Earthwatcher's photos with the keyword: steel

I was intrigued by the light and reflections on the underside of this pan on the draining board of my kitchen. The smooth surface has the distorted reflections of a silver birch tree in my garden.

This was taken around 1989 at the then British Steel's stainless steel plant at Tinsley, Sheffield. The raw steel is melted in an enormous electric arc furnace and impurities rise to the top of the molten steel as slag. The molten slag is tapped off into a cone-shaped crucible which is then picked up by the special transporter as shown, trundled outside and tipped into a large pit. When it is cool, the solidified slag is broken up and used as hardcore in construction projects. The photograph was taken using a 135 mm telephoto lens from around 150 m away and I could feel the heat even at that distance. The now defunct Sheffield airport was built on this site. Scanned from a Kodacolor print .

Just playing around in Photoshop!

Drilling an angled borehole prospecting for shallow coal at Tinsley, Sheffield, around 1989 on the abandoned steel works site for the proposed Sheffield airport. The dust cloud is due to the compressed air flush removing the cuttings from the borehole at high speed. Taken with a Zenit 'E' on Kodacolor film