Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
There will be several more pictures of Blackpool’s famed tower to come over the next few days. You have been warned! 🙂
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
Taken 1 July 2023.
Another Ekatar shot with slightly odd colours. There’s something off with the purples and greens in the shadows and midtones and, for some reason, the foreground road and pavement looks almost monochrome. It’s a shame as I like Ektar as a film and it normally scans just fine, but this roll has taken much more effort to get looking closer to normal.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
Taken 1 July 2023.
Blackpool North Pier marked the spot where my roll of black and white film ran out (pictures still to come!), and where I switched to a roll of Kodak Ektar. The three pictures here show stuff on the pier, plus one shot of the view north from the pier. I cropped the third shot as there was quite a lot of uninteresting sky in the image and I felt it looked better without.
The colours are still a little off in these frames, but not too bad, I don’t think.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
Taken 1 July 2023.
If you walk along Blackpool promenade in front of Blackpool Tower, you will come across the Comedy Carpet. This is a section of the floor covering 1880 square meters that is packed with jokes, routines, and catchphrases from 850 comedians and writers. You cand easily spend a good hour reading through it all, hopefully letting out a few good laughs while you do.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
Taken 1 July 2023.
In a break from tradition, I’m jumping right to a photo I only uploaded to Flickr today, rather than slowly working through them in a mostly chronological order – I have a whole bunch of other pictures that pre-date this shot (and this roll), but images from those sets will come later.
I jumped to this shot mostly because I didn’t want to write a long post, and this image seems to suit a shorter form blog entry (although I’m already writing more than I often do, so go figure!).
The photo was taken during a recent trip to Blackpool which I took with my wife (although it’s already two months ago!). There was an onshore breeze blowing on this day which, when it hit the sea-wall along the promenade, created an updraft that these gulls were taking advantage of. They were effectvely hovering and it made for a nice shot.
There is something a little funky about the colours in this roll of Ektar. I’m not sure if it was an older expired roll that I’ve not looked after well, or if I maybe underexposed it or something but, whatever the case, the colours looked odd when I put the negatives through Negative Lab Pro. I even went back and re-scanned an older negative to see if I’d somehow messed up my scanner settings, but that one was fine. As a result I’ve had to faff around with the colours in the pictures more than normal, so if any look a little weird, that’s my excuse.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
Taken 1 July 2023.
The past three weeks have been pretty crazy. Even outside of the illness, I’ve been incredibly busy trying to sort a bunch of things out both at home and at work. I’ve had little to no chance to do any photography and my blog posts have frequently been, let’s say, concise.
I think that situation is likely to continue into next week at least, although I really do hope for a bit of calm and a chance to catch my breath before long.
So please exuse any lacklustre efforts I make. I don’t plan on missing any days, but there may be a few posts where there’s little to see other than a photograph.
Here’s another picture from the University of Leeds. I like this one a lot for some reason.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 25 March 2023.
I think I’m finally shrugging off the worst of the throat infection. I’ve actually managed to eat normal food today without the feeling it wouldn’t fit down my throat, which was very nice. I’m definitely not back to 100%, and swallowing is still slightly iffy, but at least I can manage to get a decent amount of sustenance into my body. The antibiotics are still making me feel vaguelly nauseous all the time though, and I get the odd headache and sudden horrendous coughing fits through the day, which I’ll be glad to see the back of.
I felt well enough to return to work and impressed my colleagues with my new (and temporary) deep, gravelly voice.
I was going to try to write something about reflecting on my experience to provide a link to the photo today, but coudn’t think of anything that really worked. So the picture stands alone.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 25 March 2023.
I thought the juxtoposition between the ages and styles of these two buildings made for a good picture. The older chapel has the detail and the history, and the tower provides a sence of modernity and scale. I think they work well together.
The throat infection continues to improve, although not as fast as I’d like. I’m managing to consume more solid foodstuffs now, but there are still limits – an attempt at some bread was not favourable – and I have a constant feeling of nausea and fatigue, the former probably a side-effect of the antibiotics, the latter because I’be been eating well under a thousand calories for the past few days now. Hoperfully the next day or two will provide a marked improvement.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 25 March 2023.
Another University of Leeds building today, the one on the left is the Office of Wellbeing, Safety & Health.
I’ve noticed that I have a bit of a trend of using tree branches to fill in empty parts of photographs where I can. I like the effect it gives and, while the sky isn’t uninteresting in this picture, it would help to mask it if it were.
Day 5 of the throat infection and I think I’m feeling a bit better today. Not well – I still feel pretty ill – but not as bad as I did yesterday (and certainly much better than I felt on Thursday or Friday when I was more or less incapacitated). Hopefully I will start to feel noticeably better in the next day of two. Maybe I’ll even be able to swallow food properly again and perhaps eat something solid with enough calories to sustain me. As of today I’ve lost half-a-stone in weight since this began last week!
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 25 March 2023.
Part of Leeds University campus, this building is named after botanist Irene Manton who served as Professor of Botany at the university between 1946 and 1969. It was built in 1969, the final year of her posting. Like much of the architecture in the area it is in a brutalist style and very striking. I was only in the area for a short time so didn’t really explored the place in any depth, but I don’t doubt that there are many, many photographic opportunities present shoud you cast your eye about the place.
As the Yashicamat 124G is a TLR camera, it was a simple thing to place it at ground level to get a more imposing perspective of the viewpoint.
In other matters, I’m now in day four of my throat infection and, while it’s still pretty unpleasant, it does feel like I’m feeling perhaps just a little better today. Eating is still very difficult as my throat is quite constricted and it was quite a surprise to get weighed this morning and discover I’ve lost six pounds since Tuesday. I was attempting to lose weight anyway, so this is not a bad side-effect, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend the method to anyone. I’m hoping I might feel well enough to go and take some photos on Monday (tomorrow is probably pushing it), assuming the weather is ok. We shall see.
Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 25 March 2023.
Steel City Snapper photography 