Ballintoy on lith

A lith print from a pre-lockdown trip out to Ballintoy.  The sea was mesmerising that day - I could have stood and watched it for hours as the waves broke over the rock formations.

Sea at Ballintoy.  Lith, Foma 133 paper.

I'm hoping to get out there again this week with some fellow film-shooters, now that the schools are back and the weather has become more unsettled - two events which will hopefully mean there is space to breathe and enjoy the place. 

I haven't used Foma 133 with lith developer before but their Classic 131 paper liths nicely so I expected this one to be fine, as indeed it was, giving the very warm tones you see here.  

Saturday afternoon I took a run down to Portstewart Prom with the 'Blad, to so some street photography.  It took a while to get there, as the traffic was fierce, it being a Bank Holiday weekend and all but I struck lucky getting a parking space slightly off the tourist trail which is only a short dander to the Prom itself.  There was a huge number of cars driving through (nose-to-tail) but not too many people out&about - it was windy and a wee bit fresh, which maybe put people off.  I wasn't complaining - there were enough to photograph and being around too many people isn't a great idea at the minute anyway.  It's tough getting the balance right in these things but after barely being out of the house for 6 months it felt good to be outside and the strong off-shore breeze made me feel a little safer.   The Hasselblad isn't the ideal stealth street-shooters camera and I did get a few (a lot) of funny looks but while people in this part of the world aren't exactly comfortable getting their image snapped they are also not prone to confrontation so I just kept my head down, avoided eye contact and pretended to look through them and not at them, all of which seemed to work.  The negs look OK.  I haven't printed any yet as I'm waiting for a delivery from Ilford with some new paper - they had a 10% off promotion this weekend.  I'm going to try their new MGV RC paper, which is about half the price of fibre paper but should be fine for 'everyday' work.  We'll see.

Tree vs Turbine

This was one of those shots that really only revealed itself after the snapping event.  At the time I thought the tree would simply provide a bit of a reference point for the turbine and make the shot more interesting but now I see the natural twists & turns of the tree versus the rather stark uniformity of the metal wind turbine and the lights behind:

University of Ulster wind turbine, 2020.  Ilford MGIV RC paper.

The concentric rings around the lower part of the turbine go from dark green at the bottom to light green and then grey all the way to the top - presumably to help the whole thing blend in naturally with the surrounding foliage.   Why did they bother, I wonder?  I mean, it's a couple-of-hundred-feet-high metal structure with rotating blades so it's a bit hard to miss, isn't it?

The two turbines that the University owns sit at the edge of sports fields.  I've never seen the pitches in such good condition - no doubt due to the fact that they've not been used in the last 6 months, which is all a bit sad, really.  

There's not much else going at the minute.  Missy went back to school this week for the first time since February.  We're very apprehensive about the whole thing but by all accounts the school has done a remarkable job.  Students are required to wipe down chair and desk before and after each class.  Sanitisers are everywhere (and must be used) and there's a one-way system operating in the school corridors (where masks must be worn).  Teachers have a perspex screen between them and students and markings on the floor around his/her area - Teach isn't allowed to move outside the marked area and neither are students allowed inside.  No paperwork or books is to be handed between teacher and student.  I'm not sure how homework is being assessed - presumably online in some way (I've yet to hear the details).  Lunch breaks are staggered so that numbers in the canteen at any one time are limited.  We'll see how it all pans out but there has already been a few COVID cases in and around Coleraine in the last week - in hotels and restaurants and McDonalds (see what I did there?) so I reckon it's only a matter of time until a student goes down with it.  What happens then is anyone's guess but at the very least I would hope that fellow class-mates&friends would be offered tests and for a deep clean to take place throughout the whole school.  We did consider keeping Missy off for a week or two until we see the lay of the land but it's her last year at school and after 6 months of being at home she really needs the structure of school to kick-start her motivation for the final push before A-Levels and, hopefully, University next year. 

We're keeping our fingers (and everything else) crossed on this one. 

