Images shot on Street Candy MTN 100 in the Lomo LC-A
This wasn’t the first roll of monochrome film I’ve shot around the streets of Nottingham – because this one was – and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the last.
It certainly won’t be the last that I blog about here because even as I write this I’ve got more that I’ve shot there and have not yet found the time to do anything with. I’ll get to them, one day.
One day. One. Day.
I think those two words – one day – are going to be central to the theme of this post here.
Contents
Same place, different day, new photographs
I know from experience how exciting, motivating and inspiring it is to go to new and different places with your camera and just walk around shooting. Everything is novel to you. You’re seeing it for the first time.
It’s all just, to reuse the same word, different.
I also know it’s not always possible to do that. Life gets in the way. Time and money constraints are real. They leave you in the situation that, if you want to go and shoot some film, you’re probably going somewhere you’ve already been and done it at, and probably more than once before too.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth going and doing it.
You can walk the same streets with the same camera again, even loaded with a film you’ve shot there before, and it’s still worth it. Because really, most things are going to be different this time.
If I hadn’t gone on this latest yet another walk around Nottingham with the Lomo LC-A, I wouldn’t have got the two day-of-long-shadows images you’ve already seen above, both of which I quite like, and I wouldn’t have this first-of-the-roll shot either.
Something unique from the same old streets
There’s nothing really special about these photographs.
I presume you’re somewhat interested in something about them if you’re reading this – be that old cameras or film, a bit of street photography, or even just Nottingham itself.
But the photographs themselves, whilst good enough for me to post them here on My Favourite Lens, aren’t going to interest a casual observer like an awesome landscape or an image of an iconic sports moment will.
But that’s not the point of them.
That Thurland Hall has been there since the 1830s. I’ve been to a lot of pubs in Nottingham. A lot of times too, some of them. But I’ve never been in that one.
I’ll have a glance every time I walk past but there’s something about it that makes me think it’s not really for me.
Let’s move on though, to something else. Something more relevant to a photography blog.
Like shutter speed, for example.
I was perhaps a little ambitious with that in a couple of instances here.
Despite it being generally a great day for photography, with enough light to give me the confidence to shoot this ISO 100 Street Candy MTN film, attempting to get a shot in a shadowy alleyway probably wasn’t the best idea.
The result wasn’t bad in its own way, I suppose, but it certainly wasn’t what I was going for at the time.
Some of the following shots also have some blurred elements in them too. These could be from motion blur, or just a soft focus from the less-than-ideal light in each particular case.
Again though, they’re not terrible enough for me to not use them on this post.
What they are, to go back to the theme here, are unique images from those moments in time on that day. Never to be repeated in the exact same way.
It looks like I wasn’t the only person enjoying things that afternoon in Nottingham either.
It would be very weird if I was. Imagine that. Being the only person in an entire city enjoying themselves.
But the lad sitting outside the pie shop and the lad walking past Sainsbury’s both gave us a smile to reiterate that I wasn’t.
Thanks, lads.
Old Market Square, always there
I’ve separated the shots in this blog post into two sections.
What you’ve seen already were not shot at the Old Market Square. The rest of what you’ll see were.
This is another place in town that I’ve taken photographs at many times before. Like here and here and here, and some of those other times that I’ve not gotten around to writing about yet.
So the next time I’m in town, will it be worth using even more film at this location?
I’m going to say yes, it will be. Because, again, I’m going to get different images every time I do it.
I’m not doing architectural shots of the Council House. If I was, then you would expect them to all look pretty similar every time. Light and time of day depending, of course.
But by going more for shots of people and the occasional events that happen in the square, you’re going to get something unique each time you go.
I certainly don’t recall there being a Loaded Donuts van there before.
The Lomo LC-A is one of my favourite cameras I’ve ever owned, and it’s a very good choice for a day like this where all you want to do is walk around shooting with carefree abandon.
Set the zone focus to the quite far away setting and point and shoot. Then point at something else and shoot. Then point at another something else and shoot. All day.
What it isn’t so good at though is making it easy to focus on close-up things.
I’m not blaming the camera. I’m blaming myself. Every time I try to do this and don’t do it well, it’s on me. I know it can be done, and I know I can do it too, because I’ve done it in the past.
And I did it okay enough with this fake plant hanging ball thing here. The errant Croc though, not so much.
Alright, now we’re getting into it. This is film photography.
You see a fairground ride, you have to get a couple of shots of it. You have no choice. It’s the rules. I didn’t make them but I’m not about to break them.
And I’d much rather be on the ground taking pictures of these people spinning around way up there than be one of those people spinning around way up there.
Praise be to the Street Candy MTN 100 film here by the way, because it’s nice to not have blown-out skies.
All things said, I do like the results I got from this stock. I’ve still got another roll to shoot and I’ll do a full review of it once I’ve done that, like I did for its sibling ATM 400, but going on the evidence here it’s not a bad film at all.
Final thoughts on this one day in Nottingham
That’s it.
Just as things were getting going with some hardcore fairground photography, we’ve come to the end of this day shooting Street Candy MTN 100 in the Lomo LC-A.
In a way, it has kind of been the same Nottingham that it’s always been when I’ve walked around pointing my camera at its people and other things.
But I’m reminded of a quote I heard some time ago, that ‘everything is for the first and last time‘.
It’s a bit like the more famous one by Heraclitus that states ‘no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man’.
No photograph from this day has ever been shot before, never would have been had I not done so, and will never be recreated either.
And what I think is even more important than that is the fact that I had a good time doing this. I enjoyed my walk around and felt like I was doing something good and productive every time I pressed that shutter button.
That alone made this a worthwhile endeavour.
As mentioned earlier – the actual quality and artistic merit of the photographs? Nothing special.
But the time spent in that same but different place making them was. 🙂
If you liked that little stroll around Nottingham and want more blog posts 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 🙂
