Clouds

I snapped up some clouds the other day - tried to re-create their 3D quality on some distinctly 2D Adox MCC paper:

Clouds over Portstewart, HP5+/ID-11/Adox MCC paper

Not as abstract as those other, slightly more famous clouds - you know the ones, right? - these ones.  But hey ho you have to start somewhere.

I've been laid up for a few days on account of my legs and Ey By Gum it's driving me nuts.  I may have mentioned before that I rarely sit, on account of my ankylosing spondylitis and the associated pain and stiffness, so when I'm forced to lie about doing nothing it's akin to torture. I find it challenging.  In the extreme.

But as chance would have it I had recently taken ownership of a book I'd been after for a while - Edge of Darkness by Yer Man Barry Thornton.  Mr Thornton was a very well-known photographer, lecturer and author who passed away about 15 years ago.  He had pretty fixed views on a lot of things from what I can gather, but one thing that shone out was his love of photography, his never-ending questioning of why things are done in a particular way and his never-ending quest for improvement.  You might say he was borderline obsessive as he left no stone unturned. Anyway, the book was a god-send to me in my current situation and chapters of it got read and re-read more than once.

The sections on film developers was particularly relevant to me since I'd recently been trying RO9 as a replacement for my go-to developer, ID-11.  If you remember this shot a couple of days ago, I got a film which was very low in contrast and grainier than I would normally like, after developing HP5+ in RO9.  My first thought was that the RO9 had 'gone off' but a quick question posted on the film-and-darkroom-user forum (FADU) suggested that this was most unlikely.  The overwhelming response from other FADU people suggested that RO9 and HP5+ was not a good combination, so I went back to my trusted ID-11 for the next film and all was good again.  The shot you see here was from that one.

However, Mr Thornton's book has piqued my curiosity with regard to other developers and I've a notion to give Perceptol a try.  It might not suit every subject matter, but it looks like it could work well with HP5+ in certain lighting situations.  We shall see.  I shall of course report my findings in the usual way...