More catching up…

Following on from yesterday’s post, here are the remaining black and white shots from Brodsworth Hall. Sorry it’s a bit of a hectic post!

I’ll start off with the classic car related photos and then move on to the others taken in the grounds.

#1 – A cheeky selfie.

#2 – Someone relaxing behind their car.

#3 – Model-T Ford hood.

#4 – A bit of bonnet bokeh.

#5 – A Browning M1919 atop the hood of a Willys Jeep.

#6 – I think this was inside the Model-T.

#7 – Under a Chevvy’s hood.

#8 – Morris 8 bonnet.

#9 – Bentley bonnet (not sure of the model).

#10 – Rolls Royce grille – again, not sure of the model.

#11 – A sunlit statue.

#12 – A large monkey puzzle tree in the gardens.

#13 – Another sunlit statue.

#14 – Pine cones.

#15 – A tree stump and footpath.

#16 & #17 – Brodsworth church.

#18 – And finally, a metal handrail on a bridge that went over a sunken garden area. I really like this shot.

Playing catch-up

My aim when I first started this blog was to write at least one post per week – something that I’ve been exceeding so far – with the intention of posting something about each roll of film I shot with occasional bits’n’bobs in between. And, so far, that’s been working out ok, but…

…I seem to have built up something of a backlog over the past few weeks, mostly as a result of shooting more than I normally do – a roll-and-a-half in York the other week, three rolls at Brodsworth Hall the weekend before last, and a roll and a half at a steam rally I attended this past weekend.

I’ve posted a bunch of shots from York and the classic car event at Brodsworth Hall already, but I still have a load of other shots from both outings I’d like to share, and in the interest of catching up, I think I need to do a bit of a photo-dump, so in this post and the next, I’ll show the remaining shots from Brodsworth Hall – these all on 35mm Ilford Pan F Plus 50 film and shot with my Nikon F70 with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF-D lens.

This post will show car portraits, the next some detail shots, abstracts, and general photos taken as I walked around the grounds at Brodsworth. Before I start though, I’d just like to comment on how happy I am with the Pan F Plus. It has a lovely character, really suited to nice sunny days, and the grain, while present, is pleasantly fine. It certainly suits shots of classic cars. Definitely a film I’ll shoot again.

Anyhoo, without further ado, here are some cars!

#1 – Vauxhall Cresta

#2 – Cadillac Eldorado. Lovely car, not sure about the registration plate though!

#3 – Ford Anglia

#4 – Ford Model-A pickup

#5 – Morris Oxford

#6 – Wolseley 15/50 (I think)

#7 – VW Beetle

#8 – Humber Sceptre Mk II

 

A little family outing

Back at the start of the month it was my wife’s birthday, and we decided we’d go for ice-creams at a place that opened recently at the edge of the town centre. Our eldest was away on the day in question, but we dragged the younger two along with us (much to their protestations at being separated from games consoles and PCs!).

Rather than go straight for the ice-creams, we decided to take a bit of a stroll first and the shots featured in this post are what I managed to grab while we walked.

#1 – This was taken close to where we parked the car. It was only after around five shots that I realised that the camera (a Nikon F70) was set to 100 ASA instead of DX mode. As I had a roll of 400 ASA Ilford HP5+ in the camera, I suspected a bunch of overexposed shots, but they all came out surprisingly well.

#2 – The film speed now correctly set, we wandered up to Weston Park Museum where we had some coffees and soft drinks, before looking around the museum. Even with the HP5+ it was still too dim for most shots, but I took quite a few family pics, and also one or two exhibit photos, such as these mugs…

#3 – …and this set of scales, part of an exhibit on how we used to live.

#4 – After the museum, we strolled through the park itself, where I took this shot of the nearby Sheffield University Arts Tower.

#5 – A little further on, and close to the old Henderson’s Relish factory, I took another shot of the brass bottle installations that have been recently added to the area. I took other shots of these and you can see a few in another recent post.

