I knew I had to get a photo of these pigeons as soon as I saw them. If I’ve counted right, there are one-hundred-and-eighteen of them perched on the overhead cables (including the two in flight). Normally when I see something like this they’ll all fly away before I get chance to take the picture, but on this occasion I was blessed with a flock tolerant of my presence. I guess city pigeons are generally quite accepting of people though, and they were pretty much out of reach up there on the wires anyway. I suspect that, had I dropped some fod on the floor, the whole lot of them would have descended!
The tram has a slight blur as I wanted to maximise my depth of field, so had to use a slower shutter speed (I think it was 1/125s, but it might have been 1/60s.
I’ve just eaten my tea not too long back. Tea in this case, for those unfamiliar with the term outside the drink, is vernacular for evening meal, or dinner, if you like. I think it’s a largely working class use of the word, but it’s what I grew up with and what I continue to use. I don’t think I’ve ever used the term dinner. To confuse matters further, dinner is what I call the midday meal – lunch to posher folks than I – again a standard working-class thing I think (although I do use lunch sometimes too).
Anyway, I had fish for tea today, and got a couple of pieces out from the freezer this morning. Normally I would only have a single fillet, but these felt somewhat small, so I got out two of them.
I should have just gotten one.
While not huge, there was definitely more fish there than I needed (although not too much to eat!). Anyway, I made some batter and shallow fried them and had them with some mushy peas. Very tasty they were too.
Anyway, on to today’s photo – another frame from the roll of Ortho Plus. This one took a bit of post-processing to get it looking how I wanted as it looked very dark and drab on the initial scan. I think the editing has introduced some noise, and it looks almost digital if you zoom right in. It looks better than it did though.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Ortho Plus 80 . Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5 mins @ 20°.
On my wander through the woods at Clumber Park the other week I came across this log frame besde the path. I’m not quite sure what it is, but suspect it’s likely some form of nature conservation set up. The inside of the frame was filled with logs, many of which were showing signs of decay and growths of fungus and the like, so I think it could be to provide a habitat for small mammals and invertebrates. I could be wildly off the mark with this though – my knowledge of conservation and woodland management is not at an expert level I’m afraid.
It’s another frame from the roll of Ortho Plus I spoke about a couple of days ago, but in this case the sun was managing to peek through the cloud cover and provide a bit more light and, as a result, it’s not got the dour, dark look of some of the other pictures.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Ortho Plus 80 . Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5 mins @ 20°.
I bought a roll of Ilford Ortho Plus film, oh, well over a year ago and it’s been sat in the fridge ever since. Until about four weeks ago that is, when I loaded it for an abortive trip where I forgot a vital piece of equipment. So, after we’d had all thge renovations and decorating done, I managed to get a day to go out and make some photographs. As is my luck, the weather was mostly less than ideal on the day – the dreary slab of overcast that tends to sap my enthusiasm. But it was a chance to go out, so I took it.
I decided to head out to Clumber Park, a National Trust property about 15 miles away, near the town of Worksop. It’s a place I’ve been many times, and somewhere I like to go to see some autumn colour. Alas though, I think I pretty much missed the best of the colour this year – or at least the days that would have highlighted it at it’s best. I packed the Yashicamat along with a somewhat ambitious five rolls of film (including the already loaded Ortho Plus). Unlike the previous time I’d taken out the Yashicamat with this roll of film loaded, this time I took my tripod!
I wandered around the park for a few hours, eventually shooting the full roll of Ortho Plus and also a roll of HP5+ before heading home. I developed Ortho Plus the following day (the HP5+ roll is still sat waiting for me to get around to it) and noticed some very dense looking negatives. I’m not sure if this is normal or, perhaps more likely, due to the fact that my Massive Dev Chart app managed to reset part way through the development meaning I had to quickly try and get back on track on the fly. While I think I was still pretty close with the timings, I was probably at least 10-15 seconds out. Maybe this impacted the process.
I scanned the roll and was pretty disappointed with the results. Not only were the results dark and drab looking, there also seemed to be quite a lot of veil flare on a number of the frames. This might be because, despite remembering the tripod, I still forgot the lens hood for the camera. I’ve noticed similar flaring from the Yashicamat on other occasions, although it’s not consistent and I often get full rolls where it doesn’t appear at all (whether the lens hood is attached or not).
