Sheffield University Arts Tower

One of the more noticable structures in Sheffield is the university Arts Tower. While it is not very tall when compared with towers in other cities (it’s not even the tallest building in Sheffield) at a mere twenty stories, the fact that it sits partway up the hillside beside Western Bank means that it is visible from far afield. It should be noted that far afield in this case is probably still not that far – Sheffield is a hilly city (said to be built on seven hills, like Rome) so the best views of the Arts Tower are from the north east where it can be seen from further down the flatter area around the Don valley. It can be seen peeking over the top of hills from various locations as well though.

The building opened in 1965 and housed the Departments of Landscape, Modern Languages, Philosophy, Biblical Studies, and Architecture. There were eighteen arts departments located in the tower originally although, as the university and student body has grown, some of these have moved to new locations.

One of the most well known features of the building is the paternoster lift system, with many a tale being told of people going right over the top of the looping elevator system. Most of these are from people unaware of how a paternoster works and under the assumption that the unfortunate passengers would be somehow flipped upside-down as the lift reached its apex. They do make for better stories though. 🙂

It being such a focal point in Sheffield’s skyline, I’ve taken a good number of pictures of the tower which can be found here.

Yashicamat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 16 April 2022

Weston Park

Weston Park was the first municipal park in the city of Sheffield and formed from the grounds of Weston Hall. The hall itself would become Weston Park Museum incorporating the Mappin Art Gallery. The museum opened in 1875 and was extended thirteen years later.

The museum contains permanent exhibits on the local archeology, natural history, art, and social history, as well as regular temporary exhibitions.

The building was severely damaged by a bomb during the Second World War and the art gallery remained closed to the pubic in a damaged state until 1965.

As I type this, it’s a lovely evening outside. Just the other day, on the journey home from our coach trip, I commented to my wife on how nice the early evening light was and that I should really make a better effort to take advantage of it through the longer days of the summer. However, no matter how nice it looks, the effort required to get myself up and out after a day at work means I rarely do so. I must try harder! I am planning on heading out tomorrow to shoot one of the rolls of expired film I posted about last week though, so the photography itch will be scratched, albeit with no guarantee of successful images.

Yashicamat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 16 April 2022

Bandstand low-down

I suffered a wet knee for the sake of getting today’s blog picture, but think it was worth the discomfort and the soft focus on the forground grass along with the faint glimmer of dew give a nice sense of depth to the image. I had some expectation that the photo might be marred by camera shake as I had to hold it slightly off the ground to get the composition I wanted and felt like I wasn’t holding it completely steady, but it turned out nice and sharp. TLR’s – the flippy screens of their day!

Yashicamat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 16 April 2022

Flamborough Head

Today’s photograph is of Flamborough Head, a promontary extending several miles into the North Sea from the Yorkshire Coast on eastern side of England. Just the tip is visible in the picture. It is a landscape of chalk cliffs (the only such area in the north of the country), arches, sea-stacks and small sandy coves. Large areas beneath the cliffs can be walked at low tide and there are fossils to be had I believe.

Out at the end of the promontory sits the fog signal station.

Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .

Taken on 14 March 2022

Up above the waterline

This decaying wooden boat sits high above the waterline up the steep slope that leads down to North Landing at Flamborough.

Not living close to the coast – well, for the UK at least, where I believe nowhere is more than about seventy miles from the coast, although that doesn’t necessarily mean a lovely beach or anything, for some it’ll be a dingy mud-flat – er.. where was I?.. Oh, yes…

Not living close to the coast, scenes like this are a big draw. While I can quite easily find nice countryside, city centres, or industrial locations withing close reach, beaches, boats, and actual sight of the sea always offer some novelty. I went through two rolls of 120 film, and the best part of a roll of 135 during this trip to Flamborough, something I might have been harder pressed to do in my more frequently visited locales.

Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Lomography Color Negative 100 .

Taken on 14 March 2022

An end to autumn’s colour

Ok, maybe not the most autumnal shades here – more a yellow green than fiery shades of red and orange – but it’s probably the last shot from this year’s clutch of seasonal images where the trees still bear foliage. Today, as I type this, most of the leaves have fallen, littering the pavements and roadsides where they’ll release that rich scent of autumn so evokative of this time of year. There are still some late straggling leaves on the limbs of silver birches – some still green in fact – but most trees have revealed the skeletal form of their branches now.

I still have autumnal images yet to come, but they are of the misty, damp, almost monochromatic feel of late autumn as it rolls over into winter.

Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Grain2Pixel conversion.

Taken on 10 October 2020

Drama from religion

The two photographs today show the former Glossop Road Baptist Church, the first with its steeple rising from between autumnal trees in the back gardens of the stone houses (now mostly owned by the University and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals) on Claremont Place.

The church is now owned by Performance Venues, a small group who run this and two other venues (the Octagon and Firth Hall) in conjunction with the University of Sheffield. It is now known as the Drama Studio.

Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Grain2Pixel conversion.

Taken on 10 October 2020

Autumn in Weston Park

Early last month, on a bright sunny day, I took a walk around Weston Park, Crookes Vally Park, and the surrounding areas. I took my Yashica Mat 124G loaded with some Lomography Color Negative 100 film, and my Sure Shot Telemax containing some Kodak Gold (the results from which I’ve been posting here over the past week or so).

This was the first time I’ve used the 100asa Lomography Color Negative variant, although I’ve shot several rolls of the 400asa version and liked the results. As is my current process for medium format colour films, these have been home-scanned as linear tiff files with my V550 using Vuescan, and then converted to positives using the free Grain2Pixel Photoshop plug-in. I found that, while the initial conversions looked pretty good, I’ve still had to tweak them to get them looking “right” – or at least as “right” as my own eyes reckon they should be. Grain2Pixel is a very good piece of software, especially given it is free-of-charge, but I do find that I have to remove colour casts sometimes depending on the film I used. The scanner (Epson V550 for medium format / Plustek 8100 for 35mm) can also make a difference too.

Occasionally, certain frames from a roll produce very odd results – oftem at odds with the rest of the shots from the same roll. I tried using the trial version of Negative Lab Pro to compare with the Grain2Pixel results on some of these and it also went slightly crazy – with colour tones looking very odd. All the shots here today were pretty straightforward to deal with though.

Anyway, the three photos today are all from the Lomgraphy 100 roll, shot with the Yashica, and all three made in Weston Park (with the museum visible in the first, the bandstand in the second, and the nearby Univesity Arts Tower in the third). Autum was underway, but the trees still held onto most of their leaves and a good amount of green at this point.

Yashica Mat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Grain2Pixel conversion.

Taken on 10 October 2020