A couple of weeks ago I took the boys to Newstead Abbey which is about 20 minutes from our home, near Ravenshead & Newstead Village. We have been there on many occasions but it was a sunny day with time to kill and also the ‘Big Day Out’, an annual City Council run event that offers free entrance to various museums and other attractions.
Newstead has extensive grounds and play areas for the boys, a huge lake and waterfall features and a very well run main building with museum and café.
The ex Augustine Priory was also the home of Lord George Gordon Byron, infamous poet, traveller and bad boy.
Whilst I took a lot of pictures on my DSLR and filmed some slo-mo water on my phone, I’m more pleased by the B/W images shot on a Holga using 120 Ilford Pan Plus film. On this occasion I’ve only made one over-layed panorama, the others are single frames that show tree’s in blossom and some wire frame sculptures that sit in the formal walled gardens. Pan plus is a slow film perhaps better suited to a tripod and good light. The images are shakey but full of tone. There is only minmal post processing of these after being scanned.
The seems to be a proposal to develop Newstead in a similar way to Chatsworth House which uses the grounds and other feature to display a range of contemporary arts pieces. Newstead would be a perfect site this given its history and landscape. Click on the images below to open the gallery view.
On show at the time we visited and in the main Drawing Room was a piece by Nottingham artist Tristram Aver titled ‘And Stand A Ruin Amidst Ruins’. The multiple panel screen references Newstead artefacts from wall papers, period portraits, local flora and hunting trophies. I hope the plans for the Abbey produce more thoughtful site specific pieces of this type. Below is a panoramic shot of the Drawing Room and the piece which is on display until the 5th of July.
As well as taking more than a few photographs I also managed to get a number of sound recordings which will end up in whatever new musical piece materialises this year. The piece ‘Sea Song’ that I made last year features the waterfall from the lake and other images around the grounds.
More about the ‘Sea Song’ piece here. and the bigger piece that contains it here.
Thanks to Photo Parlour, Nottingham for film processing, analog love in a digital age.
adrian4 
Konstruktor Camera
It was my Birthday a little before Christmas and one of the presents I was lucky enough to receive (from my more than forgiving wife) was something I’d seen in Rough Trade Records a few weeks earlier. The Konstruktor Camera comes flat packed like an Airfix kit, together with some incredibly tiny screws, springs and a few decorative stickers.
The indicator on the boxes says ‘build your own camera in between 1-2 hours’. Lol! Well, it didn’t take that much longer and the biggest disadvantage that got me was failing eye sight and the really really tint screws. I eventually managed to assemble it and it seems to function as it was intended, just. So far I’ve only managed to put one roll of film through it, a out of date 200 Fuji film.
The results aren’t out standing and I lost at least a third of the roll not realising it was working.
Still in the spirit of sharing progress, below are some of the results. A few are from Stonehenge and the others are from Bolsover Castle in Derbyshire, both English Heritage sites. The little beast now has an old roll of B/W Ilford film waiting for a day trip.
The negatives were developed by Photo Parlour in Nottingham who have done all of the recent 120 film I’ve used. Also, if you are interested in this type of thing, I recently bought some out of date 120 film from an Ebay reseller called Kitschretro. They have a wide variety of film to fit most budgets and offer grouped delivery.
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Tagged as 35mm, Bolster Castle, Camera, English Heritage, Konstruktor, Konstruktor Camera, Lo-Fi, Rough Trade, Rough Trade Records, Stonehenge