Steel City Snapper photography
35mm, medium format and large format film photography (with the odd bit of digital every now and then…)
I’d intended to post more today but my evening has been unexpectedly swallowed up by a magical lawnmower adventure*. Maybe I’ll get to say more about that tomorrow, assuming I’m given the chance.
Here’s a random picture of a tree in some snow, just so I don’t miss a day on the blog. 🙂
* Neither magical nor adventurous.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
A bit cheeky this picture (or the blog post, at least) in that it’s exactly the same snowy country lane that I posted a picture of yesterday, albeit taken from slightly further down the hill. The picture I posted yesterday was taken somewhere around the telephone post with all the ivy. I felt it was worth posting this one too as, well, I like it and, well, I forgot to add it to yesterday’s post because I was very tired at the time. 🙂
The farm at centre left is the one where I was chased off by the sheepdog.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
Another very quick post as I’ve been out all day and only just gotten home. It was a great day, but I’m cream-crackered (as they sometimes say around these parts).
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
I had to go out straight after work to take a new lawnmower to my dad’s and have only just gotten back. I need a shower, a drinks and some end-of-week R&R, so this is a short post. 🙂
So here’re some power lines in the snow.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
Another snowy farm shot, though this wasn’t the one where I was chased off by the dog. 🙂
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
There’s a bit of a background story to today’s picture.
I took a number of photographs of this farm, some of which I’ll post here in the coming days. A public right of way provides access past the buildings and then on to the Moss Valley or to Plumbley, depending on the direction you choose. After taking a few photos of snow covered siloes, I decided to follow the farm road towards the valley – I’ve walked it before and know that there is an old wooden building, a shed-like structure, which might make for a nice picture.
As I headed there I noticed that, to my right, I could see into the farmyard, complete with a stable containing cows and a bunch of rustic farm buildings with snow-capped roofs. This seemed the perfect place to make a photograph, so I unpacked the Bronica from my bag, set up the tripod, and framed my shot. As I was doing this, I noticed a sheepdog – a border collie – peering out from a gate a little further down the path. It sat and looked at me but didn’t seem threatening so I continued what I was doing. Gradually though, the dog started to walk slowly towards me. It wasn’t barking, or looking in any way troublesome, so I finished what I was doing and started to pack stuff away.
Then, as the dog got within about ten feet of me it began to growl, a low rumble of noise from deep in it’s throat. And I became concerned. The dog, which until now had looked like a friendly sheepdog, the type you see in children’s books, now made apparent the fact that it had teeth, and that maybe it didn’t really appreciate what I was doing. I’ve been bitten by dogs a couple of times in my life and, while both occasions were a long time ago, I didn’t fancy a reminder of the experience, so I started to carefully move away, muttering friendly words to the animal while wondering if I would be able to defend myself with my tripod should it decide I was fair game.
After a very long couple of minutes of careful sidling away while the dog kept pace with me (it letting out the occasional sharp-sounding yap) I reached the track that leads to Plumbley and, to my great relief, the dog didn’t pursue any further. After putting a good fifty yards between us, I finally felt able to relax and make my way to safety.
Whether the dog would have made good on it’s threatening activity, I don’t know. While it was a bit of a scary experience, the dog was undoubtedly doing it’s job – protecting the farm and livestock from people with tripods and cameras in this case! I think I’ll avoid taking any pictures of this farm in future though. 🙂
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
Although it was a cold day when I made these photographs in the snow, it was also very bright. And I was wearing dark clothes. This had two detrimental effects.
The first was the sheer amount of light reflected back off the snow. As a wearer of spectacles, I don’t tend to have the luxury of just popping on a pair of sunglasses when it’s bright. I don’t have a pair for my prescription, not do I have any clip-ons (although those just tend to be an annoyance). But without sunglasses, the light bouncing back into my eyes from the floor was verging on painful. I’ve never suffered from snow blindness before, but now know what it must feel like in its onset. Even with my eyes shut the blankness of my eyelids was a glowing red.
The second thing was that it didn’t take me long to become pretty hot and uncomfortable. The light absorbancy of my dark trousers and jacket soon raised my temperature and then this was booster even further by the physical effort of walking through snow (or trying my best to keep balanced on the icy areas). It didn’t take long until I was sweating profusely!
Despite these drawbacks it was a beautiful day to be out. We don’t get snow all that often, so it’s good to take advantage of it when I can.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
One thing I was particularly pleased about with this roll of snowy scenes was that I managed to expose the majority of them well. Snow can often blow out or be rendered an unattractive grey if not given the correct exposure and recommended guidance if to use exposure compensation to over-expose if you’re using a reflective meter, such as the one built into many cameras.
My Bronica doen’t have a meter though (even the one in my metered prism seems to have carked it!), so I rely on a handheld meter instead, and my preferred technique is to use incident readings – the light falling onto the subject, rather than the light reflecting off it. This has a benefit of giving an accurate reading in these sorts of scenes (well, most of the time anyway). I think a couple of my shots were not metered as well as the others, but even those were retrievable in post processing.
The two below look pretty good though.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
There will be a number of snowy photographs to come over the next few days – the results of a brief spell of wintery weather where I actually got chance to go out and take advantage of it before it went away. Most of the shots were taken in a rural setting, but this one – in a brief section of my walk that went through a suburban area – turned out particularly nicely, I think.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 11 March 2023.
The lychgate at All Saint’s church, Hooton Pagnell.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Delta 100. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 10 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Taken 5 February 2023.
Steel City Snapper photography 