When I first saw the scan of this picture, my first thought was that it looked like a photo from a holiday brochure. I remember, before it was possible to find and book trips online, that we used to have stacks of these brochures in the house when we were planning a trip, all filled with similar shots of beaches, hotels, swimming pools, and local attractions.
Olympus Trip 35 & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I took quite a lot of photos looking down narrow streets while in Lloret de Mar. These are undoubtedly just average streets, the type to be found in many a Spanish town, but they are different enough to the streets I’m used to in the UK to draw my eye. A combination of the narrow widths, along with the signage in a different language make these interesting to me. I also had some lovely Mediterranean light to draw upon too.
The dog in the third picture looked friendly enough but, having been nipped on more than one occasion by friendly-looking dogs, I decided keeping some distance was prudent.
Olympus Trip 35 & Fuji Superia 100 (expired 2008). Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Today was my first day back at work after a week’s holiday in Spain. I did have yesterday as a buffer between the travel and the resumption of working life, which I’m thankful for, but I’ve felt pretty tired all day. I thought holidays were supposed to leave you feeling refreshed?
Thankfully, my usual post holiday blues didn’t last very long, perhaps because we were only away for a week, or maybe because I’m growing out of that particular sadness as I get older. I’m glad about that too – it used to affect me pretty badly when I was younger and leave me feeling a profound sense of loss for several days after a trip. This time, however, it only took a couple of hours back at work to pretty much erase any sense I’d been on holiday at all! Still, I’ve a couple of rolls of film and some digital photos to remind me of the trip when I get them developed / processed. I’ll post some of those here, of course.
Another picture from my Lincoln trip today – there’s probably only one more shot that I’ll post from this roll of 135 Agfa APX 100 – but I do have a bunch of colour medium format pictures still to come…
I was reading an online post today from someone who suffers from anxiety, and how they used journalling as a means to help deal with it. One of the things they found useful was to list a number of good things that had happened during the day, and to also set some goals for the following day.
I suffer from anxiety sometimes. Mostly it’s focused on a particular issue and goes away when that thing has been resolved, but I do tend to worry about things in general too. This doesn’t tend to give me the same physical and mental symptoms as actual anxiety, but is more of a constant low-level awareness of things that might be (but not necessarily, will be) a problem. Sometimes this can lead to catastrophizing and imagining extreme outcomes from often innocuous things, such as someone’s tone of voice, or something I overhear. I’ve gotten better at recognizing these situations, and I can usually talk myself out of this behaviour, knowing that the thoughts are unrealistic and ungrounded.
Knowing this, I’m going to make an effort to look out for the good things each day, and make a note of them when they happen. I think that setting my weird mind looking out for good things will be a much better use of energy than imagining what might be bad. I’ll try to list some of them here each day.
Something good that happened today…
I took down the Christmas decorations. This is something I don’t enjoy very much and which always makes me feel a little bit sad that Christmas is over for another year, so it might seem weird that I’m using it as “something good”. But the fact is that, despite my sadness that I’ve had to take them down (not that I would leave them up indefinitely or anything), I don’t actually feel too bad about it. I think I was more worried about being sad, than actually sad, and I feel fine now.
I also had our two cats helping me which was kind of annoying, but also nice. A balance between the frustration that they were constantly getting in the way, and the delight at seeing them sitting in every single box they could find (usually just as I was about to put something inside it!), which made me smile and laugh.
Today’s pictures are the last of the batch I took when I visited King’s Lynn back at the start of autumn (I know I say this a lot, but time really is flying by quickly as I get older!). This cottage forms part of the border of the grounds of St. Nicholas’ Chapel, a church dating back to the 11th century.
When I visited King’s Lynn, although there were plenty of people about, and lots of traffic, the roads close to the quayside were often devoid of pedestrians and traffic. Not completely empty, but quiet enough that it was easy to bide my time and get a photograph of the street scenes without anyone around.
I have another of my “Walk With a Camera” posts coming soon, but I haven’t put virtual pen to ink yet, and I don’t plan on rushing it today. I’ve been out mist of the day, firstly seeing The Fall Guy at the cinema with my wife, and then’ when I got home, on a shortish walk to Rother Valley Country Park to test a new lens I’ve bought.
I’ve bought a Tamron 28-300mm zoom lens that will fit my Nikon F80. I think it will be a good choice for when I go on future hikes as it should give me a lot of versatility. The F80 can make use of the image stabilisation on the lens (although I’ve found, slightly annoyingly, that only with a half-press of the shutter, and not with my preferred back-button focusing method). This should prove useful when using the longer focal lengths.
A zoom like this is never going to beat a prime, but as it’ll be used with 35mm film – probably 400asa – then I’m hoping any noticeable shortcomings will be minimal. I only took two shots with it today – all that remained on the roll already in the camera – but they’re at 200mm and 300mm, so should give me some idea of what I can expect when zoomed in. I’ll try the wide angle end on the next roll. I’ll give my thoughts and post some pictures once I’ve gotten them developed and scanned.
Anyway, in lieu of a film photograph today, here’s a digital shot from my trip to Malaga last summer. It’s been hot and humid here in the UK today, so it brought back memories of Spain.
I had the opportunity to just wander the streets of Malaga on a couple of occasions during our recent trip. Moving away from the busier tourist filled areas soon revealed a whole network of narrow streets and alleyways where I was able to make many photographs.
The heat and humidity were high, but I just felt the urge to walk and photograph; a new scene of interest seemingly presenting itself wherever I turned. Away from the central area and it’s shops many of the streets were largely empty of foot traffic – possibly because I was foolish enough to be out in siesta time. Mad dogs and Englishmen, eh?
I’ll post these in small batches, starting with the three below.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f.3.5-5.6 AF-D & Kodak Portra 400. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
A couple of images taken within a stone’s throw of one another, both in the village of Whitwell in Derbyshire. Whitwell appears to be quite a nice place, but it’s somewhere I rarely pass through – mostly because you have to leave the main road deliberately to get there, and it’s otherwise easily bypassed. One day I think I’ll park the car and go for a proper wander around the place as I’m sure there are plenty of interesting things to photograph.
The GW690 is something of a beast of a camera – it didn’t get the nickname of The Texas Leica because it’s compact, that’s for sure. As a result it canbe quite an awkward camera to use, despite its otherwise simple set of controls. I find it quite difficult to hold in portrait orientation and most of my missed shots, where there has been a degree of camera shake, have been when taking pictures this way. The camera has a second shutter release button on the front of the body to aid in taking portrait format photos, but I still tend to generate more of a wobble when using it even like this.
Thankfully the portrait oriented pictures I took on this day in Wentworth have all come out ok with the exception of one.
Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400. Shot at 200asa and developed at box speed by lab (in Xtol).
Steel City Snapper photography 