Images shot on Lomochrome Turquoise in the Rollei 35
A short drive outside of Nottingham, down towards East Midlands Airport, sits the now-decommissioned Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. It was the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station, with operations there ending in September 2024.
Also there, just across the train tracks, is the still very much in-use Redhill Marina. I suppose a bunch of moored-up boats could be reasonably photogenic, but it’s not those vessels that most people come here to photograph.
Under the imposing form of the cooling towers, something of a boat graveyard has sprung up, and the two combine to create a vista that I thought was worth my time travelling to and shooting some film at.
It’s a scene that we won’t have for too much longer though, because a huge part of it is going away. And that to me is going to be a huge shame.
The hulking towers and the timeworn hulls
Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station and Redhill Marina make a very good visual combo for some atmospheric photography.
Even by themselves, they’d be visually interesting enough to be worth shooting. The size and shape of those sort of cooling towers mean they can always be used for some interesting compositions, wherever they are. You have a few fine examples here.
The decaying boats too. Anything manmade in a state of decay is usually decent. Without the cooling towers, you could still get good images of them. Get closer to them than I have here, shoot smaller details, have multiple of them working together in your frame.
Put the two elements together though, and in such proximity that the cooling towers are the background to the boats in your foreground, and we’ve got a place that is just a bit special.
Speaking more in metaphors, a bit philosophically, the two visually disparate main components of these photographs also represent to me two quite different states of being.
Those solid, monumental cooling towers built in place to stand in place until such day as they are physically removed. And those boats, built to float from place to place, now stranded, slowly decaying, and waiting to be helped.
It’s a certain juxtaposition, and it makes it a touch counterintuitive perhaps that when this scene ceases to exist in a few years, it will be because the cooling towers have gone, and not necessarily the boats.
Maybe one day they’ll be cleared away too. I don’t know.
But according to this article, you’ve got until the end of the decade to enjoy the sight of the towers.
A few shout-outs to those doing more than me here
I can still remember the first time, a few years ago now, that I saw someone else’s photographs from Redhill Marina. They were by a chap called Cal McNab, who goes by the handle @calmanalogue on the ol’ Instagram.
Looking at his page now, he’s collaborating with two others – David Severn and Chris Matthews – on a publication all about power stations along the Trent in Nottinghamshire, with Ratcliffe-on-Soar of course part of that.
I also remember seeing a fine shot by Dan Giannopoulos a while back, taken when there had been enough rain to be able to take advantage of some lovely reflections of the cooling towers.
What’s nice here, in terms of bringing things together, is that the aforementioned publication – called Megawatt Valley – is to launch at LensFayre, the film lab and shop that Dan co-owns in Nottingham’s Sneinton Market.
I’m a fan of all of the above. I know it takes some effort to put something together from your photography, having created this zine of my own a few years ago.
All I did at Redhill Marina was shoot less than half a roll of film and knock up this blog post about it.
Only shooting and posting 14 photographs
Before I went to Redhill Marina, I thought I’d be getting through the whole roll of Lomochrome Turquoise there. It didn’t take that long for me to rethink this, however. There was only so many shots I could take of the cooling towers and boat graveyard before they started to feel a bit repetitive.
In the interests of transparency, I’m posting all of them on here. 14 photographs taken and 14 published. And a simple yet hopefully somehow helpful explanation of why I think some didn’t work as well as others.
Next up is the first of the roll shot, which is also a bit out of focus. Because I hadn’t shot with the Rollei 35 for a while and forgot about setting the zone focus.
When I shoot what I usually shoot, which is street scenes out and about in various towns and cities, I’m always trying to be mindful about the backgrounds of my images.
Some photographers look for interesting people first and care less about the rest of the shot. I’m the opposite, most of the time looking for the overall view first, and having any people in the shot working with that.
I like to fill the frame, all the way to the corners when possible, and I like to have a nice balance in my compositions too.
It’s that desire for balance that makes me think these next three shots are weaker than most of what I’ve posted already. Those earlier ones either had cooling towers cut off on each end of the shot, or cooling towers just in the middle and at neither end.
With these, we have one at one end of the image and not the other, and that’s what gives them an unbalanced feeling I don’t so much like.
Wrapping up from the Redhill Marina boat graveyard
Just as a point of order, it’s worth mentioning that not all of the boats you’ve seen in these images are dead. Some are being restored, although some do certainly look – to my unprofessional eye – beyond help. So boat graveyard is still fair to call it, I think.
That final photograph was the only shot I took that features no cooling towers at all, and I think the lack of them in the image illustrates a couple of points.
First is that if you’re going to a place with something as visually striking as cooling towers to use in your shots, you really should use them. Because that is the most boring photo I got that day.
Second is that it backs up that earlier thing about the work feeling a bit samey after not even getting through half the roll of film. Because you could argue, well don’t just keep shooting the cooling-towers-and-boats combo then.
But when I did try something else, some of that magic – the whole point of going to this place – was lost. So to me it was about getting a smaller number of images overall, but having them all include the main thing.
I’ll end this by saying I’m glad I went with the Lomochrome Turquoise for this shoot. I was concerned that if I’d gone with a normal colour film my images would just look like those who have shot here before, but going with a colour-shift film at least made that not the case.
Yes, it’s a bit gimmicky. But it’s my Redhill Marina gimmick. 🙂
If you liked these photographs from Redhill Marina and want more adventures illustrated with film photography, why not have a look at some of these:
And if you think others will find this post worth a read, help them find it by giving it a share 😀
