Henry and his piano

January 18, 2024 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

I took a few pictures of this guy busking beside York Minster. To quote his bio that can be seen in the photo:

“Hello 🙂

My name is Henry. Me and my piano have been travelling around the U.K. for the past few years in my van and busking.

This piano was going to be taken as rubbish before I rescued it and gave it a new life!

I aim to create quiet moments for people to reflect and connect during these strange times.

Hope you enjoy my original compositions.

Thanks for listening ❤”

He seems to get around a bit and has pages on Facebook, Instagram, and Bandcamp.

I have no affiliation with Henry, but I did chuck a couple of quid in his case before I took these photos. 🙂

Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+ @800asa. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°

Taken on 16 December 2023

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Bowler hats and ghosts

January 16, 2024 fishyfisharcade3 Comments

My wife and I visited York in December to see the Christmas markets. As always tends to be the case at these things, the wares on offer were not cheap! That didn’t put us off buying some treats, and we came away with selections of cheeses and biscuits and other bits and pieces. It also seems set in law that there must be a stall selling bratwurst cooked over a charcoal fire at all these markets. I had a concoction of bratwurst, chips, and various toppings for my lunch, but there was some sort of jam stuff on there too which wasn’t really to my taste and I wish I’d just had a sausage in a bun instead.

Wandering round York city centre I took some pictures where I could with my Yashicamat 124G (and a few with my Olympus XA-3 which was tucked in my jacket pocket). It was pretty busy and trying to get pictures without someone walking into frame while I set up the shot or (more annoyingly) just as I pressed the shutter, was difficult.

The two shots here were taken at The Shambles, York’s famous medieval shopping street. This quaint street with it’s hundreds-of-year-old buildings is busy at the best of times as a tourist trap, but is made even busier by the fact of having a Harry Potter shop at one end, and The York Ghost Merchants at the other.

It’s the latter shop from which the two bowler-hatted gentlemen featured in today’s pictures were from. There was a queue of at least fifty people waiting to go into the shop to acquire their very own unique ghost (including a lot of overseas tourists. These spooky figurines are clearly popular!), so these people (of which there were at least four) were acting as crowd-control in the very narrow and very busy street.

The first shot was taken from close to minimum focus distance with me backed right up against the window of a baker’s shop. The second doesn’t look too busy, but you’ll notice that it’s cropped from the Yashica’s usual square format. This is because I has perhaps a quarter of a second to photograph the guy outside the shop before the crowds closed in again. There are people entering and exiting frame at the left and right of the full frame version.

Yashicamat 124G & Ilford HP5+ @800asa. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10mins @ 20°

Taken on 16 December 2023

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Tunnel vision

October 10, 2017 fishyfisharcade5 Comments

I wonder how many times that title has been used for similar posts?

An older shot, from a trip to York back in the summer. I think I might’ve already posted a similar shot, taken at the same location and time, but that one was in portrait format, so this is a new one.

Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford HP5+.

Taken on 10 June 2017

35mm · Film photography · Photography

So much for at least one update a week!

July 10, 2017 fishyfisharcade2 Comments

Oh well, the sky hasn’t fallen down as yet, so I guess my self-imposed “at least one post a week” wasn’t the be all and end all (after all!).

Anyway, I’ve still got quite a mountain of pictures to post – even though, until the weekend, I’d had a break of a couple of weeks without taking a single photograph – so here’re a few more. These were all taken during the day-trip to York that I’ve already posted about, but were on a second roll of film that I didn’t finish on the day. There’s no particular theme, just a selection of things I though might make a decent picture.

These were all shot with my Olympus OM-1 on Ilford HP5+. I used the F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 for some, and a Hoya 25-42mm wide-angle zoom for the others. I got both lenses with the camera but, despite its wide-angle versatility, I’m not keen on the Hoya – it’s very bulky and heavy and the image quality isn’t a patch on the F.Zuiko. I’ve flagged the Hoya shots with a (H).

#1 – This was taken on my way back to the town centre after the morning’s visit to the National Railway Museum. I hung around at the edge of the street to get someone reflected in the puddle. I took two shots, but this is the best.

#2 – Despite their poorer image quality, I still like a few of the Hoya shots, including this one (H).

#3 – York Minster at a jaunty angle (H).

#4 – Another one of the Hoya shots I really like (H).

#5 -The Minster again (H).

#6 – And again. I like the juxtaposition of the old Roman column against the more modern cathedral here. I couldn’t have taken this without the wide-angle (H).

#7 – A couple of bicycles (H).

#8 -Another street scene (H).

#9 -And another (H).

#10 – York’s famous medieval shopping street. the Shambles, some of the buildings here date back to the 14th century. It gets its name because it used to be the home of a large number of butchers’ shops (shambles being an old term for open-air butchers and slaughterhouses.

#11 -And York’s famous tea-room, Betty’s (there’s another branch in Harrogate, which I think is the original). There was a sizeable queue outside each time I passed by.

#12 -Finger-puppets for sale on The Shambles.

#13 -And more modern digital “bobble head” clocks.

#14 -And gin (though this wasn’t on The Shambles).

#15 -There was a sizeable international food fair taking place on the day, with loads of stalls, but the only one I photographed was this sausage stand (which might be there all the time anyway for all I know).