#6 – We were getting closer to the ice-cream parlour now, but I took another couple of shots before we got there. This one of the Somme Barracks building, which dates back to 1907…

#7 – …and this shot of some balconies on a much more recent apartment building.

#8 – The ice-creams were great and I polished off this tasty cherry sundae. Yum!

#9 – I took a final shot on the way back to the car of these curious hooks on the side of the Somme Barracks building.

And, finally, here are a couple of bonus pics from the end of the roll.

#10 – The only apple in the fruit bowl that still had a stalk attached.

#11 – And a fly outside on the double-glazing (shot with a macro lens).

Apart from the family photos, there were a number of other pretty decent shots from the walk, but I’ve not gotten around to uploading them as yet, so they may (or may not) pop up on here at some point in the future.

One thing is for sure though, this was the roll of film that showed me how great HP5+ is. My prior uses (on 35mm at least) had all been slightly dull and lacking in contrast and texture, but I think it’s safe to say (as I think I have before) that this was down to operator failure. 🙂

Oddshots #3

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).

More classic cars at Brodsworth Hall

This is a follow on post from the previous entry, this time containing the Kodak Portra 400 shots taken with my Yashica Mat 124 G. The film was slightly expired (although the date on it was 2016, so it’s still more-or-less fresh really).

Brodsworth Church is not actually part of the English Heritage site and, as far as I could ascertain from my brief walk around it, not accessible from it either. There were a couple of gates that I suppose I could have climbed over, but they were padlocked shut, so I didn’t take the chance.

A couple of close-ups of the Willys Jeeps that were on display:

And finally, a bunch of car shots, my favourite being the elderly couple looking at the Bond Bug, which I think has a quirky “Martin Parr” feel to it.

Classic cars at Brodsworth Hall

 

NOTE: Some of the images in this post are showing broken links. The images are still there if you click them, but they are not being displayed for some reason I can’t fathom.

It was a rare Fathers Day this year where I got to go out and do something rather than being stuck at home because my wife was at work and, as luck would have it, there was a classic car event taking place at Brodsworth Hall on the day in question.

Brodsworth Hall has the benefit of both being not too far away, and also being another English Heritage property that I can use my membership benefits to gain free access. It’s not a place I’ve visited before, but it looked very nice in the English Heritage booklet they sent me, and I’d been planning a visit even before I discovered the classic car show was on. The hall is one of the most complete remaining Victorian country houses in the country and has, apparently, remained largely unchanged since the 1860s. The day I visited was probably not the best on which to appreciate the house and gardens however due to the large numbers of visitors, not to mention dozens of vintage motor vehicles parked around the place.

I also managed to lose my way on the drive there. I’d assumed that there would be signposts on the A1 (there are certainly signs for the hall on the southbound carriageway as I saw them on the way back from York last week), but either they aren’t present or (more likely) I managed to miss them – probably because I was overtaking a lorry that obscured the sign or something. That’s usually the cause! Thankfully, despite taking the wrong exit, there were yellow AA signs showing the way to the “Classic Cars”, and after about ten minutes I reached the entrance to the grounds. Along with dozens of other cars… It must’ve been a good ten minutes from entering the grounds to getting parked thanks to the large number of visitors, and as the temperature was over 30 degrees, I was very glad to be in a modern, air-condition car rather than one of the attractive, but less well equipped vehicles on show.

I’d come the the Hall with a couple of cameras – my Yashica Mat 124 G, and my Nikon F70. The F70 contained a roll of Ilford Pan F Plus 50 that I’ve had for a few months but been waiting for a nice bright day to shoot it, and the Yashica had a roll of Ektar, plus a roll of (slightly expired) Portra 400 & some Fuji Acros on standby. In the end I shot the Ektar, the Portra and the Pan F 50, but didn’t use the Acros, and the shots in the post are of the the Ektar (I’ll add another post or two containing the Portra and Pan F shots at a later date).

I’m not going to add descriptions for the all the shots below (I’ll likely embarrass myself by getting the names of the cars wrong or something), but might add a few notes where I have something to say (note: I was going to say “something interesting to say”, but that might be pushing it. 🙂 ).

