Just a simple photo of a street today – Haymarket, in Sheffield.
I think the Velvia 50 (and the F80s matrix metering) have done a pretty nice job with the scene. Early morning sunlight was casting a combination of contrasty highlights and shadows – something I normally keep well away from where slide-film is concerned – but in this case the result is very pleasing with lots of detail and lovely rich colours.
Golden Touch gaming Fruit machine prizes at stake Be gamble aware
So says the slightly forlorn looking billboard. Assuming the exciting development is coming to this piece of land, there’s little sign of progress as yet.
Exchange Street leads up to what was once the thriving market area, with Castle Market up the street and to the right, and the Sheaf Market to the left where the modern red brick car-park can be seen in the picture. The markets have now moved to The Moor at the opposite end of the city centre – a move much lamented by some. The new markets are busy, if smaller than the old locations, while the original site of the Castle Market is supposedly being re-developed into a park.
Scent of the market Fish and fruit and meat and veg A memory now
A picture of one of the many apartment blocks that have risen across Sheffield city centre in the last couple of decades. Th university seems to throw up ne buildings on a contant basis, but I believe this one is private accomodation. I’m not sure if the building shown here has a specific name, but it stands on Blonk Street right beside the river Don just above to point where the River Sheaf merges.
Velvia colours From a roll of expired film Vividly azure
BAck to expired slide film once more, this time some Velvia 50 getting on for 20-years expired. As has been the case with previous rolls of untested slide film where I have more than one at my disposal, this was again shot mostly to test the results. Once again though, this doesn’t mean shooting test cards or anything like that, it’s just a case of shooting the roll at box speed to see how it performs with the hope that it all goes well and I get a bunch of interesting pictures as well as a knowledge of how the film fares. I can then update my settings and so on for future rolls of the same batch.
This Velvia 50 produced mostly well-exposed photographs but has a very warm tone to the results. I’ve reduced it somewhat in my scans but it still persists. It’s possible that Velvia just scans this way and that I need to modify my technique accordingly, or it might be a colour shift caused by the age of the film.
I’ll bear this in mind when shooting the other rolls.
This image shows the River Don in Sheffield where it flows past the Kelham Island area to the left of this scene.
A mirror surface Broken by the ripple wakes Of a pair of ducks
I’ll sign off from this run of expired Fuji Sensia photographs with another funfair image with the lovely blue-sky tones contasting with the warm browns of the ferris wheel on Bridlington seafront.
There are more seaside images yet to come, but with a change to black-and-white.
A boy named Ferris Once took a day out from school And killed his friend’s car
The clunky coin-operated telescope – a staple of the seaside resort in the UK (and probably all over the world – there were loads of them dotted around when I visited New York for instance, although were fancy binocular variants). They always seem awkward to use. Big heavy lumps of metal and glass on stiff supports with a limited range of movement. The optics are often full of debris, giving a nostalgic, cataract-ridden view of whatever you manage to point them towards. They probably promise more than they tend to deliver, but I’m happy they’re there, especially when they look beautiful against the blue summer sky as this one does.
Say what can you see? Out on the beach and the seas And up in the skies
The sign for the Fun Park stands out vividly against the lapis-blue of the summer sky. At least when shot with this roll of expired Fuji Sensia. I don’t think it was quite so vivid in reality, but who cares about that?
In summertime skies A bright glory of colour Welcomes visitors
I tend to find seaside arcades a bit of a letdown nowadays. They mostly seem to contain kiddie rides, prize grab games, slot machines, and coin cascades. These things all have their charm, and when my kids were younger, would be a genuine source of amusement (and a drain on my wallet), but something has been missing for a long time now… Videogames.
It may be a coincidence of my age, but the arcades are largely synonymous with, well, arcade games. Even when I was quite small I remember early games like Pong, Boot Hill, Sea Wolf and Night Driver among others. Then I was around for the real emergence of games: Space Invaders, Asteroids, and a little later, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Defender and a whole slew of others. It was heaven.
The arcades would ring with the electonic sounds of the games, flashing attract sequences, and simple 8-bit tunes bleeping, blooping, and crashing as they drew players into this world of light and sound. A single £1 note would, when changed into coins, provide ten games on the machines. Sometimes this would be gone in a fragment of time if you chose difficult games that you were ill-prepared for, but if you knew your stuff you could play for a long time on such meagre funds.
As the years progressed games advanced in graphical and sonic fidelity. Gameplay became more complex. Multi-player experiences appeared (Gauntlet anyone?), and the cabinets gained features. But as the arcades advanced, so did home gaming systems. For a while they trailed their arcade big-brothers, but in the 90s the advent of the Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation finally drew level. Now you could truly have that arcade experience at home (well, except you missed tha cacophony of sound, the atmosphere, the groups of fellow games and all the other joys of being in an arcade).
Sadly, this meant the gradual decline of the video arcade. New machines became ever more specialised with light guns, custom cabinets that the player could sit in to fully experience the action, and all manner of other bells and whistles that were difficult, if not impossible, to recreate in the home. And the pricper play increased. Where once that £1 would have given you ten credits, not you got a single game for the same price, often with no guarantee that it would last any longer. Slowly, the arcade floorspace that had once been given over to rows of individual game cabinets was reclaimed by other attractions.
The heritage of the video arcade still remains, and there are nods to the Space Invaders and Pac-Man games of old, with large attractions that, upon gaining a score, spew tickets that can be exchanged fro prizes and novelties. It’s not the same as getting your name on the top of the score table though.
Please insert a coin To defeat the invaders You puny Earthling
This boatyard in the British seaside town of Bridlington is at the top end on the car-park where we left our car for the day. It was a little difficult to get an angle I was happy with without some of the parked cars encroaching on the scene. I’m not unhappy with this one though and think the three men make the scene work nicely. Once again, lovely colours from expired slide-film too.
Today I’ve been out trying out a new digital camera. As this blog is about my film photography I doubt I’ll post any results from it here, but I might dust off my sister blog (which I haven’t updated in years) for the occasional post. The camera is a Ricoh GR III – a high-end compact camera with a fixed 28mm f/2.8 lens and an APS-C sensor. The camera is tiny (comparable to my Olympus XA3) and so will be easy to take with me on trips, even if I have a film camera with me too. It’ll probably be used mostly for (attempts at!) street photography and other urban architecture type stuff, but who knows? It won’t mark any reduction in my film output, I don’t think.
Blue boats and blue skies Out of their environment Yearning for the seas
Steel City Snapper photography 