Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
I’ll be posting pictures without commentary while my mental batteries take a break and hopefully recharge. Please feel free to use your imagination to fill in the blanks. 🙂
Normal nonsense will resume shortly…
Nikon F80, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF-D & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Taken on 11 May 2024
Or perhaps it’s “underpi”? 😉
Anyway, whatever the plural (and I expect there isn’t a collective noun), here are three photographs of underpasses. They’re all fairly close to one another – in fact, the latter two photos are in the same structure.
They felt like a good trio of pictures to publish together.
This whole roll of film had a sense of suspense about it. I took my Canon Sure Shot Supreme on an outing a couple of months back and decided to carry it in its case using the built-in belt strap. This was very convenient right up to the point where the strap came unglued and the camera fell onto a concrete floor (still inside the case, thankfully). The camera’s plastic shell became slightly misaligned and had to be popped back into shape, an a few little chips of plastic broke of around the shutter button. I was concerned about light leaks (so I filled the chip holes with a bit of black silicone), and also some sort of major damage to the mechanism or electronics. However, when I finished shooting to roll a few weeks later and got the negatives back they were all perfectly fine. So I still have a working Supreme, albeit now with a few battle scars.
Canon Sure Shot Supreme & Kodak Gold. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken 20 May 2023.
On my last visit to Birminghm I had an hour or so from getting off the train to when I needed to be at my meeting so I did what any self-respecting photographer would do – I took photos.
Just outside the station I found an underpass with a reflective ceiling and a number of cylindrical columns which looked like it might make a good location to catch a picture or two. Noting the reflections that pedestrians were casting in the mirror of the ceiling I waited for a couple of people to walk through the scene.
For this first shot I metered for the interior of the tunnel.
For this second image I waited for a person to appear at the far end of the underpass, the camera metering for the bright opening and casting the tunnel into a starrk, low-key light. This is the one I prefer.
Canon Sure Shot Z135 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Taken on 7 September 2022
I can’t hear the word “underpass” without it bringing the sound of John Foxx’s 1980 electronic classic song of the same name – although I still always have a childish urge to switch the chorus to “Underpants!” :).
I’m really happy with how this shot turned out. Again, the vignetting has added some grit to an already nicely gritty scene. I’d just walked beneath the underpass myself and was out the other side when I saw someone going the other way. So I about-turned and grabbed a picture of their silouhetted form as they reached the light at the far side of the tunnel. The 35mm lens focuses pretty slowly for some reason on the F80 so the figure isn’t totally sharp, but I don’t think it matters at all in this picture.
Figures pass below
Under the traffic above
Echoes of John Foxx
Nikon F80, Nikkor 35mm f/1.8G DX & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°.
Taken on 24 July 2021
I’m pretty happy with the way this photo turned out. I noticed the shaft of sunlight in the underpass and decided to wait for a figure to pass through it. I used the Sure Shot Ace’s waist-level finder so I’m very pleased that I managed to time it so the figures are illuminated by the sunshine, but their heads are in shade and framed against the sunlit wall at the far end.
Canon Sure Shot Ace & Ilford Delta 400.
Taken on 8 February 2020
Steel City Snapper photography 