The first couple of shots are of some US Army vehicles from WW2 – a couple of Willys Jeeps to be precise, and I got a couple of shots with the Ektar (and some later shots with the Portra and Pan F 50 too).

The next couple are of a Morris Oxford. This is notable for me as my granddad had the same car and I rode in it on many occasions, including multiple trips to their caravan at Mablethorpe. His was green though. My memory of it from being a child was that it was some sort of big, finned, American-looking thing, but the reality differs a little. Still a nice car though, and one I have fond memories of.

The rest are shots of various other cars. The line of Morris’s and the two American machines are my favourites of these.

As a quick postscript to this post, I noticed that a few of the shots from the roll had a colour cast to them. I’m not sure why this is, but can only assume it down to the direction I was pointing the camera and the angle of the sun as all the shots pointing away from the sun seem to be ok. I didn’t have my lens hood with me, so maybe it was caused by flaring of some kind? I colour corrected the shots in question (maybe not perfectly!) to remove the worst of the cast.

 

A rainy day in York

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.

Sutton Scarsdale Hall

After spending the best part of £50 on an English Heritage membership earlier in the year, I’ve been trying to ensure that I get value for money on it by visiting various English Heritage sites – although, to date, I’ve only managed to visit three, and the one I’m writing about today was free to enter in any case.

Sutton Scarsdale Hall is in Derbyshire between Chesterfield and Bolsover (one of the other EH sites I’ve visited, Bolsover Castle, can be easily seen from Sutton Scarsdale Hall on the opposite side of the wide valley in which both are situated). It can be observed from the M1 motorway, and this is how the place first came to my attention  many years ago.

The current house dates back to the 18th Century, although it is now just a shell – after falling into disrepair it was asset stripped early in the 20th century and the interior up to, and including, the roof were all removed and sold on. It is freely accessible to visitors, although on this occasion, my first, the interior was off-limits due to maintenance work and the main structure is bordered by some somewhat ugly metal fences that prevent access.

I shot a full roll of Fomapan 200 with my Yashica Mat 124 G during the visit, and I’ll include most of the photos here (three of the shots I took were quite similar, so I’ll just use the best of those, and one was out of focus, so that is omitted too).

#1. Not the first shot of the roll, but I’ll place it first here as it’s the view from the car park and the first thing you see upon arrival.

#2 & #3. The ornately columned east wall of the structure.

#4. To the east, the valley slopes down into the wide valley and this shot was taken looking back towards the hall.

#5. Looking down into the valley, I spotted a couple of trees that made for a nice picture.

#6. I decided that I’d like another shot of the trees from a different angle. This involved climbing over a walled ditch (although someone had thoughtfully left a small wooden stepladder against the wall by which to climb up and down) and then walking down a track towards the trees. I actually took three variations of this shot (you can find the other two on my Flickr feed if you click one of the images in this post), but this is the one I really like.

#7. A shot of some poppies growing in the field adjacent to the track.

#8 & 9. The final two shots were taken in the churchyard of All Saints church in the nearby village of Heath. I’ve noticed the dollar-like symbols on gravestones before and wondered what they represented, so after taking this shot decided to look up the meaning. I discovered that, despite appearances, it’s not a $ symbol, but the letters I, H & S overlaid on one another and represent the first three letters of Jesus in Greek.

Changeable weather #2: The dry(ish) part.

Following on from the last post, here are the remainder of the shots taken on Saturday 27 May.

Shortly after I finished taking the photos in part one, and after walking up towards the West Street / Glossop Road area, the sun decided to re-emerge and bathed everything in bright, and pretty humid, conditions.

I’d intended to got to the pedestrianised area between the old Henderson’s Relish building and the new university buildings that stand in the spot where the old Jessop’s maternity hospital once stood. The area is in the process of gentrification at the hands of the university and is none the worse for it. As much as I like to see old architecture remaining in place, the new buildings either incorporate the old, listed, architecture, or are modern in a pleasing way that makes for interesting photographs. The university bioincubator facility has a little sculpture / garden thingy in between the buildings that was catching the light nicely too.