The other reason for my disappointment probably stems from my ignorance of using orthochromatic film. I think I got it muddled up and thought the trees in the shots would look quite lively. In actual fact, the film doesn’t register reds and other warm tones, reducing them to dark grays and blacks instead. This meant that, while the autumn colour wasn’t at its best, there was still enough of it present to make my photos look pretty sombre.
All-in-all it wasn’t what I’d hoped for but, as I say, it’s my ignorance at fault here. I’ll maybe try a roll of the film again at some point, I just don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to do so.
Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford Ortho Plus 80 . Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10.5 mins @ 20°.
I thought I’d take the time today to post the picture I’ve entered for the “magical” theme in the photo contest I’m taking part in. It fits the theme, certainly, although in a rather literal way, but it’s probably not the picture I’d have hoped to get under different circumstances. As I said yesterday, I was up against the ticking clock with the deadline for entries on the 30 November. As I’ve not been in any sort of mood for doing any photography over the past two weeks, it was very much a last minute dash to get something in before closing.
I had though about going inside the shop and perhaps picking up some props to photograph at home as a still-life or something, but they were closed yesterday (it’s normally opened on Saturdays I believe, but there was a sign on the door apologising because they were having some new flooring fitted). So my only option was a shot of the shop from the outside. The weather was very gloomy due to the snowy and stormy conditions we’ve been having, so the light wasn’t great, but on the plus side, the billboard on the side of the shop fitted the theme perfectly too, so that little bit of synchronicity was welcomed.
All-in-all I could have done better in different circumstances, but it is what it is and certainly better than dropping out of the contest. I still want to win it for Stan! 🙂
An iconic symbol of traditional British seaside resorts, the chair in this photo was nowhere near a beach – it was for sale on a stall with a wide array of memorabilia and brik-a-brak.
I like to look at stalls and shops selling this sort of stuff. Occasionally they’ll have something I’m interested in purchasing (camera gear probably), but they are also a treasure trove of nostalgia and unknown stories. Wher did this deckchair come from for instance? Was it taken from a seaside beach at some point, or was it purposely bought for someone’s garden, or perhaps to take on days out so the cost and hassle of hiring a chair might be avoided? Similarly the Bahamas calendar hung up beside it? Who bought it? When did they travel there? How did it end up on this stall? (although I fear I know the answer in most cases…).
Often you will find children’s toys, whether abandoned as they grow out of them, or perhaps lost, like something from a Toy Story movie. Sometimes things that you might expect no-one would buy, such as the plastic radiotherapy mask that was also on this stall – whoever that belonged to, I hope they discarded it as part of a full recovery.
When I was a child I would watch Bagpuss on TV. For those unfamiliar with the show, it was a children’s programme about an antique shop owned by a girl named Emily. Within the shop were a number of children’s toys including stuffed animals, dolls, carved wooden bookends, a “marvellous, mechanical, mouse organ” and the eponymous Bagpuss himself, a pink and white saggy old cloth cat. In each episode, Emily would bring a lost item to the shop and the inhabitants would awaken (“When Bagpuss wakes up, all his friends wake up”!) and they would examine the item, someone would tell the charming tale of it’s history, and it would be mended (by the mice) and placed back in the shop window so that it’s owner might find it again. It was made by a British animation studion called Smallfilms who made a number of similarly nostalgic and charming shows. The creators of the shows were Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, both of whom are sadly no longer with us, but whom countless grown-up children carry a small fond part of in their memories.
Stalls such of this always remind me of Bagpuss a little.
A saggy cloth cat Brings back memories of youth Now I’m saggy too
Yashicamat 124G & Shaghai GP3. Lab developed in Xtol.
This is one of those photos that I have high hopes for when I first see the negative but which, on closer examination, is let down by some technical problem. In this case the man in the mirror is slightly out of focus. Now there’s a good reason for this – the photo wasn’t a posed portrait, it was a candid shot which involved me crouching down to get the correct angle on the mirror and then capturing someone’s refelction as they walked past. People would be in the mirror for a fraction of a second, so no time to nail the focus and I just went with what looked right in the brief moments that someone passed through the frame.
I still like the picture a lot, but wish I’d have nailed the focus better. The pose is bang on though and I don’t think I could have gotten anything better.
Man in a mirror Seeing a reflection of A photographer
Yashicamat 124G & Shaghai GP3. Lab developed in Xtol.