#16 -The old BT piper logo was still in evidence on these payphones.

#17 – This is my favourite shot of the bunch. I spotted this trout’s expression on a fish monger’s stall.

#18 – Another bicycle. The city being relatively flat, bicycles appear to be a popular form of transport in York.

#19 – Not sure if these stones mark actual graves any more.

#20 – And the final shot of this batch, a small alleyway just off Stonegate. And another of the shots I quite like.

It’s a shame the weather wasn’t better on the day – there are untold numbers of things to photograph in York, and the place is well worth the visit.

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Oddshots #3

June 23, 2017July 24, 2017 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

Another of my occasional quickie posts featuring just a single shot. This time taken in York’s National Railway Museum with my Olympus OM-1, F Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford HP5+. The subject is a selection of glassware from the Great Eastern Railway Company which was housed in an exhibition case in the Flying Scotsman area of the museum. It was very dimly lit in there and so a wide aperture and slower shutter speed were required (1/30s handheld) to get a sufficient exposure. I’ve cropped the photo slightly as there was a distracting bit of silverware encroaching in from the right of the frame that I didn’t like.

The shallow depth of field lends it a bit of an abstract air and it’s a photo I like (I am a sucker for these sorts of pictures though).

35mm · Film photography · Photography

A rainy day in York

June 16, 2017June 16, 2017 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

The British summer behaved as expected last weekend, when my wife, her sister and I went on a trip to York, delivering a day of rain and muggy humid conditions. The trip came about because I fancied a photography outing, but didn’t want to leave my wife out if I went somewhere nice, but I similarly didn’t want to feel guilty or limited in what I could do by dragging her around while I took photos, so I suggested she bring her sister so that they could do the shopping thing, while I went off to do my stuff.

Anyway, the trip from Sheffield to York takes about an hour, so it’s nothing too onerous to undertake, but the weather definitely put a (literal) dampener on things and so, while the ladies went around the shops, I was forced to find some indoor location myself, and decided upon the National Railway Museum. The museum is worth a visit (even if you’re not all that interested in railways), and I’ve been a number of times in my life, both as a child, and then as an adult, with our own kids. The major downside in the museum, photographically speaking, is that it’s not incredibly well-lit – especially in the hall where the royal trains are housed – and while this isn’t a hindrance to modern digital cameras, where the ISO can be changed on the fly to account for dim light, it’s something of a nuisance for a tripodless film SLR, even with 400 ASA film loaded. So, while I took quite a few shots inside, there were many where I just had to let them go as I would’ve needed far too slow a shutter speed to be able to hand-hold the camera. Oh well.

The photos below were taken on the way to, and inside the museum. I have a bunch of other shots from the day in York (it did mostly stop raining in the afternoon, thankfully), but I’ll perhaps share those in a future post at some point – plus some of them are on a roll of film that hasn’t been finished as yet.

All the shots below were taken with my Olympus OM-1 with a F Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens fitted, on Ilford HP5+ film. It’s a lovely camera, and the lens is capable of some very sharp results (although I did lose a couple on the day thanks to camera shake in the low light).

#1 & #2 – While heading towards the museum, I spotted a tour group in the town centre. As the rain was coming down quite hard, they were all holding umbrellas, and I thought they were worth a shot or two. Sadly, just as I got the camera out of my bag and focussed, the group decided to move on, which is why there’s a degree of motion in the first shot. Still, I decided to follow them to their next point of interest and got a more satisfying second shot.

#3 – Just before you arrive at the National Railway Museum if coming from the town centre), the road goes beneath the norther edge of York railway station, and there is a separate tunnel for pedestrians and cyclists.

#4 – Just inside the museum, next to the reception area, is a steam engine of some sort, and I spotted this interesting-looking gauge on the dome.

#5 – In the Station Hall section of the museum I was very limited by the available light, and only took a couple of shots – one of which had awful camera shake. If the day had been brighter, then the skylights would have let in much more illumination, but not on this visit unfortunately, so this is the only shot I got in there. It’s a shame as there are lots of things of interest in here, both for the museum visitor and the photographer looking for interesting subjects.

#6 & #7 – The other main section of the museum is the Great Hall. This section houses most of the locomotives and has an operating turntable that is demonstrated at set times throughout the day. One of the first things you see in the Great Hall is a Japanese Bullet Train, and you are able to board the single carriage and watch films that are screened at either end of the compartment. I seem to be receiving a concerned or disapproving look from the lady in the second shot, although I didn’t really notice her at the time of taking the picture.

#8 – The main feature of the Great Hall is the turntable, and the first shot here shows a group of spectators waiting for a demonstration to begin.

#9, #10, #11 & 12 – show details of some of the locomotives arranged around the turntable, and these shots show a replica of Stephenson’s Rocket, the Mallard, the Evening Star (Britain’s last steam locomotive run by British Railways) and a Class 31 diesel locomotive.

#13 – Also in the Great Hall was this odd little locomotive off to one side of the larger specimens.

#14 – The final shot I’m including here is of a couple of diesel shunters that were stood outside the Station Hall.

I have to say that I’ve a new-found love for Ilford HP5+. My early attempts with it resulted in slightly flat, grey images that I wasn’t top happy with, but I’ve now realised that this was a fault of the photographer and not the film, and my recent shots have been far nicer in their tones.