Rather than describe each shot, I’ll drop a selection below. As with the previous post, these are a mixture of Yashica Mat 124 G / Kodak Ektar & Olympus 35 RC / Kodak Colorplus photographs.

After this batch of shots, I started to walk back towards town down the back streets that run parallel to the main West Street drag. The remnants of the rain made for a nice reflection of a green doorway in the side of St. George’s lecture theatre (a deconsecrated church). I took two shots of this, one with the last frame of Ektar in the Yashica Mat, the other with the 35 RC.

The rest of the day’s shots were with the 35 RC, and I’m pretty happy with a number of them, especially the last two of the set below (the guy walking past the university building and the “No Entry” road marking).

The final shot below, is of the Q-Park car park building off Rockingham Street. Sheffield has its fair share of mid 20th century brutalist design car-parks, as do most towns and cities in the country, but recently seems to have acquired several of far more interesting design, such as this one.

Probably back to black and white stuff for the next post.

Changeable weather #1: The wet part.

I went up town last Saturday with the primary intention of taking some photographs (although I did have a secondary mission to pay the deposit for a restaurant booking that my wife had made). The weather was bright and warm, with some fluffs of cumulus (and some bigger wodges of cloud on the horizon) littering the sky. This was not to last.

Despite the conditions remaining the same during the twenty minutes of so it takes to drive into the town centre, literally as soon as I got out of the car, one of the aforementioned “wodges” of cloud was threatening the day with its massive dark bulk. The weather forecast app on my phone said not a word about rain though, so I fed the parking meter and set off to get some pictures.

The weather forecast app tells lies.

I got the following shot of an old cutlery works entrance.

Then I followed the street leading to the back. There I started to line up another shot when I felt a few spots of rain – not heavy at this stage, but enough to potentially get on the lens and spoil the picture (indeed, a single fat droplet fell right into the open top of the Yashica Mat leaving a wet splash on the focusing screen). The only available shelter was a small doorway that was presumably a point of egress from a fire escape or something. It was approximately 18 inched deep, so enough to provide adequate shelter, but with the downside of having a noticeable air of urine odour to put up with. Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and literally seconds after stepping into the doorway, the heavens opened and rain began to pour down as though someone had turned on am enormous  shower in the sky. The heavy rain lasted maybe five minutes, but then took another ten to abate completely, so I remained in my shelter for quite a while. During this time I took the following shot. It’s a little out of focus, but it’s not a great shot anyway, but is included here as a memory of the moment nonetheless.

The next shot was taken from right outside my sheltering spot )it is directly to the right of where I took this photo).

It’s interesting to see how the tarmac has worn from the streets in this area, revealing the original cobbled surface beneath. As well as the Yashica Mat, I also had my Olympus 35 RC with me, still loaded with the remaining frames of the roll of Kodak Colorplus I’d been shooting previously, and it was with this that I got the shot below (my sheltering place can be seen at the bottom left of the frame).

Further along this same street, I took the next shot of some graffiti. The shot is quite nice (if you like this sort of thing) with lots of texture and detail. The small red shape that can be seen at the bottom of the boarded-up window is actually a small door that has been affixed and is labeled “The home of Abdul the world’s smallest muslim”. Whether Abdul is a fictional character in the mind of the artist who added the doorway, or represents a real person (though presumably not small enough to fit through this small doorway!), I know not, but it adds some additional interest to the shot.

A couple more street shots from the same area are next, one from the Yashica Mat, the other form the 35 RC. There’s a slight John Bulmer-ish feel to the second shot in terms of the colour and conditions that I like.

It’s interesting to think that, although relatively lightly traversed nowadays, that these streets would have been hives of activity at one time, with many hundreds of people employed in the area.

The last shot of this batch is taken again with the 35 RC, although I did a black and white conversion on the Colorplus as I liked the result better than the original colour image.

The weather was to brighten up again shortly after taking this last shot, and I’ll document the remaining pictures in the next post.