March 2023 and stands in Balm Green Gardens, close to Barker’s Pool in Sheffield.
Back in October I visited the My Brutal Life exhibition in Sheffield. The exhibition featured a variety of pieces from various artists, covering photography, painting, collage, poetry, and film, all linked by the theme of brutalist architecture.
The venue for the exhibition was the Moore Street Electricity Substation, itself a notable brutalist building that sits just on the edge of the city centre. While the substation is in active use, one of it’s floors is empty. This floor was originally intended to hold the equipment that would provide electricity to two foundries and a car factory that were never built.
It forms an impressive space – effectively a large concrete emptiness with no source of natural light at all – that was perfect for this exhibition. I had seen a number of the pieces on show previously – something that’s bound to happen when you visit local exhibitions featuring local artists and of local subject matter – but others were new to me, or at least not seen before by myself in person.
One of the artist’s featured was Jen Orpin, a Manchester-based painter who has produced a number of works featuring roads and bridges, notably concrete spans across motorways. I first came across her work in a feature in the Guardian newspaper and her compositions of brutalist bridges crossing mysteriously empty stretches of road caught my eye. There’s a photorealism to the work that evokes recognition and a sense of otherworldliness. You can see example of her work on her website: https://www.jenorpinpaintings.co.uk/
Although the exhibition space was far too dimly lit for me to take film photos (I had no tripod), I did take a number of pictures of the staircase that needed to be ascended to reach the exhibition space (126 steps!) and of the substation itself, which you can see here in this post.
The pictures coming over the next week or so are a continuation of the pictures I made on a day trip to Leeds back in October. I’ve already posted a bunch of images from this trip, starting with this post from 27 November, but those were black and white photographs shot with my Olympus OM-1N on Ilford FP4+. The set that I’m going to post are all taken with my Canon Sure Shot Z135 compact and, in a first for me, shot on Kodak Ultramax. I’ll let you know my thoughts on the film and my results as I post more images.
The view from my seat as I waited for my train to depart for Leeds.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Kodak Ultramax. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted using Negative Lab Pro.
A few miles south from the Herdings Twin Towers that I posted about yesterday lies St. Peter’s church at Greenhill. The church was built in 1964/65, so is a relatively modern structure. It’s slightly squat spire always has an air of a witches’ hat, I think.
The early morning light was casting a beautiful glow onto the willow trees that grow beside the church. I don’t think my photograph does proper justice to the light.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Kodak Portra 160. Lab developed, home scanned & converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Often I will eke out multiple blog posts from each roll of film I shoot. At present, however, I have approaching two-hundred pictures that I’ve mostly either not scanned, or uploaded to Flickr yet, so I guess I have enoungh leeway to chuck our a batch of them all at once every now and then.
These shots are all from the same walk around the edge of town (shot on the day I used the roll of Portra 400 from which I’ve recently shared images of the Cholera Monument and other stuff). There’s no particular theme, although I guess it forms a snapshot of the sort of stuff that tends to catch my eye in an environment like this when I walk around with a camera.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE or Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC, and Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.
I took this picture not fat from the Cholera Monument, which I posted about recently. It’s a view towards Sheffield city centre. I found it interesting to see in the picture a whole host of other locations that I’ve photographed on other occasions.
I’ve photographed the new structure in the centre of the image (with the two red cranes) at least twice (here & here). Just to the left of that you can see The Hubs, which I’ve also taken many pictures of, such as this one, and this one. The “Cheesegrater” car park can be seen behind and to the right of the new construction. At the right edge of the fram can be seen Sheffield Hallam University with th red lettering at the top. On the side of the building you can just make out the “What if?” poem, which you can see here too. Behind the university building in the distance is the university arts tower, which I’ve poasted loads of pictures of, such as this.
There are several other buildings I can see where I have pictures too, some of which I’ve posted on the blog, others which I haven’t. The building in the foreground begind the grass is Sheffield Midland Station, another location where I have lots of pictures from.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC, and Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Granneli’s is a traditional ice cream and sweet shop that resides on Broad Street in Sheffield. The shop has been in business since 1874, opened by Italian brothers Luigi and Charles Granelli (although they had begun the business in different premises three years earlier). It began as an ice cream shop before expending to selling sweets. The ice cream business continues and there are Granneli’s ice cream vans serving a number of areas.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC, and Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Despite having lived in the city for five decades, I’d never visited the cholera monument in Sheffield until the day I made these pictures. I’ve seen the monument on many occasions, it sits on an elevated piece of land next to a small wooded area named Clay Woods just a few minutes walk from Midland Station, and is visble from many parts of the city, and on this day I decided I’d finally take a closer look.
The monument was erected in 1835 to memorialize those who lost their lives in the cholera epidemic that struck the city three years previously. Over four hundred people lost their lives and the majority of them were buried in nearby grounds.
The memorial was partly destroyed by a hurricane(!) in 1839, and has been struck by lightning on a number of occasions, including having it’s top section removed completely following a strike in 1990, and was only completely restored in 2006.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 150mm f/3.5 MC, and Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
Steel City Snapper photography 