Sheffield is a hilly city. It’s said to be built on seven hills, like Rome, although I’ve never quite worked out which hills count in that number, or where the statement originates.
While other parts of the world have infrastructure and housing built on much more precipitous slopes, Sheffield has its fair share of steep streets and homes built on hillsides.
In many places streets of differing altitude are connected by footpaths such as one shown below. There might be a germ of an idea for a photo project lurking in that thought…
This curiously shaped building on Queen’s Road has been a bicycle repair shop for a number of years now, but it’s original purpose, until 2012, was as a public house – The Earl of Arundel and Surrey Hotel.
The building has a small date plaque on the front denoting that the building dates from1879 and also used to have a sign affixed which read:
“These premises have a unique claim to fame as the only remaining official pound house in Sheffield. It was built in the late 1880’s on land belonging to the Duke of Norfolk who was also the Earl of Arundel and Surrey and Lord of what was then still the Manor of Sheffield. These premises inherited the manorial rights of being a pound house. The Landlord was known as the Pinder and he had the right to round up and hold any stray animals-horses, cows, sheep-until their owners collected them. He could charge a fee for their return. The stables are still used to this day, to house two percherons belonging to Vaux Brewery in Sunderland, when they visit Sheffield for their processions and other person appearances. They are to be found at the rear of the building.”
The end of the three-day May Day bank holiday weekend is drawing to a close and I’ll be back at work again tomorrow. A number of businesses in the UK have trialed four-day working weeks recently, in most cases very successfully, but I don’t think my employer has any inclination to offer the same. Perhaps in time, as more places start to provide employees with these types of flexible working options, it will happen, but I’ll probably be on brink of retirement by the time it does.
A four-day week certainly sounds appealing though, even if it means working longer hours on the days I work. I could do a lot with an extra day, and it would expand the time I have for leisure, certainly. It would be like having a bank holiday every week!
I went out for a walk with a camera on Saturday, but nothing particularly focused – I needed some more DD-X developer, so went for a lengthy walk around town, snapping anything that caught my eye, although I only shot ten or eleven frames. I got my DD-X though, plus three rolls of 120 black and white film (I still have a huge stash of film to shoot but very little medium format B&W left, which is something I use quite often, so I got a few rolls to tide me over).
No photography related stuff today (unless I include uploading some new pictures to Flickr and posting here), but I went to see Thunderbolts* with my wife, which was good fun. Back to the 9-to-5 tomorrow.
Although the weather has been nice today, I’ve spent most of it sat on the sofa with our cats, browsing the internet on my phone and reading a photobook (England Observed by John Gay. You can see a selection of his wonderful and evocative photographs here).
My dad visited this morning and we agreed to visit Newark Air Museum this week while I’m on leave – we attempted a visit last autumn, but when we arrived they had had a water outage and were unable to admit visitors!
I also checked in with my son on WhatsApp to see how our daughter-in-law was getting on in the 5k run she was doing as part of the Leeds Running Festival (which she admitted she was doing largely to get the medal that all participants receive 🙂 ).
Now I’m sat here attempting to digest the large Sunday dinner I’ve consumed (featuring a very large leg of lamb). I didn’t receive any chocolate eggs, although I don’t think I could manage any chocolate after the dinner.
I slept better lat night, thankfully. I’m not sure if my mind was just in a bit better state, or if it was a result of my tried-and-tested “eat a banana before bedtime” method of combating anxiety-caused insomnia, but I’ll do the same again tonight. Getting a decent amount of sleep makes a lot of difference to your day.
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
If you look closely at this shot, you will see a partly obscured sign with the word “raw” printed upon it. It was my intent to include the full sign in the shot, and it was completely visible in the viewfinder but, because the Yashica Mat 124G is a TLR camera, with the taking lens a couple of inches below the viewing lens, the parallax was sufficient to drop half of the sign below the top of the foreground wall. I was quite surprised that the parallax effect would have been noticeable at the distance I was from the subject.
It was out daughter-in-law’s birthday this week so we’ve been round to her and my son’s house this afternoon to celebrate, and it was nice to have a get-together with them, ours, and her immediate family. I felt pretty gloomy this morning after another poor night’s sleep, but the party has cheered me up a lot. Families are very important.
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Of the shots from this roll of film that I uploaded to Flickr, this one receive by far the fewest likes. But I like it.
I like the bold red of the car against the graph-paper wall of the building. The red fire alarm that matches the car’s colour. The parking signs. The plant behind the frosted glass window.
Photographs are a subjective topic, aren’t they?
My anxiety persists. It’s causing difficulty with my sleep (not stopping me from falling asleep, but preventing me from going back to sleep when I wake early) It’s leaving me feeling fatigued and I keep catching myself almost nodding off while watching TV in the middle of the day. I need to find some techniques to keep it at bay but, in honesty, I think the only thing that will remove it is resolution or acceptance of the thing that’s causing it.
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I’ve finished work now for the Easter weekend and the whole of next week, which is nice. Unfortunately, I’m also feeling pretty anxious about some stuff going on in my family. I wish I was better at dealing with anxiety. My wife worries about things too, as does everyone – especially their children’s wellbeing – but is able to avoid the worry consuming her. It’s something I envy.
I tend to be ok through the daytime, but early mornings seem to be worst, where I’ll wake with panicked thoughts that prevent me from getting back to sleep.
It’s perfectly possible that I’m being over-anxious and that I will look back and wonder what I was fussing about, but my brain has a tendency to catastrophise and I really need to find some way of dealing with this.
Sorry for the slightly gloomy post!
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
After the last few days of B&W images shot with my Yashica Mat 124G, I’m moving over to a splash of colour. These we taken on the same outing as the B&W photos.
Sometimes I have to spend some time tinkering with the colours when converting C41 films in Negative Lab Pro (yes, Kodak Gold, I’m mostly talking about you), but others often look great straight off the bat, like these vibrant Lomo CN 400 images that I’m going to share in the coming days.
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Steel City Snapper photography 