Down by the riverbank

Another grey Sunday in Sheffield. Not quite as bad as yesterday, but not a lot better either, so where else to head but my favourite grey day outdoor location; the Rivelin Valley. Another set of falls and another footbridge over the river. I always like the way the overcast skies make the colours pop. I must come back again when the greenery awakes.

Ancient Signs

In the moorland above Bradfield you come across many of these ancient stones marking road junctions. They apparently date from the 17th Century, are Grade II listed and I can't honestly say I have noticed them anywhere else in the UK. I'm told Bradfield Council has spent a lot of money restoring them, sometimes having to retrieve them from ditches and the middle of field walls to place them back in their correct spot.

Dinnertime at the 'Cat

Support trooped off to the Devonshire Cat again this Friday dinner. No-one wanted their picture taking, quite positively, so I snapped this picture of the 'cat' instead.

Day 56

Today is the 56th day of the project. It's also the number of my house, so here's a picture of the number on the front of my house made up of hand-coloured tiles I picked up in New Zealand last year.

Oi you!

Behind Waitrose on Eccleshall Road lies a wall with this mural on it. Your guess is as good as mine as to what it's all about, but if I were looking for where Sheffield council stashed the alien bodies I'd maybe start right here...

Dad's RAF stuff

I was having a bit of a sort out of papers and stuff in an endless attempt to get on top of the mountains of tat that threaten to take over my life, when I came across this stash of RAF memorabilia from my father. I thought it'd make a nice little montage and a nice reminder of the past.

108 Steps

Had a day off work today and early in the morning went wandering round Macclesfield town centre. I took the back way up into the centre, via the 108 Steps from Waters Green to St Michael's Church. I wonder if the ancient burghers of the old church would have been horrified to discover that Buddhist temples often have 108 steps, (because apparently there are 108 steps to enlightenment).

White Nancy from Smith Lane

More snow, would you believe? Surely we have reached some sort of quota now? Luckily it thawed quite quickly on lower ground and I had to climb high into the hills above Rainow to take this picture of the White Nancy war memorial at Bollington with the Cheshire Plain stretching out behind.

Goldfinch & sunflower kernels

A long time ago, when the garden was swamped wih siskins, I tried to take a similar picture with a film camera. The click of the shutter, no matter how I tried to mask it, always gave the birds a startled look. It also seems to take at least 30 shots just to get one with the bird looking in the right direction! In contrast this was suprisingly simple; with all the lights and beeps turned off the camera is near-silent and the goldfinch was totally relaxed about the big black box hanging a few feet away. Still took 30 shots to get a decent pose though.

Office with a view

Visiting Diane's office this afternoon I took this stitched panorama of the view from her office over the city of Bradford. The resulting full panorama was so long that only about half of it is shown here. The full resolution picture has amazing detail including a little police helicopter and pigeons in the sky.

Another day, another tunnel

Went for a walk at dinner to see what Staples were charging for printer carts. Nearly double 7dayshop prices, that's what. Naughty Staples, you don't get a link for that! Anyway, took a quick snap in this pedestrian tunnel with the deliberate idea of trying out a cross-processing effect on it. I love cross-processing film, but it's so hit and miss it's hard to justify using it with lab prices what they are today. Anyway, I like the 'neon green' result here and think the image stands in excellent contrast to yesterday's.

Underneath the railway line

When I used to take Heidi to Quarry Motors for servicing, I used to walk underneath the railway lines here. I always felt that the place had the feel of a Cartier-Bresson image, but I was always in a hurry and never had time to set up a tripod and take a picture, until today. In an ideal world the picture would include the silhouette of a walking, hunched character smoking a cigarette, but in the 30 mins I stood here freezing my toes, not one person passed under the bridge.

Fat Tuesday

Today is Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, or Pancake Day as we in the UK are wont to call it. That means the eating of pancakes by law (or something). Here are mine topped with maple syrup. I actually ate four.

Driving home from work

Had a Manfrotto Super Clamp delivered at work today, so wasted no time in affixing it to the rear hand grip in the Terios and trying a few remote release shots on the way home. I mean, what else was I going to photgraph on a wet Monday?