A run up the town

Uptown Coleraine, to be precise, with our lovely Italianate Town Hall dominating the pedestrianised precinct.  Pedestrianised, that is, apart from the delivery vehicles and other 'Access' vehicles which in reality means hardly pedestrianised at all.  Anyway, here's my rather feeble attempts at street photography, using the M6:

35mm lens.  HP5+ on Fotospeed RCVC paper.

Since I use a walking stick/cane when I'm out and about, it's not so easy to shoot and run, so I usually find somewhere to stand to 'do' my street photography.  I was propped up against a rather large raised flower bed here, cradling the camera while hoping I was holding it reasonably straight.

I've mentioned before that as a general rule, Northern Irish people aren't too happy to have a camera stuck in their faces.  It's a far cry from New York or Tokyo, so a bit of subterfuge is generally required.

I turned around to take this one:

Greggs.  The times we live in, eh?

Burton's Men's Wear used to be on the corner there where Greggs is now.  Greggs, in case you don't have one near you, is a national chain of cafes selling pastries, sandwiches and drinks.  They seemed to spring up from nowhere about 5 years ago and are now on pretty much every high street in the UK.  Their USP is 'cheap'.  I was rarely in Burton's and have been in Greggs only once, to try their 'famous' vegan sausage rolls.  That was a damn good marketing story, I have to admit.  Once was enough.

We like our flowers in the town, as you can see.   In places they can be overdone and the town council is always messing with them but in general I'm in favour.  

This was probably the best of the street shots that day:

The magnet that was drawing the ladies in was Coleraine's bestest department store which was just to my left.  There was a guy outside, just out of shot, collecting money for 'Getting kids off the street and into fishing'...one of the more bizarre groups that you get asking for money every time you are in town. You can see his table and collecting buckets.  In the twenty minutes or so I was there he seemed to do pretty well.

The last one for today.  Another shot from the hip:

I liked the social distancing here - these guys talked for some time while the little girl stood patiently.  The older guy on the left was masked, the other one wasn't. The ubiquitous 'Poundland Shop' in the background advertising Amazing Value Everyday.  Menarys, on the right, is a smallish clothing store with a restaurant which caters for the traditional eater (home-cooked and piled high, best for potatoes and meat). The fact that it's home-cooked means I'd go there rather than Greggs but unless things are desperate I'll usually pass on both and eat at home. 

Probably like a lot of High Streets in the UK Coleraine's has undergone a bit of a revolution in recent times.  Most of the established stores have gone, or are in the process of going.  Replaced by chains of cafes, Charity Shops and £1 stores.  And Chemists/Pharmacies...Coleraine seems to have a lot of them, for some reason.  Probably as we're not a very healthy nation (see Greggs, above). 

American Girl

I liked a lot of Tom Petty's songs back in the day and American Girl was a good 'un.  This shot was from a couple of years ago when Missy & I paid a visit to The Brother.  We had gone downtown Chicago to see some prints of a certain Mr Ansel Adams and this was taken on Michigan Avenue on the Hasselblad with a standard 80mm lens:

On Fotospeed Oyster RC paper.

I printed it this morning (that would be yesterday if you're reading the day of publication) and was just using up some old paper that, well, needed using up - in this case some 5"x7" RC paper.   So the image itself is a whopping 10cm x 10cm in size.  Actually it's kinda cute, this small.  I should do more this size.  When I started printing seriously again, a few years ago, I couldn't wait to print big.  And yes, big is beautiful but small is rather nice too, I'm finding.

The print is much nicer than the scan, by the way, which looks a bit dull on my screen.  

I seriously need to get out and about this week and snap something interesting but it's still busy as heck out there.  One more week and schools will be starting up again and hopefully everyone will bugger off back to their homes...I mean their first homes.   The weather is starting to change as autumn is nearly upon us - we had a serious bit of wind here last night which meant this morning I've been out tidying up - small branches and detritus everywhere.  I'm not mad keen on summer here as a time for photography but the light is starting to get a bit cleaner and the stronger winds will bring more interesting skies so I'm excited for the coming months.  

