I’ve often wondered what the purpose is (if any) of this short section of fence that extends a few feet into the lake. There’s a gap on the shore (with the remains of a latch where a gate presumably once stood) so it serves no purpose in preventing passage. I guess it could be a holdover from before the lake was there (when it used to be a quarry) and was never removed when it was filled with water and the country park developed.

Whatever the case, it makes a nice subject for the occasional photograph.

Pentax P30T, Rikenon 50mm f/2 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°.

Taken on 2 May 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Old weathered bench

June 3, 2020 fishyfisharcade4 Comments

There are a number of these benches dotted aroung the edge of the lakes at Rother Valley Country park. I’m unsure as to when they were installed, but they certainly look like they’ve seen their share of the elements. The park is almost 40 years old now, but I’m not sure if the benches have been there all that time.

I’ve photographed them before on previous occasions. The shot below was originally posted on here back in 2017.

First picture: Pentax P30T, Rikenon 50mm f/2 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°.

Taken on 2 May 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Pandemic scenes #10

June 2, 2020 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

A slightly larger selection of photographs today made up of most of my remaining pandemic-related pictures. I have a few others, but I’m not sure if they’re worth posting or not.

As retail opens up and the lockdown measures ease, there might be opportunities to make more photographs relating to the situation (and if the whole thing goes belly-up, there might be a whole bunch of new lockdown pictures too!), but for now this is the last of what I have to show.

The photos were made over three seperate outings, using two different cameras (and film stocks). The first three follow on directly from the trig point images I posted yesterday, being made on the same walk. The first shows the KFC restaurant at the local retail park. This place would normally be full of cars at the time I walked past, but on this day is was completely deserted. I think it may have re-opened for drive-through sales now but on this day it was shut. The McDonald’s to the right of the image was similarly closed (although it was part way through renovation as the lockdown took effect, so won’t reopen until that is complete anyway). There’s a Pizza Hut off the edge of the frame to the left too, but that was also closed. Probably good for people’s cardiovascular systems though.

After walking past the KFC I dropped down to the shopping mall to get some items from Sainsbury’s. The usual socially-distanced queue was in effect and took me past these signs on the store window close to the entrance. The rightmost sign is for the Big Night In, a television special made by the BBC where the majority of the performances came from the act’s own homes. You can just make out the ghostly reflections of other socially-distanced shoppers in the window too.

Walking home I passed by a local pub restaurant, closed up since before the lockdown started. Like many similar venues, the noticeboard features a thank you message to NHS and other key workers.

This next photo was taken from practically the same spot as the second picture in this sequence, but on a different day. It shows the supermarket’s promotion of technology to make it easier for people to avoid contact with others while in the store.

And finally, this is one of the children’s play areas at Rother Valley Country Park, the gates taped up, warning notices applied, and fastened shut with plastic cable ties.

Shots 1-3. Canon Sure Shot Telemax & Ilford Delta 400. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8 mins @ 20°.

Taken on 25 April 2020

Shots 4-5. Pentax P30T, Rikenon 50mm f/2 & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins @ 20°.

Taken on 29 April & 2 May 2020

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Joe’s

February 16, 2020 fishyfisharcade4 Comments

I’m jumping back in time a little today with a photo from 2017. The main reason being that I decided yesterday to re-scan this roll of negs. My original scans were performed on my Epson V550 flatbed using the Epson Scan software, which is what I used to use for all my scans, but is now only really used for black and white medium format stuff.

All my B&W 35mm negatives are now scanned with my Plustek scanner, which gives far superior results, while I send all my colour films off to a pro lab for dev and scan (mostly because I know the colours will look how I would expect them to). I still scan medium format slides on the V550 though – mostly because it will cost me an arm and a leg to get lab scans (the place that processes and scans my C41 film for a very reasonable price don’t process E6 unfortunately). The Epson doesn’t fare too badly with medium format scans, although that’s only really down to the fact that the larger image size means that any loss in scanning quality is less easy to spot on screen – comparing like-with-like with a 35mm scan shows the quality is exactly the same.

So, while all my C41 film has been lab scanned over the past year, I still have a lot of stuff that has only ever been scanned on the Epson (both colour AND B&W), so every now and then I’ll re-scan those rolls on the Plustek to get better results. Today’s photo is from one such roll – shot during a trip to Camden in London that my wife and I took a couple of years ago. While I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the Portra 160 colours that the Plustek and Silverfast have given me, they’re a whole heap better than the slightly muddy, greenish cast scans that I had from my Epson Scan attempts. The resloution is light-years ahead too, with details now much more finely resolved than before.

Today’s photo is one that has really benefited from the re-scan I think.

Pentax P30T, Rikenon 50mm f/2 & Kodak Portra 160.

Taken on 9 September 2017

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Sunday morning

February 9, 2019February 9, 2019 fishyfisharcade3 Comments

This is one of those shots that might not be any good, but which I like for some undefined reason. I don’t know if it’s something in the arrangement of the goalposts, or perhaps the small football-playing figures, or just some random alignment of things that just switches something on in my brain. I have similar feelings about this shot that I took ona digital camera a few years back. No-one else really seems to say much about them, so I guess it’s just me.

It’s a conversion to black and white (although the colour version had its own charm too).

Pentax P30T, Rikenon 50mm f/2 & Kodak Colorplus.

Taken on 9 December 2018

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Splashes of colour and light

February 8, 2019February 8, 2019 fishyfisharcade1 Comment

As those of you who visit my blog will no doubt realise, I have a preference for black and white photography over colour, with most of my shots on here being the former. That’s not to say that I don’t like colour photographs though. It’s just that I don’t seem to be (in my own opinion anyway) as good at taking them as B&W shots (and, for all I know, I might not be very good at B&W either! 🙂 ).

I do shoot colour at times though (especially digitally, where I’m trying to get better at landscape stuff) , and will continue to do so, not least because I have over 40 rolls of 35mm colour film sat in the freezer. When it comes to colour I tend to favour abstracts and small vignettes of larger scenes (although I’ll do the snapshots and chocolate-box scenes too if they present themselves). I have a book by Dutch photographer Keld Helmer-Petersen (122 Colour Photographs) which is full of pictures in a style that I tend to favour. The photographs in the book date to the 40s and 50s. The book is only available as a facsimile edition at present (unless you can lay your hands on an original copy), but it’s full of lovely images. A Google search gives a good idea of the sort of thing I mean.

Anyway, here are a small selection of shots taken on a walk back in December. I definitely think that sunny days work in the favour of these sort of photographs.