Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
This photograph shows Sheffield University Arts Tower on the left with three of the blocks of flats next to Netherthorpe Road (there’s another block not visible in this image). Between the two blocks on the right the tower of St. Vincent’s church can just be seen through the gap.
Olympus OM-1N, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Agfa APX 100. Adox Adonal 1+25 6mins @ 20°.
Taken on 15 April 2022
I’ve been on my first business-focused trip today since spring 2020. I felt oddly anxious about the experience, not because of Covid or anything like that, but because I have not left my home for any work-based reasons in over two years (well, I did need to travel into town to get my faulty laptop fixed last year, but that wasn’t a meeting or anything, and it was only into my local building) and this trip involved taking a train journey to another city.
The day went well though and the biggest issue was the fact that the smart shoes I wore to go with my suit (which, while maybe not quite at the cutting edge of modern fashion any more, thankfully still fits) managed to rip the back of my heels open. This has clearly happened in the past but I’ve blanked it out of my mind until today – I know that it has happened before because there is a partially-used pack of plasters in my laptop bag from where I obviously had to perform field surgery the last time I wore the razor-backed shoes. I sat and mended my feet on a seat outside the station before I even got on the train! There’s nothing quite like a minor, but painful, injury to start the day…
I did manage to fit my 35RC into the laptop bag and, while I didn’t really have much time to take photos, grabbed a few shots on my way to and from the station. Not enough to finish the roll though, so it’ll be a while before I develop those.
Here’s another view of the University Arts Tower with the figure of a walking man neatly framed beneath a foreground tree. I hope his feet weren’t hurting.
Olympus OM-1N, Zuiko Auto-S 50mm f/1.8 & Agfa APX 100. Adox Adonal 1+25 6mins @ 20°.
Taken on 15 April 2022
One of the more noticable structures in Sheffield is the university Arts Tower. While it is not very tall when compared with towers in other cities (it’s not even the tallest building in Sheffield) at a mere twenty stories, the fact that it sits partway up the hillside beside Western Bank means that it is visible from far afield. It should be noted that far afield in this case is probably still not that far – Sheffield is a hilly city (said to be built on seven hills, like Rome) so the best views of the Arts Tower are from the north east where it can be seen from further down the flatter area around the Don valley. It can be seen peeking over the top of hills from various locations as well though.
The building opened in 1965 and housed the Departments of Landscape, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Biblical Studies, and Architecture. There were eighteen arts departments located in the tower originally although, as the university and student body has grown, some of these have moved to new locations.
One of the most well known features of the building is the paternoster lift system, with many a tale being told of people going right over the top of the looping elevator system. Most of these are from people unaware of how a paternoster works and under the assumption that the unfortunate passengers would be somehow flipped upside-down as the lift reached its apex. They do make for better stories though. 🙂
It being such a focal point in Sheffield’s skyline, I’ve taken a good number of pictures of the tower which can be found here.
Yashicamat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 16 April 2022
Early last month, on a bright sunny day, I took a walk around Weston Park, Crookes Vally Park, and the surrounding areas. I took my Yashica Mat 124G loaded with some Lomography Color Negative 100 film, and my Sure Shot Telemax containing some Kodak Gold (the results from which I’ve been posting here over the past week or so).
This was the first time I’ve used the 100asa Lomography Color Negative variant, although I’ve shot several rolls of the 400asa version and liked the results. As is my current process for medium format colour films, these have been home-scanned as linear tiff files with my V550 using Vuescan, and then converted to positives using the free Grain2Pixel Photoshop plug-in. I found that, while the initial conversions looked pretty good, I’ve still had to tweak them to get them looking “right” – or at least as “right” as my own eyes reckon they should be. Grain2Pixel is a very good piece of software, especially given it is free-of-charge, but I do find that I have to remove colour casts sometimes depending on the film I used. The scanner (Epson V550 for medium format / Plustek 8100 for 35mm) can also make a difference too.
Occasionally, certain frames from a roll produce very odd results – oftem at odds with the rest of the shots from the same roll. I tried using the trial version of Negative Lab Pro to compare with the Grain2Pixel results on some of these and it also went slightly crazy – with colour tones looking very odd. All the shots here today were pretty straightforward to deal with though.
Anyway, the three photos today are all from the Lomgraphy 100 roll, shot with the Yashica, and all three made in Weston Park (with the museum visible in the first, the bandstand in the second, and the nearby Univesity Arts Tower in the third). Autum was underway, but the trees still held onto most of their leaves and a good amount of green at this point.
Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Grain2Pixel conversion.
Taken on 10 October 2020
After something of a bleak half-a-year, I’m hoping that things are finally on the up and that, as a result, I might be able to breathe some life back into the blog. Fingers crossed!
The University Arts Tower in Sheffield is one of the city’s tallest buildings and is visible from far and wide thanks to its hillside position over the city.
Yashica Mat 124 G & Fujifilm Acros 100.
Taken on 19 October 2018
Steel City Snapper photography 