Three more shots here that I took on my walk in the snow (which, somewhat incredibly, was a full two months back now!).
I had my Canon Sure Shot Supreme in my pocket on the day and, while my main camera for the walk was the Bronica ETRSi, I took a handful of pictures with the compact too.
I think they’ve come out remarkably well given the fact that a) the roll of film might have been around twenty-years expired, b) the camera and it’s automatic metering system dates back to the 1980s, and c) snow can be difficult to meter for regardless of the meter, with cameras having a tendency to underexpose the stuff.
So, overall, these look pretty good to my eye. The snow is bright and white, but still retains detail.
Yesterday I mentioned my “magical lawnmower adventure” – which I also stated as not being magical or adventurous. Whatever the case, I thought I’d explain…
Last week my dad asked if I could get him a new lawnmower as his old one had broken. He’d seen one in a local DIY store that he liked. I looked online, found the model, and bought it via click and collect. The next day I went to the store, collected it, and took it round my dad’s house. All sorted, I thought.
On Sunday, we met my eldest son and his fiancé for a meal and, as they’ve only recently got their first home with a garden, and as they’re recently engaged, told them we’d buy them a lawnmower as a gift to keep their garden tidy. We decided to buy the same model that my dad had bought, and ordered it from the same store (again, using click and collect).
Then, yesterday, my dad called asking if I had the receipt for the mower. When I asked what the problem was, he told me that he couldn’t get the blade off the machine in order to alter the cutting height. As my dad is in his eighties, I told him I’d call round and give it a try after work. I decided to pick up my son’s mower on the way there.
When I got to my dad’s, what I’d assumed would be an easy job turned out to be anything but. The bolt holding the blade in place was super tight and I couldn’t budge it. If I’s had a suitable gauge spanner, I might have been ok, but all we had was a plastic spanner / wrench thing that had come with the mower. This was next to useless on the tightened bolt, just coming loose with not way to secure it in order to generate any real force. After a few attempts I decided I’d have to take it back to the store to see if they could sort it out. So I dismantled it, put it back in the box, and headed back.
At the store I explained the situation to the woman at the customer service desk and she called for assistance. A guy soon appeared to help and, upon hearing the issue, told me I wasn’t the first person to come to the store with the same problem. He had a go at loosening the bolt, but had just as little success as my dad and I. So he went and fetched another mower from the warehouse. We opened it in the store and attempted to take the blade off the replacement. It was stiff, but after a few goes it came loose. So we put it back in the box, and I drove back to my dad’s with it.
When I arrived I decided that I’d put it all together there and then to ensure there were no further issues. Inside the box were no instructions or other documentation, but two of the plastic spanner / wrenches! As it wasn’t tricky to put together, I did so without guidance and was able to test-mow a small section of his grass. However, as the documents are important for when my dad wants to maintaing the mower, or register the warranty, I told him I’d go back to the store again to see if I could grab the documents that were in the original machine’s box. So off I went.
At the store, the same woman was on the customer services desk and seemed a little surpised to see me back. I explained the situation and she called the same guy, who had already moved the faulty mower back to the warehouse. A few minutes later he appeared with the manual and other documentation and I was able to leave for, hopefully, the final time (for lawnmower-related activity at least).
I’ll let my dad have the documents when I next see him, and my wife is dropping our son’s mower off at his house at the weekend. I only hope he can remove the blade when he needs to…
So, there you have it. The full story. Maybe someone will find magic and adventure in there, but I think they’ll need to look hard.
I thought I’d post both these pictures today – they’re the same subjectj just from different points of view. They feature no lawnmowers.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
I’d intended to post more today but my evening has been unexpectedly swallowed up by a magical lawnmower adventure*. Maybe I’ll get to say more about that tomorrow, assuming I’m given the chance.
Here’s a random picture of a tree in some snow, just so I don’t miss a day on the blog. 🙂
* Neither magical nor adventurous.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
A bit cheeky this picture (or the blog post, at least) in that it’s exactly the same snowy country lane that I posted a picture of yesterday, albeit taken from slightly further down the hill. The picture I posted yesterday was taken somewhere around the telephone post with all the ivy. I felt it was worth posting this one too as, well, I like it and, well, I forgot to add it to yesterday’s post because I was very tired at the time. 🙂
The farm at centre left is the one where I was chased off by the sheepdog.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Another very quick post as I’ve been out all day and only just gotten home. It was a great day, but I’m cream-crackered (as they sometimes say around these parts).
