I spoke a little about the erosion that is taking place on the shoreline of Yorkshire’s east coast the other day. These two pictures show how close to the edge some of these caravans are sat. While they no doubt have wonderful views out over the North Sea, I think I’d be tempted to move to a new pitch if I was the owner.
This video gives a good view of just how parlous the situation is for structures placed close to the cliff tops in this region.
Someone had been walking barefoot across the beach at Hornsea on the day I visited. Whoever they were, they had moved out of sight before I came across their tracks.
I like this picture but can’t help but think that there was a better one to be had. I wanted to keep the building in frame at the upper right, and I wanted a crashing wave as well, both of which I’m happy with, but the placement of the footprints isn’t quite how I’d like it.
Scenes like this require care. walk into the scene and, to quote Joel Meyerovitz, it becomes bruised – in this case the risk that the smooth sand becomes tarnished with my own footprints as well as the unknown walker’s. Maybe I should have sought out more patience but, as usual when I visit somewhere that’s not as easy to get to, I like to try and maximise my value from the day and see as much as I can, which means I tend not to hang around a sinmgle location of photo opportunity for too long. Perhaps I would improve my photography if I did.
The beach at Hornsea has a lot of pebbles, no doubt in part because of the coastal erosion that is taking place in the region. Pebbles are interesting to look at, with an endless array of shapes, sizes, colours and textures. The colours are multiplied further when the pebbles become wet, their tones becoming more saturated, fragments of minerals sparkling in the sunlight, and some taking on a crystaline, semi-translucent appearance.
I wondered as I stood there, how long the process of taking a rough chunk of rock and smoothing it to an organically sleek pebble would take. “How long is a piece of string?” might be a suitable retort as, given the range of different types of rock and mineral, plus the fact that the process never ends, each individual piece being constantly weathered until it becomes sand, but it’s still something that I expect will take a considerable duration.
So I was quite surprised to see a large pebble formed out of a section of brickwork, complete with mortar holding the components together. While I’ve no idea when this chunk of masonry began it’s transformation, I expect it’s far more recent than I might have expected. I took a phot of the brick-pebble but it’s on a roll of film I’ve yet to develop. Hopefully, if it has worked out ok, I’ll post it on the blog.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I visited the seaside town of Hornsea earlier this week. It’s the first time I’ve ever been – most of my seaside visits to the east coast being either the Lincolnshire resort towns of Mablethorpe and Skegness, or the Yorkshire towns of Bridlington, Filey, Scarborough & Whitby, which are further north from Hornsea.
It’s not a large town and the seaside facilities are more down-key than the other resorts I’ve mentioned. There was a single arcade that I saw, but no sign of any fairground or other attractions that might attract younger visitors. The beach was nice, a combination of sand and pebbles punctuated by groynes, and the main part of the sea-front where the promenade sits, has a sea wall. The reason for this was quite obvious on the day I visited as, while not a stormy day by any account, the waves were striking the wall with some force when I arrived with plumes of white spay shooting up above the top od the defenses and blowing back onto the promenade area in places. Further north and south of the town where the defences are not present it was plain to see how the coast is being eroded by the waves, and the earthen cliffs had a crumbled appearance. Perched atop these cliffs were a number of caravans belonging to a couple of large caravan sites either side of the town.
I didn’t really explore the town centre itself, which is a little way back from the sea front, but what I saw looked nice and I did take a few photos before I left.
The photo today shows a shop close to the promenade, it’s window packed with the sort of things that you only tend to find in seaside towns, along with the requisite fishing nets, windmills, and ice cream signs (although oddly, given the name of the shop, no buckets and spades on view).
There will be more photos from Hornsea to come…
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I was wondering what picture to post today, especially as I’ve almost exhausted my current supply of fresh pictures (the ones that are scanned that is – I have a couple of rolls waiting to undergo their analogue to digital transformation, plus three rolls waiting to be developed AND another couple of rolls in cameras with just a handful of frames remaining to be shot).
So, I picked out the two below which have some thematic connection at least.
I’m not sure of the reason – although the humid weather might be a cause – but I’m feeling particularly stressed-out today, a feeling that has increased during the afternoon. Despite this, I did manage to develop a roll of film during my lunchbreak, and also started scanning som 120 Kodak Gold negatives when I finished work (although that process was not going smoothly, so I packed it in before my stress levels increased further).
I’ve not much to say about today’s picture other than this large fibreglass sheep was stood outside a shop I passed when on a day out with my wife last month. It was striking enough to make a picture.
I guess that this is a similar picture to the one I posted yesterday. This one is overexposed though. It’s overexposed because I mistakenly set the 35 RC to an f/2.8 aperture instead of the A (for auto) setting that would allow it to meter correctly in it’s standard shutter-priority mode. As a result this picture (and a couple of others) got far too much light. The other couple I’ve discarded in terms of posting them anywhere but I still quite liked this shot so I did what I could to recover it.
The photo also appeared in Flickr’s Explore section today, which I was a little surprised by. I get pictures selected for Explore on a reasonably regular basis (probably one a month or so) but they are rarely the photos that I think are my best. In fact, they’re often the ones I like the least. I have no idea how Explore selects it’s photos.
Whenever I get a photo in Explore I always get lots of comments from people congratulating me on the achievement. I’m grateful if people like my photos, but these people rarely seem to then venture into my feed to look at the other (arguably better) pictures. It’s almost as though anything not in Explore is somehow sub-par and not worth bothering with.
I don’t tend to look at Explore very often – usually it’s only when one of my pictures is featured and I’m feeling nosey as to how far down the selction it appears. There are a lot of very nice photos featured, but there are also a lot of obvious pictures too, as well as some bizarre choices from time to time. However, if I do find one I really like then I will go and look at the feed of the photographer as sometimes this introduces me to new bodies of work I really enjoy.
I had an appointment this afternoon and didn’t get home until recently, so just a quick post today with a photo of a Tetris-like building in Manchester.
These punchbags were in a room adjacent to one of the leather chairs I posted pictures of yesterday. Although I never saw anyone punching them, each time I went past the three bags would be swinging slightly. Clearly ghosts were to blame. There can’t possibly be any other rational explanation to this mysterious event. 🙂
Steel City Snapper photography 