Betty

About this time of year Betty starts moulting her winter coat and, because she won't let anyone near with a brush, it gets all tangled up in the places she can't reach. After a couple of weeks we can't take it any longer so we grab her and whilst one person holds her down kicking and screaming, the other snips off all the lugs with scissors.

Bang, bang!

Spent a fun morning at Catton Hall learning the rudiments of clay pigeon shooting. It's the first time I have ever tried this, and it turns out that for me the combination of being right-handed and left-eyed did not help with my accuracy. I wasn't entirely disastrous, but let's just say the British Olympic Squad won't be giving me a call anytime soon. Still, it was a good laugh and the sun shone - what more can you ask for? This picture taken by Gareth, standing well out of the way of clay debris from my 'hitting them late' technique.

Secular stained glass

Not much exciting to photograph outside on this grey and drizzly day, so nipped into St George's Church lecture theatre and took a snap of this stained glass panel that the University had made when they took over (and de-consecrated) the church.

Approaching storm seen from the Birley Stone

About a mile from my house, at a bend in Oughtibridge Lane known locally as Jawbone Hill and overlooking part of the Don valley, lies the ancient Birley Stone. I drove up there with the camera in the late afternoon, and just before the sun dropped below the hills I caught this storm traveling up the valley floor. One of my favourite pictures of the series so far. I think it fully encapsulates the landscape photographer's old maxim: f8 and be there.

Support meet

Set the G10 up on a lightstand in the corner of the meeting room and bribed everyone with choccy biccies to ignore it. A typical support meeting. From left round the table: Dave, me, Mark, Alison, Mick, George, Pete.

Perhaps on reflection...

... it was hubristic to think that this was going to be an easy shot. Glass and chrome - a recipe for photographer pain. In fact this rather unassuming little picture doesn't begin to encompass the faffing involved and the sheer number of shots to get one I consider halfway decent. Those guys in the old days doing product shots on film... I salute you.

Name Dropping

The weather's not getting much better - trying to snow again - so outdoors still looks grey and miserable. Down at the competitor's campus is this building, called after one of my namesakes, John Stoddart, who was vice chancellor of Hallam until 1998. I always fancied a photo of myself standing under the sign and pointing at my name!

Fishy Fred

Among the jobs today was the monthly cleaning out of Fishy Fred's tank. Here he is in his standby home, waiting for the water to stabilize in the main tank so he can go back. BTW that's not a small bowl he's in; he now measures 6" long nose to tail and it's hard to believe what a tiddler he was when we first rescued him. It's getting to be a bit of a fight these days when you catch him to transfer him over.

Aunty Dorothy

Took mum and Aunt Sandra to Belper today (with James along too) to visit their Aunt Dorothy (my Great-Aunt). It was her birthday a few days ago - she was 89.

Previously Enjoyed Artefacts To Delight Your Eyes And Ears

Had a walk round at dinner. It's cold and grey outside again - default February weather - and nothing really took the camera's fancy, so I hereby submit this picture of the shop Rare & Racy in the Devonshire Quarter. which I often wonder how long it will survive in the modern world of eBay and instant online gratification. It'll be a shame if it does fold and become replaced with another Starbucks or other clone.

Misty Monochrome

Of course it snowed again last night. Today has been cold, damp and misty. At dinnertime I took a walk up to Weston Park to look for some interesting pictures. There were one or two contenders for today's slots but I like the shapes the path and the trees make in this one. Also it's the first time a picture has lent itself so readily to B&W.

Carpe Diem

This little stencilled graffito of John Peel appeared on the side of a shop shortly after he died. When the wall was repainted, the owner left a little 'frame' round the stencil. For a long time I thought I ought to grab a picture and today I did. It seems like someone has added a moustache recently, which annoys me both for the defacement and also because I left it until afterwards to take the picture.

Reality Bites

This was the sort of day I was worried about when I started this project. A busy, busy day, topped and tailed by dark, rainy (sleety, even) weather. It's not lack of ideas, it's lack of time and opportunity. I suspect there'll be many more days like this before the year is out. Tomorrow's a whole 'nother prospect though.

Varsity Blues

I think there can be little doubt we're dealing with a frustrated architectural photographer here. For some reason I am just drawn to the shapes that these new buildings make. Here we have the front of the University's copper-clad Information Commons building against the midday sky. Yes, I have noticed it's a study in blues yet again.