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
I had to go out straight after work to take a new lawnmower to my dad’s and have only just gotten back. I need a shower, a drinks and some end-of-week R&R, so this is a short post. 🙂
So here’re some power lines in the snow.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
There’s a bit of a background story to today’s picture.
I took a number of photographs of this farm, some of which I’ll post here in the coming days. A public right of way provides access past the buildings and then on to the Moss Valley or to Plumbley, depending on the direction you choose. After taking a few photos of snow covered siloes, I decided to follow the farm road towards the valley – I’ve walked it before and know that there is an old wooden building, a shed-like structure, which might make for a nice picture.
As I headed there I noticed that, to my right, I could see into the farmyard, complete with a stable containing cows and a bunch of rustic farm buildings with snow-capped roofs. This seemed the perfect place to make a photograph, so I unpacked the Bronica from my bag, set up the tripod, and framed my shot. As I was doing this, I noticed a sheepdog – a border collie – peering out from a gate a little further down the path. It sat and looked at me but didn’t seem threatening so I continued what I was doing. Gradually though, the dog started to walk slowly towards me. It wasn’t barking, or looking in any way troublesome, so I finished what I was doing and started to pack stuff away.
Then, as the dog got within about ten feet of me it began to growl, a low rumble of noise from deep in it’s throat. And I became concerned. The dog, which until now had looked like a friendly sheepdog, the type you see in children’s books, now made apparent the fact that it had teeth, and that maybe it didn’t really appreciate what I was doing. I’ve been bitten by dogs a couple of times in my life and, while both occasions were a long time ago, I didn’t fancy a reminder of the experience, so I started to carefully move away, muttering friendly words to the animal while wondering if I would be able to defend myself with my tripod should it decide I was fair game.
After a very long couple of minutes of careful sidling away while the dog kept pace with me (it letting out the occasional sharp-sounding yap) I reached the track that leads to Plumbley and, to my great relief, the dog didn’t pursue any further. After putting a good fifty yards between us, I finally felt able to relax and make my way to safety.
Whether the dog would have made good on it’s threatening activity, I don’t know. While it was a bit of a scary experience, the dog was undoubtedly doing it’s job – protecting the farm and livestock from people with tripods and cameras in this case! I think I’ll avoid taking any pictures of this farm in future though. 🙂
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Although it was a cold day when I made these photographs in the snow, it was also very bright. And I was wearing dark clothes. This had two detrimental effects.
The first was the sheer amount of light reflected back off the snow. As a wearer of spectacles, I don’t tend to have the luxury of just popping on a pair of sunglasses when it’s bright. I don’t have a pair for my prescription, not do I have any clip-ons (although those just tend to be an annoyance). But without sunglasses, the light bouncing back into my eyes from the floor was verging on painful. I’ve never suffered from snow blindness before, but now know what it must feel like in its onset. Even with my eyes shut the blankness of my eyelids was a glowing red.
The second thing was that it didn’t take me long to become pretty hot and uncomfortable. The light absorbancy of my dark trousers and jacket soon raised my temperature and then this was booster even further by the physical effort of walking through snow (or trying my best to keep balanced on the icy areas). It didn’t take long until I was sweating profusely!
Despite these drawbacks it was a beautiful day to be out. We don’t get snow all that often, so it’s good to take advantage of it when I can.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
One thing I was particularly pleased about with this roll of snowy scenes was that I managed to expose the majority of them well. Snow can often blow out or be rendered an unattractive grey if not given the correct exposure and recommended guidance if to use exposure compensation to over-expose if you’re using a reflective meter, such as the one built into many cameras.
My Bronica doen’t have a meter though (even the one in my metered prism seems to have carked it!), so I rely on a handheld meter instead, and my preferred technique is to use incident readings – the light falling onto the subject, rather than the light reflecting off it. This has a benefit of giving an accurate reading in these sorts of scenes (well, most of the time anyway). I think a couple of my shots were not metered as well as the others, but even those were retrievable in post processing.
The two below look pretty good though.
Bronica ETRSi & Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford HP5+. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 9 mins 30 secs @ 20°
Steel City Snapper photography 