Images shot on Lomochrome Turquoise in the Rollei 35
Most of the time I shoot a roll of film somewhere, at least one deliberate choice has been made that shapes what I’m doing and trying to achieve.
It could be the camera, like when I choose the Sprocket Rocket because I want to try some sprocket hole street photos. It could be the kind of image I take, like when I’m making diptychs. And sometimes it’s the film itself, like when I wanted to try something a little more surreal for these cooling towers and boats.
Here though, there hadn’t really been that much of a decision to make regarding what I was shooting and where. I just wanted to get the roll of Lomochrome Turquoise I’d shot those cooling towers and boats on finished.
Mansfield is the closest semi-interesting place for me to go and shoot. So, with the attitude of just letting this film do its thing and having no expectations for how it would turn out, that’s where I went.
The overarching theme of this blog post
I’ve shot a few rolls of film around Mansfield before this one, and that is both a blessing and a curse.
The good thing is that I know the town, I know some decent enough spots for architectural details and angles, and I know certain areas that get good light at certain times of day.
The bad thing is that with all that knowledge in my head and Mansfield not being a very big place, I sort of end up shooting similar things most times I go there.
I think because of all that, it’s not really a place I go to any more to shoot at because it’s an interesting place to shoot and write about.
It’s become more of a testing ground for when I want to try some different gear or film and need somewhere not too far away to do it.
Yes, the first roll of film I shot there was a ‘this is Mansfield’ type of thing, but since then it was my go-to arena for playing with a 110 format camera, shooting a Helios lens for the first time, and doing some non-sprocket hole Sprocket Rocket shots too.
All of which were about the gear and not the place.
That’s the overarching theme of this post. That all I needed was a good enough place to nip to and finish this roll of Lomochrome Turquoise.
I’d already done the main thing I wanted to with it at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. So when I wanted to see what it did when shot around some streets too, they didn’t have to be anything or anywhere special.
Even with missing focus on my old friend the Leaning Man, Mansfield sufficed in that respect.
Streets and shopfronts on Lomochrome Turquoise
The images you’ve seen so far have been of solid, inanimate objects. The utilitarian Four Seasons car park, the arches of Mansfield’s viaduct, a statue and some cars.
It’s good to try different things with a roll of film though, so I spent some of this one on some of the life that is still to be found around Mansfield’s town centre. Which is nothing like it used to be, but that’s another complaint for another day and probably some other website.
But yes, some of the type of shots I would probably take with any film, just shot on this Lomochrome Turquoise. To speak on that for a second, it’s interesting to note that for all the colour-shifting it does, the greens are still green here.
The trees, but also the Specsavers branch which you’ll know if you’re also from the UK, and the Chad newspaper on the old Regent News shop if you’re also from Mansfield.
The three most different Turquoise shots from this roll
I’ve kept the next three images separate because I think they’re a good example of how to get a dull shot from your Lomochrome Turquoise, which you probably don’t want, and how to get some bold ones too, which you might.
This isn’t going to be any different to how you’d get dull or bold images from any normal colour film either, to be fair. But I think picking these out is still worth it.
For the first one, the top half of the shot was in the shadow of that entrance ceiling, and it’s quite a uniform colour palette under there too. That has led to a shot that looks almost monochrome yet with a blue-green tinge. Not the nicest.
The next two are the opposite, with a variety of bright colours and the sun being on them as I shot too.
That slots and bingo place turned out a brighter orange than I expected from the blue it is in real life, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that a hi-vis vest and brightly colourful cones and barriers came out quite bold.
Similarly with the second shot below, that fluorescent detail on the police car was always going to look funky on this Lomochrome Turquoise, and that was a good thing to shoot amongst all the more normal colours of the town.
So as mentioned, to get bolder results from this kind of film, it appears from this small sample size you’ll do well to just follow the rules of any other colour stock. Shoot brighter colours in good light. Easy as that.
Some station shots and a few from the park
The remainder of the shots on this post are from a couple more places I’ve photographed many a time before, and did so for a couple of different reasons again with this Lomo Turquoise film.
The train and bus station area was, a bit like the viaduct and multi-storey car park earlier, for the compositions and architecture.
Again, not new ideas for me to shoot and not very original angles taken either, but I had to get this roll finished somewhere and seeing how these spots looked on this film was as good as using it anywhere else.
On the other hand, these final ones from Titchfield Park were shot more deliberately to see how this film handled a more landscape-y colour palette.
With lots of vegetation in them, these were taken with the upcoming film review in mind, and also to use in a comparison with one of Lomography’s other colour-shift films, Lomochrome Purple.
That one is said to be better for landscapes, with this Turquoise better for urban environments. That is something we shall see in due course.
For now, here’s some almshouses, a nice dog, a basketball hoop, and a couple of shots where I tried to do something with three benches with the rule of odds in mind.
Wrapping up this wrapping up of Lomo Turquoise
I do often finish these blog posts with a wrapping up… subheading, but this time it’s multi-layered. It probably has been before and I’ve just never noticed.
But yes, this whole thing was about finishing off the roll after using it for the main objective at Redhill Marina, and those park pictures were the final part of that, and this section now is the last wrapping up of everything that’s come before.
Right.
Considering I went into Mansfield because it was the easiest place to finish this roll and was happy for the shots to just come out however they did, I was pretty happy with how they did in the end come out.
I mentioned on that other post from the boat graveyard that I’d gone with Lomochrome Turquoise because I didn’t want my photographs to just look like those of the people who have shot there before. I think that plan worked.
And these from Mansfield benefitted from it in the same way. That because of the shift in colours, they’re differentiated at least in one way from the previous times I’ve shot around town too.
None of this is at all revolutionary in the world of photography. But it is an example to you, the reader, of what can be done in the name of creation and fun.
For me and what I put up on this website, that’s most of the time enough. 🙂
If you liked these turquoise photographs from Mansfield 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 😀
