Nothing much to say about my photos today – some more shots of the road viaduct that I’ve posted other pictures of recently.
I’ve mostly been glued to CNN for this week for obvious reasons and today has been a good day. I don’t know exactly what the future will bring, but it feels like a corner has been turned. For me, and I think for many, it is a happy day.
Plus it was foggy this morning, and I got to go out and make photos in it. Bonus!
A couple more frames made with the Lipca Rollop II. These are most likley the last photographs from this particular camera that I will publish here now that I no longer own it. It’s a nice camera should you ever come across one in good working order.
Lipca Rollop II & Fomapan 100. Adox Adonal 1+50 9mins @ 21°.
To the south-east of Sheffield, one of the main routes into and out of the city centre is the A57 road. For a long time, the route took it through a number of suburbs. As car ownership increased, so did conjestion, and eventually the route was altered to create a bypass. As the road gets closer to the edge of the city it needs to cross the Rother Valley. This requires it to span not only the River Rother itself, but also two railway lines and the marshy floodplain itself. To do this a viaduct was constructed.
The viaduct stands around a mile from where I live and the floodplain to the east of the river is accessible to walkers (and also a herd of cows that graze there). Both these shots were taken early one morning as I tested the makeshift repair I’d to the Lipca Rollop II TLR (more about that here and here). Spoiler alert – the repair was a bust and I still ended up with the same light leak on some frames (it’s feintly visible in the middle of the shot above). I’ve now moved the camera on to someone else who may hopefully be able to either repair the problem properly, or just live with the fault – it still makes very nice photographs if you work around the issue.
These photos were made on one of my remaining rolls of bad-batch Fomapan 100. As I was testing the camera I wasn’t too concerened about the spotting issues on the film and there are way too many of them for me to bother to attempt to remove in Lightroom or Photoshop. They’re only apparent when the images are viewed large in any case. I think I’m down to a couple of rolls of this batch of film now, so I’ll likely save them for other camera tests or maybe the Holga – that one will eat up defective film for breakfast! 🙂
This also marked my first foray into a different developer. I’ve used Ilfotec DD-X since I started home-developing B&W film when the Covid-19 lockdown began in the spring. DD-X is very nice (if a little expensive) and I will continue to use it. I dod want a cackup though, so I bought a small 100ml bottle of Adox Adonal (Rodinal in all but name). This roll was my first time using it. I think the results are pretty nice. I think I prefer the DD-X, but the Adonal still looks great, is much cheaper, and will be usefull should I attempt stand developing at some point. It should also last forever without going bad.
Lipca Rollop II & Fomapan 100. Adox Adonal 1+50 9mins @ 21°.
As with yesterday’s post of 35mm photos of Emley Moor, today here are a couple of 35mm shots of Denby Dale (or, more specifcally, the viaduct) taken on the same visit as the medium format pictures I posted here.
Of the two pictures, the first one (above) is my definite favourite. I also have a medium format version of the same scene but, despite it’s increased resolution and detail, I prefer the more gritty look of the 35mm image. It would perhaps have been nice to have a train crossing the bridge, but my time was limited and I didn’t know the running schedule.
The second shot is another variant of one of the medium format pictures I made (which can be seen in the linked post above), but taken from a vantage point a little further up the road.
On the edge of the village* where I live there is a farm. It’s located on a tight bend in the road, but the narrow verge is always well-tended, and through the gate and gaps in the hedge, you can often see ducks, geese and chickens milling around. The farm also sells a range of produce, and signs such as the one in my photograph are affixed to this tree and at other places. Once upon a time the farm probably backed out onto an undisturbed river floodplain, but this was taken over by a railway marshalling yard when the local coal mine was still in production (it’s been closed nearly 35 years now), and in more recent times now carries the A57 bypass via a viaduct across the valley, which is what can be seen in the middle part of the picture, just behind and above the hedge. Despite all this, there’s still a peaceful air around the farm, especially when the rush-hour traffic has subsided.
*I use the term “village” in its loosest sense – it’s actually just a suburb of Sheffield, but like many satellite settlements that have been absorbed into the wider metropolitan mass, it’s still known as “the village” be local people.
Steel City Snapper photography 