The three people in today’s photos caught my eye as I wandered around the collection of classic vehicles at the Smallwood Steam Rally last week. It was the tall stovepipe hats that attracted my attention initially as they could be seen from a couple of rows of cars away.
When I reached them they had all sat down for a breather beside a large trailer / RV. Rather than attempt a candid shot, I asked if they would allow me to make a portrait, to which they kindly agreed. I think the Yashicamat helped in this – TLRs are quite the attention grabbers in a way that a regular SLR or rangefinder probably wouldn’t be.
The photo is on Shanghai GP3, but shot at 200asa and push-processed. One of the other people at the rally with us that day had said it was his favourite film shot this way, and the results are pretty nice. Almost with a Fuji Acros look to them.
It was difficult to find developing times to push the film (at least with the developers I had to hand). While I found some suggested times, there was some variance depending upon where I looked. The other option would have been to use the standard 1.5x normal developing time for pushing a single stop. In the end I decided to take them to my local lab rather than risk messing things up – I thought I might have some nice pictures on the roll, plus it had been a 3-hour round trip to get to the rally, and I didn’t want to lose the photos.
The negs were a little on the thin side, but scanned really nicely.
Once upon a time Engineers would wear these hats When building marvels
Yashicamat 124G & Shaghai GP3. Lab developed in Xtol.
Usually, when I go downstairs, I’m greeted by our cat. He’s either on the back garden when I open the blinds, or is waiting inside the utility room. He’s almost always awake and ready for his breakfast. This morning he wasn’t there when I opened the blinds, but as it had been raining I wasn’t surprised, and when I opened the door into the utility room he was laid in his bed, waking at the sound of my entry. At first I wondered about this slightly unusual occurence, but then my eyes alighted on a stain on the edge of his bed and, swiftly after, some blood on his forepaw and a lot of blood around his nose and mouth.
Bending down to get a closer look I could see he’s suffered some sort of injury. My first though was that he’d been in a fight with another cat, or perhaps a bigger animal. Whatever the case, I was alarmed and quickly grabbed my phone to ring the vet’s out-of-hours service. I was able to get an appointment for him to be seen at 10am. While his face, particularly his lower lip, looked to be a mess, he was walking around and not limping. He was very subdued though and showed no interest in being fed.
He was quite vocal in his cat-carrier during the car ride to the vets, which in a way was a relief. He never likes trips in the car like this and the fact he was making is displeasure known was much better than silence. After arriving at the vets – due to Covid restrictions – we had to wait outside and explain to a member of staff what the problem was. Someone then came and collected him from us and told us to wait and that they would call on my wife’s mobile phone when the vet had assessed his condition. After a 15-minute wait, we got the call. The vet was under the belief that he had been struck by a car as he had some damage to his claws and pads which is a common injury in such events. He looked to have taken a knock to his head which raised concern about injuries to his bones -perhaps a fractured jaw – but the vet was confident that this wasn’t the case. He’d not shown too much distress or signs of extreme discomfort when being examined and his reactions, alertness, and vitals were all good. He had a nasty graze on his cheek and lower lip and a bruised tongue however.
The vet advised a dose of pain relief and anti-inflamatory, along with further liquid pain medication for us to administer from the next day – although we were to watch and make sure he was eating and drinking. Because of the discomfort with his tongue and mouth, there is a chance he may need to go back to the vets to be tube-fed is he can’t manage to eat and drink himself. While I’ve not seen him eat anything yet (he’s been asleep most of the day) he did have a decent drink of water from his bowl earlier, which was good to see.
We’ve decided to restrict him to the house this evening (and dug his old litter tray from the garage!) so that we know he’s safe overnight. Fingers crossed he will be on the mend soon. It’s at times like these when you realise just how much these little friends weedle their way into your life and heart.
Not much of a photography post today I suppose, but it is what it is.
Cats can be worries Attempting to use nine lives In their adventures
The final three photos I made during my walk around Tideswell Dale, Miller’s Dale, Monk’s Dale and then across the meadows back to Tideswell itself. The final three photos from the Yashica Mat at least – I also shot a few more frames with the OM-2n which had spent most of the day tucked in my backpack.
The skies were beginning to get more threatening by this stage and veils of rain could be seen falling to the south and west. Luckily though, I managed to avoid all the showers. Unluckily, the chip shop where I thought I might treat myself to a well-deserved lunch, was closed. 😦
I wanted some chips But instead had to go for A tuna sandwich
Steel City Snapper photography 