Ballintoy Harbour

Yes it's that place again.  Well it is a pretty special place, is Ballintoy.  In fact I was there last night with a few film shooters - although the light was flat and I was foundered.  Still, it was good to be out with some like-minded folk for a while.  

Anyway, this one was from a while back:

That harbour again, on Kenthene fixed grade paper.

It needed a bit of work - and still needs a bit more burning in on the top left to balance it out.  The whole sky got a few extra seconds as did the water in the harbour, as well as the foreground, just to pull things in a little.  That's the Western End of Rathlin Island just emerging from the mist in the background, by the way.

Money for Old Rope

OK maybe not old rope, perhaps twine would be a better description.  And no money has changed hands - yet.  I live in hope.  

Still not out&about much so relying on finding things of interest to photograph in the 'studio'.  The studio being an old table in the garage with some natural light coming in from a side window.  

Some old twine, on Foma 133 paper, toned.

 It's Monday morning here and I'm just checking this before publishing it.  Not that there's much to check, I know...  Anyway, it's a bit of a miserable morning here, the rain is coming down very steadily and there won't be much done outside today.  It's not cold, just very, very wet.  Usually in this part of the world there are two possible outcomes for how things progress weather-wise.  Often when it's wet in the early part of the day it will fair later and we could be in for an absolutely beautiful evening.  Alternatively, it will rain all day.  I'm going to be brave and opt for the former.  Time will tell.

The ongoing effects of COVID-19 are becoming all too apparent around the North Coast.  I went out for a newspaper for my mother early Saturday morning, as I usually do.  I had a couple of other errands to do so I made the mistake of driving through Portstewart Promenade.  Now it was about 10am and already the place was bunged - cars everywhere, delivery lorries double-parked as usual and the place was chaos.  In the middle of it all a woman with two very young children (walking, but only just) decided to stop the traffic so she and her children could cross the road.  Complete madness, given that there is a pedestrian crossing with traffic lights not 100 yards away.  But no, she wanted to cross right then and there and so that's what she did.  I  wonder if she had any idea how much danger she was putting her kids in by doing such a thing. 

Presumably most people have decided not to go abroad this summer and are spending the summer 'at home'...or rather, 'on the North Coast', in caravans, rented houses and campervans or just for day trips.  At any rate, this part of the world is rapidly becoming a place to be avoided at all costs during the summer months.  So if you were thinking of a short visit, please think again.  Come in September, not now.  We're full. 

  

Le Touriste

Still working away on my Still Life tables - gathering more bits&pieces from my mother's house and trying to set them out in some half-sensible way to tell a story.  This is the latest effort, using the 'Blad, some old FP4+ and a 60mm lens:

Le Touriste, 2020.  Hasselblad/FP4+/60mm on Foma 133 fibre paper

My Uncle's old briefcase is the perfect period piece, as is his Omega Seamaster watch.  I burned in the face of the watch a little, as it was catching the light.  I could have probably given it a bit more.  There's natural light coming through the garage window to the right hand side and I'm holding a large foil reflector just out of shot on the left to balance it out a bit.  Exposure was around the 6s mark, allowing for reciprocity failure.  I'm not a smoker, by the way, but my brother-in-law is so last time he was down I asked him to keep me some of his butts.  Lovely, I know - and they really stink, so I keep them in a small sealed plastic food container and only bring them out for the shot.  I'm sure he must think I'm not right in the head...and he might be right.

This was developed in good old Multigrade and then bleached back prior to sepia toning, just as in the gooseberries print the other day.  I overprinted it slightly, by maybe 1/2 a stop to allow for the bleach but even though I pulled the print early from the bleach stage as I was toning the print it looked like I'd lost most of the writing on the 'Touriste' card and the Royal Automobile Club 'France' map in the foreground.  But it's funny old game, the darkroom thing is, as after washing and drying it was all good - the lettering is, as you can see, still visible.

Gooseberries

We have three gooseberry bushes in the garden and apart from the year when I pruned them too hard at the end of the previous summer they generally produce a decent crop.  The trick is picking them at the right time - too early and, well, they're just hard and sour.  Leave it too late and they go brown and mushy.  We were almost too late this year, but got a few decent ones to make either jam or chutney with - although I'm thinking this year of trying a gooseberry fool.  Gooseberries are not, of course, the easiest fruit to pick, on account of the the ferocious thorns.  You can't wear too thick a glove otherwise you can't feel for the fruit but it seems that no matter how well you try to protect your hands those thorns will find a way through...