The Lads

 A few of us film-shooters ventured out last week just to see if the place was as we left it six months ago.  (It was, strangely enough).  It was a Nikon day for me - the FM3a had the 180mm on it and these were taken with it (which also goes to show that we were 'social distancing', or at least for these shots anyway).  First up we have Mr Lee, who although is the right side of 40, likes his film gear.  He's particularly fond of Exacta cameras (and let's face it, who isn't?).  Well, he was, until his camera mysteriously stopped working one time we were all out last year.  Actually most times we are out together something disastrous happens....we're still trying to work out who it is that is bringing the bad luck.  

A film waster.

Next up we have Mr David, who seems to be in the process of collecting any film camera that comes his way.  Sounds like a good plan, if you ask me...

And another one.  Both on HP5+ printed on Fotospeed RCVC Oyster paper.

Unlike David, I try to show a modicum of restraint these days with my camera-buying but my resolve wilted the other day when I was offered a decent looking black Nikon F2a at a 'friend' price.  The F2a is the one with the matched needle display instead of those 'orrible new-fangled LED things in the newer F2as.  I didn't need it, but I wanted it.  The F2 was the iconic camera of the '70s when I was a lad and it's a beast compared to, say, the Olympus OM-1 but it is a thing of beauty and I love it.  I think you could probably drive over an F2 and it would still work...it feels as tough as old boots.  I'm seriously considering selling the FM3a as having two Nikons is a bit of overkill.  It would be the sensible thing to do...but sense and me don't always go together like they should. We'll see.  

Watch

This was my wife's grandfather's watch, which was given to him by his Army mates while serving in the Middle East.  He was from the South of England but was won over by a good Irish girl and settled in Derry.  The rest, as they say, is history.

FP4+ on Foma 133 fibre paper in Multigrade Print Developer

Taken on the Hasselblad, with a slightly wide angle 60mm lens and a 21mm extension tube.  The tube lets you get pretty close - this was almost full-frame and must be pretty close to 1:1.

Unfortunately, as you can see, the lid has sustained a bit of damage over the years - I had to resort to good old BlueTac to set it roughly in place.  It was a very temporary solution - from time to time the lid would start to close as the BlueTac gave way and given that my shutter speed was a few seconds that was not a Good Thing.  But it held long enough this time around.

Using an extension tube on the Hasselblad needs a bit more care and attention than on most cameras.  There's a sequence that must be followed - tube on body first, then lens on tube.  Reversal is the opposite and woe betide you if you remove tube and lens together.  The reason for all this palaver is that the shutter on the V-Series Blads is in the lens, so there is a mechanical linkage between the body and the lens.  This drive shaft allows the shutter in the lens to open when the shutter release button on the body is pressed.  The len's shutter must be cocked before mounting to (and from) the body and so the body must be cocked as well.  There are 'red dots' which must be aligned but the general rule is Keep body and lens cocked before removing (or attaching) the lens.  The easiest way to keep things right is advance the film to the next frame immediately after taking a shot.

I've nearly been caught out using an extension tube.  It's OK when mounting it on the body but once after a long session I found myself about to remove tube and lens together.  The tube is black, like the lens, so it's hard to notice.  I stopped myself just in time but I thought they should have made the tube a bit more conspicuous - bright yellow, perhaps. 

Gone fishing

It's a few years since I've been fishing but when I was a lad it was a common occurrence, usually with Brother, Grandfather and Uncle.  Needless to say all the gear is still here and while it warrants a better job than you'll see here I wanted to see how it photographed, so I laid a few things out and snapped them up on FP4+:

Flies, reel and fishing knife on Foma 133

The print isn't as murky as you see here but neither is it substantially better, so I need to work a little on it. Actually this print was from a couple of weeks ago and I’ve since discovered that “the look” you see here is down to how Foma 133 reacts with Fotospeed's Warmtone WT-10 developer.  It just makes the whole thing a little too 'warm'.  Foma 133 performs better in straight Multigrade, I have since found and that’s what I’ll be using next time. Perhaps with a fishing rod as well and even a freshly caught salmon - although that might be pushing it a bit.  We'll see.  

