The church that can be seen behind the wall and trees in this photographs is St. George’s. It is one of a trio of Commisioner’s Churches built in the city under the 1818 Church Building Act. The construction of these churches was funded following parliamentary vote.
St. George’s was consecrated in 1825 and operated for over 150 years before being declared redundant and closing in 1981. After standing unused for a number of years, the church was purchased by the University of Sheffield and now houses a lecture theatre and student accommodation.
I went out with friends to a local pub today. I’ve drunk more than I have for quite some time – not enough to make me roaring drunk, but I certainly have something of a healthy buzz going as I type this. Please don’t hold me accountable for any rubbish I post, or any typos (above and beyond the ones that seemingly always drop into my posts, at least).
I didn’t intend to drink as much as I have (even though it was’t a particularly excessive volume) but, as anyone who’s been to a bar can probably attest, a couple of drinks and your intentions can slip, and I ended up doubling the quantity of alcoholic drinks I planned on limiting myself to. I hope I don’t have to pay for it with a hangover!
Today’s photo is of a pub, or the upper part of it at least. Not the one I’ve visited today though, this is the Red Deer in Sheffield town centre.
Looking back on the words above, they seem to pass muster. Perhaps I can hold my liquor better than I thought. 🙂
These are the same blocks of flats that featured in yesterday’s post, but shot from a different vantage point – this time from the Broad Lane roundabout.
When I first saw the developed negatives I thought that this frame had some sort of damage – and odd, white splotch. It turned out to be the street light. 🙂
This photograph shows Sheffield University Arts Tower on the left with three of the blocks of flats next to Netherthorpe Road (there’s another block not visible in this image). Between the two blocks on the right the tower of St. Vincent’s church can just be seen through the gap.
I’ve been on my first business-focused trip today since spring 2020. I felt oddly anxious about the experience, not because of Covid or anything like that, but because I have not left my home for any work-based reasons in over two years (well, I did need to travel into town to get my faulty laptop fixed last year, but that wasn’t a meeting or anything, and it was only into my local building) and this trip involved taking a train journey to another city.
The day went well though and the biggest issue was the fact that the smart shoes I wore to go with my suit (which, while maybe not quite at the cutting edge of modern fashion any more, thankfully still fits) managed to rip the back of my heels open. This has clearly happened in the past but I’ve blanked it out of my mind until today – I know that it has happened before because there is a partially-used pack of plasters in my laptop bag from where I obviously had to perform field surgery the last time I wore the razor-backed shoes. I sat and mended my feet on a seat outside the station before I even got on the train! There’s nothing quite like a minor, but painful, injury to start the day…
I did manage to fit my 35RC into the laptop bag and, while I didn’t really have much time to take photos, grabbed a few shots on my way to and from the station. Not enough to finish the roll though, so it’ll be a while before I develop those.
Here’s another view of the University Arts Tower with the figure of a walking man neatly framed beneath a foreground tree. I hope his feet weren’t hurting.
The coming days will see a series of photographs made with my recently acquired Olympus OM-1N (a replacement for my faulty OM-1. You can read about how I came about it here, should you wish).
The camera appeared to be in full working condition, but needed new light seals, so this was its first outing after I’d replaced those. As I didn’t want to chance a roll of something expensive on an untested camera, and as I have no cheap bought-for-£1 Agfa Vista Plus left, I used the cheapest, but fresh, stuff I had to hand – some Agfa APX 100. As far as I’m aware this is just re-branded Kentmere 100 these days (although I think it used to be re-branded Fomapan 100 previously). The last time I shot some of this I developed it with Ilfotec DD-X and got some quite overdeveloped negatives (probably my fault). This time I decided to use some Adox Adonal instead and got better results.
My old OM-1 had been converted to meter properly with a 1.5v cell, but this OM-1N still expects a 1.3v cell. I do have Wein cell that I could use but, again, as the camera was untested I didn’t want to crack open an expensive battery so I used a 1.4v zinc-air battery instead. I’m not sure how much this will have affected the metering but, on the whole, the shots came out quite well exposed with perhaps a little over-exposure present. The good news is that the camera worked perfectly.
Posted here today are three shots from the start of the roll. More to come this week.
I’m feeling a bit frustrated at present. Nothing to do with my photography, but all to do with my ears. Which are blocked.
I have a problem with blocked ears, and have done for years. Every so often they will get clogged up and I need to put in drops and visit the GP to get them cleared out. This is the case at present. I visited the nurse last week to have them syringed (after a couple of weeks of putting in olive oil drops), and had been really looking forward to getting my hearing back. Unfortunately, my ears were so clogged that the drops had only penetrated part way and the procedure left further wax deeper in my ear. On top of that, after I came out of the GP’s my hearing gradually became worse through the day – my right ear wasn’t too bad at first but in the evening I tried watching some TV programmes on the iPad with headphones – trying to listen to the TV in the living room as fruitless, with all the sound becoming a bit of a mush and any dialogue being very difficult to make out – and while the headphones on the iPad worked ok at first, after a while I felt my right ear gradually close up with whatever was still blocking much of it. So that was that.
I’m now putting drops in several times a day in preparation for round two with the nurse later in the week. Sigh.
That had nothing whatsoever to do with photography, but a photo you shall get nontheless. Not of the inside of my ears thankfully, but some dried grasses that I photographed a few weeks ago.
After arriving back at the carpark following a walk the other week, I saw this old Mercedes in one of the other bays. I liked the low key look it had, with subtle reflections from the bright shafts of light coming from the centre of the building, but wasn’t convinced that the picture would turn out ok. I was wrong I think, and it turned out better than I might have hoped given the conditions and slow shutter speed used.
Time seems to have gotten away from me today and I don’t have time to write much. Still, the fires of the blog need to be fed and the fuel today will be these two photographs of canal narrowboats. A lot of the narrowboats at Victoria Quays seem to be permananent fixtures that I’ve never seen move – basically floating homes – and I’m sure that I’ve photographed many of them on more than one occasion.
These two shots came out quite nicely though, I think.
Sandwiched between the River Don and Blonk Street is the I Quarter (formerly Hancock & Lant) Tower. I’m not sure where the I Quarter name comes from – maybe the developers? – but Hancock and Lant was a furniture store established in the 1930s that used to have its showroom in the same location. They moved address at some point to, I believe, Queen’s Road, but I’m not sure if they are still trading.
The access to the store was via a very narrow road that ran between the building and the river, with a small area where, if you were lucky, you could find a parking space. I say road, but that doesn’t really illustrate just how narrow it was for vehicles, and there was always the fear of getting trapped down there as there was no way that anything other than a bicycle would have been able to squeeze past any othe vehicle. Today’s photographs show this location, although it is no longer accessible from this end by motor vehicles due to the concrete support columns of the I Quarter building.
Steel City Snapper photography 