Anyway, we liberated a few and before they got thrown in a pan I whipped them into the garage for a quick snap with the 'Blad and here is the result from yesterday morning's darkroom session:

Gooseberries on Foma 133 paper, sepia toned

I'm still learning about the Foma 133 paper.  In a warmtone developer such as WT-10 it can be very warm - maybe too warm.  In multigrade developer, which is what I used here, it appears to be much more neutral and more like Ilford's Warmtone paper.  After the usual wash I dunked the print in standard sepia bleach (potassium ferricyanide/potassium bromide mix).   Not for very long, though - just enough to see the bleach starting to take affect.  Then a wash for 10 mins followed by the toner stage.  I prefer using a very dilute toner and then toning to completion.  

Picnic at Portaneevy

After the exhilaration of seeing the school of dolphins/purpoises at Ballintoy the other day Missy & I drove a bit further round the Antrim coast road.  Not far after Ballintoy is Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge and just past that is the picnic area and viewing point at Portaneevy.  Here lies one of the best views along this part of the Antrim Coast road.  Way to the West you have Donegal, just off-shore you have Rathlin Island and past that (visible on a good day) the Western Scottish Isles of Islay (25 miles) and Jura (50 miles).  Kintyre lies 24 miles to the East.  A stone slab informs you we are about 1300 miles from Cape Farewell in Greenland and 800 miles from Iceland, in case you were wondering.  This is the view to the West, looking at the Rope Bridge in the foreground and Sheep Island in the background.  The little white dots you might just be able to make out on the headland are sheep-things:

View from Portaneevy towards the Rope Bridge and Sheep Island.  On Ilford Cooltone RC paper

   

The shot is nicely unsharp from the accidental use of the Softar Filter on the 'Blad, as explained last time.  

One of the benefits of COVID-19 is the slightly fewer tourists at this time of year.  Usually places like Portaneevy are best avoided in the summer months, as coachloads of people fill them up.   But last week it was almost empty - a few locals having picnics on the grass and that was it.  However, with the lockdown easing up here in Northern Ireland I think it'll be September before I venture out that way again - although perhaps an early morning/evening trip might be OK.  

Picnic-ers (incorrect use of hypen I know but without it the word looks very strange) are great to observe.  Older folks have their Thermos Flasks (ideally a red tartan design) with tea, proper ceramic cups or, at a pinch, mugs, and home-made sandwiches.  Younger ones tend to forego the tea in favour of bottled water or pop of some variety and store-bought sandwiches or wraps and crisps.  Yes, I know, How sad am I for noting these things but I can't help it - people are interesting to watch.  When we were young the Thermos Flask and sandwiches came with us on every Sunday outing without fail and it always makes me smile when I see people still doing that.  In order to keep the water as hot as possible the Thermos has to be pre-heated with boiling water, of course.  Then that first fill is discarded and replaced with freshly boiled water just before you leave the house.  Since us Irish have to take milk in our tea (I think it's the law) a small glass bottle is filled with milk - something like an old cough mixture bottle is perfect, although you might need to seal the top with a bit of cling film or even tin foil so as to prevent spillage.  Sugar (in those days we all had sugar in our tea) was usually in sachet form, squirrelled away in a handbag from the last cafe or hotel that was visited.  Sandwiches, as I said, were always home-made - money was tight enough for pretty much everyone in those days.  The thing that caught my eye with the picnic-ers with the Thermos Flask at Portaneevy that day was the milk - a dirty great 2-litre plastic milk container plonked in the middle of the wooden picnic table for the whole world to see.  Standards, my friends, are slipping...

Foma 133 in Ballintoy

I'm still experimenting with my new-to-me Foma 133 paper.  As I may have said before, it's a silver chlorobromide paper, described as being suitable for portraits and 'retro-styled' imaging (whatever that may be).  It's an interesting one, for sure - about as far from say, Adox MCC paper as you could get, and that's a paper I really like for it's clean, clear look.  The Foma paper has perhaps a look that one would tire of easily, but I'm not there yet.  

This was from Ballintoy last week, when I was out with my favourite model.  That's Sheep island in the near background and Rathlin Island in the distance, some 6 miles or so away. 

Missy, at Ballintoy, July 2020  Hasselblad, 60mm lens

If you're thinking it's a little 'unsharp' for a Hasselblad you'd be correct.  I'd put a UV filter on the front of the 60mm CB lens for a bit of protection.  Well, I thought it was a UV filter, as it looked clear.  When I went to take it off I realised it was a Softar filter, perfect for portraits but probably not the thing usually recommended for landscapes.  But it was a happy accident - I like the result. 

Sheep Island is so-called, by the way, as that was where the locals used to take their valuables some years ago when word reached them that a raiding party was on the way to disrupt their peaceful existence.  It's a natural fortress, with a grassy top, and I'm guessing they had some clever way of getting their livestock (and, presumably, women and children) up on top and then retreating back to the mainland to welcome their not-so-welcome guests with freshly sharpened steel and what have you.  Some weeks, or maybe months later, those that were left standing could go back and be reunited with their loved ones (and sheep). 