My grandfather and uncle were both keen fishermen all their lives and it was the usual Saturday activity for a few years of my life.  My grandfather tied his own flies, so there's quite a collection of them.  It was proper course fishing, for salmon and trout (and the odd flatfish that was usually thrown back with disdain).  Salmon and trout, on the odd occasion they came, were taken home for the plate.

When the fish weren't taking the fly, then it was worm, or spinner.  Mostly worm, actually - Saturday mornings would be taken up with digging up a patch of the garden for a few dozen earthworms which were stored along with a little earth in an old jam jar with a few holes tapped out of the lid for air.  If you dig nowadays you'd be lucky to see a worm but back in the '70s they were plentiful.  What's all that about, eh?

Just a few of the spinners and Mepps that we used

 

Some of the spinners you see here were home-made - usually the simple copper ones.  Others were store-bought - like the Mepps which you can see in the along the bottom, right and top of the print.  They were strange things, with a colourful oblong disc which spins around the hook.  Due to the way they operated, an anti-kink device was required to counteract the spin, otherwise your line ended up fouling.   

Not fouling as much as if you were unlucky enough to catch an eel, mind.  Eels were the last thing you wanted on the end of your line.  They fought with the strength of a decent fish but would try to wrap themselves around any old half-submerged post or tree trunk and if they succeeded, you could say goodbye to your hook and a good few few yards of your line as well since most times the only way forward was to admit defeat and cut your line.  On occasion you'd be able to land one and then the fun really started.  Once on dry land, an eel was like a thing possessed and would wrap itself around your line several times - you had no chance of getting a grip on it long enough to cleanly extract the hook.  The only way forward (again) was to cut your line and then cut the damn eel into small pieces until life had expired, the thing had stopped wriggling and you could get your hook out.  Then you'd have to tie another cast on your line and attach the hook and re-bait it before you could resume.  It was, as you can imagine, a messy affair.  By the end, your hands would be full of eel scales, blood and guts and the place looked like a massacre had taken place - which it had, pretty much.  Eels were bad news.

By the time I was going fishing, there weren't many fish being caught - and there's a lot less these days by all accounts.  No, the day was mostly about being outside in the open air, in a beautiful part of the world. You came home pretty exhausted from casting several hundred times and walking a few miles up and down the riverbank in full thigh-length waders and waterproof coat, carrying fishing bag full of gear and a couple of rods. And your lunch, which mum had made in the morning - sandwiches, an apple and maybe a couple of biscuits.  I'm not sure hygiene was top of the list in those days - probably a quick rinse of the hands in the river was all they got.  It didn't seem to harm us, anyway.  They were great days and I loved them, fish or no fish.  Then as I got older the fishing Saturdays were replaced with working Saturdays, in my part-time job in the photographic department of a local Chemist's shop - which I also loved, but the memories of the fishing expeditions will always be a bit special.

Me and John Hume

Silly title of course - it should me John Hume and me, since he had an ever-so-slightly higher profile that yours truly. In case you hadn’t heard, Nobel Laureate and Politican John Hume passed away this week. His funeral in Derry took place yesterday. 

It is difficult to underplay the impact John Hume had in the politics of this part of the world. He was instrumental in the Civil Rights movement in Derry in the late 1960s. Fast forward 20 years and he was the guy who brought Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, to the table for peace talks.  Then he became a principal architect of the Good Friday Agreement.  He received (jointly, with David Trimble) the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998. He was human, though, so he didn’t get it right 100% of the time, but then again, Who did?  

When I joined the academic staff of Magee, Ulster University’s Derry/Londonderry campus, I was put forward as the University’s representative on a forum that went by the name of the Derry Investment Initiative. The role of DII was to drive inward investment to the City, initially from the US and later from Dublin. John Hume was DII’s secret weapon.

Nothing to do with John Hume - just a still life of some old stuff.  Darkroom print from Ilford FP4+ on Foma 133 paper.

