Our January trip to Conham River Park was a good excuse to test my new Ensign Ranger Special, given to me for Christmas by Hannah’s dad Arthur.
It’s a fairly typical folding camera, except that it allows you to take pictures either in square or rectangular format. On this occasion, I chose square (and then you’re stuck with your choice for the whole film). It’s a nice camera and it handles well, but my example (dating to 1953) has a little bit of rust on the film gate which appears to have come off and become stuck to the film. In some places it stayed stuck, causing white dots on the film, and in other places it scratched the surface, causing black dots.
Perhaps more alarming, a small insect apparently got inside at one point and was sat on the film when I took a picture, leaving a perfect silhouette. It’s strangely transparent, but I hope it got crushed in the rollers!
Still, you didn’t come here to see pictures of a fly stuck to some film in an old camera. Here are the pictures I took at Conham on a cold and bleak day.
At one stage we veered away from the river and passed through this gate.
Through the gate and across the field, you can see the Cadbury factory in Keynsham.
I’ve had a film in my Zorki 4 for a few months now but it has seen hardly any use. I took it to work in central Bristol and left it on my desk, so it would be more likely to see some outings at lunchtimes.
My cycling route to work takes me through Castle Park, where somebody had laid this poppy wrath on a memorial stone on a misty November morning.
Poppy wreath
After several years of closure for refurbishment, Cabot Tower is now open to the public once again. I went up with Chris and Paul (who took a panorama). The lighting was a bit grey and flat but I think the photos are OK. The same can’t be said for my ears and fingers, which almost froze off.
On a different day, a photowalk found Chris, Paul and me in a children’s playground in Redland. After I had spun them round on the roundabout, I managed this photo of the log swing.
For this week’s Photo Challenge, crowds, I took this composite picture of students coming and going from the chemistry department at the University of Bristol.
This week, I was contacted by Dutch producer Matt Pop who asked if he could use some of my photographs of Stockholm in the video for his remix of ABBA‘s The Day Before You Came.
Who am I to say no? I like ABBA and I like dance remixes. See if you can spot my pictures in the video.
I recently tried out my newest camera, a 1963 Canon Demi. For those who don’t know, this is a half-frame camera, meaning that the negatives are half the usual size and you get twice as many negatives on a film. This was significant when the camera was new in the 1960s: colour photography was just coming out and was expensive, so half frame cameras reduced the price somewhat. This isn’t why I bought it – I wanted it because of its tiny negatives (meaning you get more grain), cheap lens (for that lo-fi look) and its unusual default portrait orientation.
The camera has a sort of semi automatic metering system. It’s tiny and easy to carry around and the emphasis is on convenient picture-taking rather than technical details. I noticed that this carried over into my photography, and most of the pictures I took on the Demi’s first outing were far from technically perfect, but more “free and easy” and probably more interesting as a result.
All of these shots are taken in different areas around Bristol.
Oldbury Court
Castle Park
Victoria Street
Christmas Steps
St Michael's Hill
Earlier this year, street artists were invited to come and paint graffiti on various buildings along Nelson Street. Perhaps the black & white film I was using doesn’t do these vibrant works of art justice, but I like the graininess.
Graffiti on Nelson Street
Graffiti on Nelson Street
Graffiti on Nelson Street
Graffiti on Nelson Street
Graffiti on Nelson Street
Graffiti on Nelson Street
Graffiti on Nelson Street
St Michael's Hill
Royal Fort Garden
Leaves
Royal Fort gatehouse
These works are taking place to demolish the old children’s hospital to make way for the new University biological silences building. Most of the demolition work is to remove and 1950s brick and concrete structure. The original frontage of the old building is being kept, and will be incorporated into the new building.
I took these photos of Oldbury Court Estate in October but it’s taken me a while to get round to processing the film, as I have moved house. The good news is my new darkroom is much larger and better equipped. The first film to emerge from it has come out perfectly.
These photos are unusual for me, because they are taken in the early morning. Usually I’m too lazy for that, and sunsets are much more common on this blog. But fog is also my favourite weather and so the sight of mist out of the window is usually enough to get me out of bed early and outdoors with a camera.
On this occasion, the camera of choice was the mighty Horseman 980, loaded with Kodak Ektar film.
This photo of the weir near Snuff Mills was taken a few days earlier, but it was on the same film so it can live here too.
Tonight found me on top of Troopers Hill, which overlooks the city of Bristol. It’s about three miles from the centre, so it affords pretty spectacular views.
Click this image below for a somewhat larger version, or inspect the really huge version.
View of Bristol from Troopers Hill
I also took this long-exposure shot of the chimney on the top of the hill.
This picture of Troopers Hill inspired me to look up John Keats’s well-known poem. I also entered this picture into the Photo Challenge.
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
I recently saw a web page about a project called CameraMail. The idea is simple – you post a disposable camera to a friend with instructions for postal workers to take their photos using the camera along the way. Hopefully, at the end you are left with a series of pictures, documenting the camera’s journey.
I bought a cheap Fuji camera and stuck it to a sturdy piece of corrugated cardboard with a hot-melt glue gun. It stuck rock solid, so I then decorated the board with various instructions to make it stand out in the sorting office.
Below the camera, I stuck an address label in the plain black area. It was addressed to my brother Edmund in Nuneaton – a journey of around 110 miles if you drive directly. I have no idea of the route taken by the CameraMail.
Here I am, just about to post the CameraMail in Bristol. It’s a shame I didn’t have time to post it in the post office during office hours, as I might have got another photo or two.
From here on, I have no idea where any of these pictures were taken. Just enjoy the pictures! A couple of the negatives came out completely blank, so I assume either someone took photos indoors without a flash, or the camera accidentally went off in a sack of letters.
I am guessing this photo was taken in Nuneaton, as the mail seems to be out for delivery in a small van.
And finally, Edmund received the CameraMail safe and sound. Unfortunately, he seems to be too young to know that you have to use a flash if you use film indoors!
So please allow me to give my thanks to the postal workers who participated and took photos. I hope it was fun for you, too.
Sorry it has taken me a little while to get these photos online. The CameraMail was posted on 2nd August, and took around 3 weeks to arrive. Then, it took me a while to get round to processing the film.
I might try this again some time – but perhaps with a route that’s a bit more exciting than up the M5 to Nuneaton. If anybody reading this lives in the Orkney Islands, let me know!
I’ve taken star trail photos before, but this time I made a special effort to include Polaris, also known as the pole star or the North star. It is very close to the celestial North pole, meaning all the other stars appear to rotate around it.
At first I was annoyed that two or three aeroplanes crossed the frame in the 45 minutes it took to make this picture, but actually I think the lower, continuous aircraft track adds something to the picture. I don’t like the dotted line, though.