Sparking Plugs

Remember them?  When's the last time you put new plugs in your car's engine...or set the gap?  I can just about remember messing with engines when I was a teenager.  Well, I can remember my father and my older Brother doing so, to be more accurate - I was never very mechanically-minded when I was young.  Later on I dabbled a bit, changing differential oils and lubricating swivel joints and what have you - the things that garages are supposed to do but never actually do.  These days when I flip open the bonnet of a car I see something vaguely resembling an engine but apart from checking the oil about once a year (if that) and filling up the windscreen washer fluid I don't go near it.  That's pretty much what the motor manufacturer's want, I reckon, so their franchised dealerships can make some serious money for them.  The last car we had developed a problem with the boot release from the remote fob - the boot would still open manually, so it wasn't a massive inconvenience.  The dealer said they would have to 'run diagnostics' on it to find out exactly what sensor wasn't working (I thought it was would have been pretty obvious where the problem lay but it was a case of  Computer says 'No').  About an hour's work, they said, to find the problem, which would cost about £120...plus, then, whatever parts and labour were needed to repair it.  Needless to say we opted to live with the minor inconvenience...

Anyway, these old spark plugs were lying around from the good ol' days so I set them out and photographed them using the Sinar 4x5 with an old 210mm Rodenstock Symmar-S f/5.6 lens.  210mm in 4x5 world is close to 60mm in 35mm terms:

Sparking Plugs, 2020.  FP4+ Delta, RO9 and Foma 133 paper in WT-10 developer

This was pretty about 1:2 on the negative, which is about as close as I can get with the setup I have (about 300mm bellows extension).  Any more and I'd need a longer rail - the closer you want to get to your subject the farther the film plane has to be from the taking lens - for 1:1 you need double the focal length of the lens, so for a 210mm lens that's 420mm of extension.  Obviously with a shorter focal length lens it's easier to get closer, so if I ever come across an affordable 150mm lens or similar I might pull the trigger, but it's a lot cheaper to get a rail extension, which I think is my next move.  There are dedicated 4x5 Macro lenses but amazingly these still command stratospheric prices, which is hard to fathom when anyone doing commercial product photography these days is using digital. 

On this shot, in order to get everything in focus I was using a lot of tilt on the front standard, so the plane of focus is close to the tabletop. Even then, at f/22 I think things are a little tight - I could have done with a bit more tilt or stopped down to f/32.  It's a completely boring shot, I know, but I'm enjoying messing about with the Sinar while learning about the idiosyncrasies of large format photography. 

Out standing in his field

One from a while ago, of the Sheep Man and one of his little lambs:

The Sheep Man, on Foma 133 paper

I'd promised Graham a print of this and finally got round to it.  It was taken on a Nikon N80 (badged as F80 in some countries) with Sigma zoom - an autofocus, auto-everything camera which I hate.  Well, you can go manual but it seemed more trouble than it was worth so I just set it on Program mode.  Most of the shots were out of focus as I hadn't realised the focus point was set to the right of middle - this was one of the few ok ones.  I did have a look at the manual for the camera beforehand but I lost interest after the first couple of pages...all those exposure modes!  All those focus modes!  Nah, not for me - just give me a camera with a shutter speed dial and a manual focus lens with an aperture ring and I'm happy. 

Those dunes again

One from earlier this year, up on the dunes on Portstewart Strand.  This came out very poorly on the negative - very low contrast, so I didn't have high hopes for it.  From memory it was that sort of day - heavily overcast, flat light.  But after a bit of experimentation with a test strip I was pleasantly surprised by how it rendered on my new Foma 133 paper.

Portstewart Dune grass, on Foma 133 paper

I'm kind of missing the dunes now - last time I was there was early March.  Yesterday I got a nice letter in from Boris saying as of the end of July I no longer need to stay at home.  Thanks Boris me old mate!  Well, to tell the truth, I have been stretching my legs a little already...yesterday Missy and I ventured out to Ballintoy Harbour - she wanted to see the 'secret beach'.  Secret Beach no more, though - it was busy!  But then it was mid-afternoon on a quite glorious day.  I took the 'Blad and even persuaded my glamorous assistant to carry the tripod for me (!) but there was no chance of using it.  But I did cajole Missy into letting me take a few shots of her, so the day wasn't completely lost, photographically-speaking.  As we were heading back to the car she leant on a big rock and as I was framing the shot I was suddenly aware of something going on in the sea behind her.  Something quite amazing, actually...a whole school of porpoises or dolphins travelling West...there must have been about 30 of them.  The ones in the front were having a great time - several were leaping clean out of the water, turning somersaults.  It was quite a show and went on for about half an hour as they made their way through Ballintoy towards Portrush.  I've seen the odd one or sometimes two around the seas here before, but never so many as yesterday - and never seeing them leaping out.  It ended up being quite a memorable father-daughter day.