Last week’s shoot was a shoot with a difference as I actually had the day off and had arranged to meet a good friend outside The Crucible in Sheffield to go to a session of snooker at the World Snooker Championships.  I took the little Olympus OM-D E-M10 along just in case as Kate had a longer journey than me and I had an hour or two in the city centre in the morning – though the weather forecast wasn’t that promising.

On arrival, however, Sheffield was bathed in lovely spring sunshine, so I set about shooting a bit of the splendid architecture (old and new) within easy walking distance of the station.

There’s some fantastic modern architecture that works well with nice graphic images on a sunny day with a deep blue sky and I was particularly drawn to the Cheesegrater building (it’s a car park!) eventually getting in nice and close producing totally abstract patterns.

I’d photographed the Peace Gardens and Town Hall before, but not in spring so I spent a bit more time here in the sunshine.  The fountains are always impressive but the lovely magnolia flowers were the highlight on this occasion (above and featured image, top).

I made my way back to the Winter Gardens (reflected in the steel spheres dotted around the square) and through to Tudor Square for coffee sat outside in the sunshine at Crucible Corner whilst waiting for Kate to arrive.

After the snooker session (a second round encounter between Marco Fu and Anthony McGill which Fu went on to win, if you’re interested!) we had a wander back to the Winter Gardens to see the BBC temporary studio in action.  I’ve photographed the Crucible before but intended to get some new shots, but it was in shade in the morning, and was falling into shade again after the snooker (a four hour session) so I made do with the colourful Lyceum Theatre next door – the painted façade looking lovely in afternoon sunlight.

On the way back to the station we both spotted the tall monument on the hill behind glinting in the sunlight – I’d not noticed it before on previous visits to the city!  So after Kate caught her train I climbed up to what proved to be the Cholera Monument to have  a look.  The view over the city was great, though clearly for a different time of day photographically, but the monument itself looked good against a patch of blue sky with wispy white cloud, so I took a few shots here before descending the hill back to the station.