I’ve never visited Sherwood Forest before, despite it being only half-an-hour’s drive from where I live. I’ve visited Clumber Park and it’s surrounding woodland on many occasions though, and I guess that’s all part of the original much larger area of forest.
The trip I took last month was mostly intended to photograph the Major Oak but, if I’m honest, it’s not all that photogenic and, due to the fences that surround it, the compositions are a bit limited. I’m sure that, under good conditions, there are many good photographs to be had, but I feel that the other trees (including many other ancient oaks) withing the forest are perhaps better subjects.
Today I’ve posted a few other pictures from the trip. I think I might try to return in a few weeks when tthe autumn colour is in full effect.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE, & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed, home scanned, and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I photographed this artwork (officially titled “They Shoot Horses Don’t They?“)last year during an autumn trip to Blackpool and posted about it here, but the two photos I’m sharing today were from a visit this year, back in July – we went back again because we had a complimentary room.
There are a lot of public artworks around in the UK – I think there may be requirements on developers to install such things when the build new projects, but many of them feel somewhat arbitrary. This one though, is there for its own sake and it’s quite a spectacle up cloese.
Yashicamat 124G & JCH Street Pan 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9mins @ 20°
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro
The colours on these two Kodak Ektar pictures were very strange and I couldn’t get them to look right no matter what I did in Negative Lab Pro, Lightroom, or Photoshop. So, in the end I decided to convert them to B&W, which has worked quite well, I think.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted to black and white in Lightroom.
Another Ekatar shot with slightly odd colours. There’s something off with the purples and greens in the shadows and midtones and, for some reason, the foreground road and pavement looks almost monochrome. It’s a shame as I like Ektar as a film and it normally scans just fine, but this roll has taken much more effort to get looking closer to normal.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
Blackpool North Pier marked the spot where my roll of black and white film ran out (pictures still to come!), and where I switched to a roll of Kodak Ektar. The three pictures here show stuff on the pier, plus one shot of the view north from the pier. I cropped the third shot as there was quite a lot of uninteresting sky in the image and I felt it looked better without.
The colours are still a little off in these frames, but not too bad, I don’t think.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
If you walk along Blackpool promenade in front of Blackpool Tower, you will come across the Comedy Carpet. This is a section of the floor covering 1880 square meters that is packed with jokes, routines, and catchphrases from 850 comedians and writers. You cand easily spend a good hour reading through it all, hopefully letting out a few good laughs while you do.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
In a break from tradition, I’m jumping right to a photo I only uploaded to Flickr today, rather than slowly working through them in a mostly chronological order – I have a whole bunch of other pictures that pre-date this shot (and this roll), but images from those sets will come later.
I jumped to this shot mostly because I didn’t want to write a long post, and this image seems to suit a shorter form blog entry (although I’m already writing more than I often do, so go figure!).
The photo was taken during a recent trip to Blackpool which I took with my wife (although it’s already two months ago!). There was an onshore breeze blowing on this day which, when it hit the sea-wall along the promenade, created an updraft that these gulls were taking advantage of. They were effectvely hovering and it made for a nice shot.
There is something a little funky about the colours in this roll of Ektar. I’m not sure if it was an older expired roll that I’ve not looked after well, or if I maybe underexposed it or something but, whatever the case, the colours looked odd when I put the negatives through Negative Lab Pro. I even went back and re-scanned an older negative to see if I’d somehow messed up my scanner settings, but that one was fine. As a result I’ve had to faff around with the colours in the pictures more than normal, so if any look a little weird, that’s my excuse.
Yashicamat 124G & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with negative lab pro.
Well, after two-and-a-half-years, I’ve finally tested positive for covid-19. My wife too (although this will be her second time).
I’m not sure exactly where I picked it up, but the flight to Spain is probably a good bet, confined in an airplane for two-and-a-half hours, plus walking through two international airports would seem to increase the odds. That said, I might have just picked it up in the local shops. Who knows?
I first noticed the symptoms last Wednesday, a couple of days after we returned from our trip. Nothing severe, just a mild sensation at the back of my throat like there was something stuck there, maybe a bit of granola from my breakfast of something. I also had some achy muscles, but I was putting those down to all the hiking about I did in Malaga – especially a hike up a steep path to the castle – but they may well have been covid symptoms too.
By Thursday I was feeling worse and under the belief that I’d caught a summer cold. My muscles ached more and I was suffering from bouts of fever and chills although, again, nothing too severe. Friday and Saturday were similar, but paracetamol kept the worst of it at bay – a headache around the base of my skull being the most debilitating symptom. This morning my wife was feeling ill too and we pulled out some of the covid testing kits we still have at home. Almost instantly, both our tests showed two solid lines indicating infection.
I’m actually feeling quite a lot better today and haven’t needed any paracetamol, but I’m feeling somewhat pissed that my remaining annual leave – where I had quite a few things I’d hoped to do – has been blighted by illness and resulted in my doing little. It’s a public holiday tomorrow here in the UK and the weather currently looks nice so, if I don’t feel ill, I’m tempted to take a trip with my camera somewhere. It’ll be someplace outdoors and I’ll not be mixing with anyone, so it should be fine if I decide to go ahead.
It still makes me feel oddly guilty to be considering it though, even though there are pretty much zero restrictions regarding covid here in the UK anymore. Even people working in healthcare are allowed to go to work while infected in most circumstances, so a trip out somewhere by myself should be ok I guess.
Here are three more Sheffield Steam Rally pictures. 2023 was the first year the rally returned after three years away due to the pandemic.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE, & Kodak Ektar. Lab developed, home scanned, and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Steel City Snapper photography 