So for a few years, I was invited to DII’s various initiatives to try to bring employment, primarily in STEM subjects, to the city. Perhaps once or twice a year we would jet off to Washington DC or Dublin and 'do the rounds'...talk to business leaders and potential investors at large Organised Events and do some hospitality at smaller functions.  I was there to represent the University and sing the praises of the (high) quality of our graduates, particularly in the fields of Computing & Engineering.  It was an easy job.  The Mayor was there to represent the City in an official capacity. Others were there from Government, to talk about the various support measures available. A few Business leaders were there to tell their stories from the coal face, so to speak and Mr Hume was there (in name if not always in person) to get people’s attention and open doors. This was, remember, shortly after a serving US President came to Derry at Mr Hume’s invitation, so he had some serious clout in Washington.

These were interesting events...a far cry from my usual day of University teaching, research and admin.  We got to speak to some big tech companies - where everyone was VP of something or other.  (I quickly learnt that job titles in these companies meant diddly-squat).  One one occasion we got to Capitol Hill, though it was a rushed affair. I can’t even remember the name of the Senator or Congressman we spoke to but it was pretty obvious that minutes before we arrived he’d redecorated his office with an Irish Flag and other bits&pieces relating to the Emerald Isle. I got the impression as we left after our allotted 20 minutes that his staff were getting ready for his next visitors from Mexico or wherever.  He was well enough briefed, he listened well and said all the right things.  Who knows what, if any, impact came of it.  His staff, I do recall, could have easily got second jobs with Mr Hugh Hefner, by the way - young, leggy, highly-presentable girls with curves in all the right places.  As I say, they were interesting times.

The Dublin events were more intimate affairs where we would book a room in a nice restaurant and invite just a few potential investors to enjoy 'An evening with John Hume (and the Derry Investment Initiative)'.  The food was top class and Mr Hume would lead the evening's discussion.  As the evening wore on, we'd all said our piece and everyone around the table relaxed Mr Hume would have everyone's attention as he related various stories and anecdotes about his times in Washington and as Member of the European Parliament.  He was always discreet but very, very entertaining and gave everyone there a little insight into his world.  Fascinating stuff.  I remember one story he told about former House Speaker Tipp O'Neill when he first visited Derry.  John had done his homework and as they went for a drive around Donegal he was able to point out the various places that Tipp O'Neill's ancestors had come from not so many generations ago (his grandmother came from Buncrana, a small town in Donegal not far from Derry).  As they came across the shell that would have made up the ancestral home John stopped the car, got out and handed one of the stones to Tipp for him to take back to Washington with him - to sit on his desk and remind him of his Irish roots.  It was, John related, quite an emotional moment for Tipp and it sealed a very strong friendship between the two men.  

Mr Hume was very well known in Derry, of course, and although he moved in very different circles to the rest of us in many respects he never really left the city.  He could often be seen at the University, where he would wander into the canteen on his own and sit down between the students and staff to eat his lunch.  He was always happy to chat to anyone who chose to sit down beside him - there were no airs and graces and he'd be the first to ask How are things or What's new in your life?  A colleague recounts John sticking his head around the door of an ongoing seminar and saying 'Well boys, Who wants to meet President Clinton next week?'.  Now there's a question you don't get asked every day of the week...

It was a cruel fate that dementia robbed John Hume of much of his dignity in recent years.  He was, from what I read, unable to remember pretty much anything of his remarkable life.  I feel very lucky to have met him and to have spent so much time in his company.  His impact on the politics and life in this part of the world will be felt for many years to come.

John Hume, 1937-2020

Back At the Show

I revisited the Ballymoney Agricultural Show negatives the other day and printed a couple that I thought warranted a second look.

'Catching up', Ballymoney Show 2019. Kenthene paper.

I like the gentleman's ruddy complexion in comparison to the lady's.  Clearly he spends a lot of time outdoors.  The rosette marks him out as a judge, by the way - not a Category Winner ;)

"Family Day Out".  Adox MCC paper.

I had high hopes for the 2020 Agricultural Shows, as I found them a good opportunity to waste even more film than usual, but obviously they had to be cancelled.  Hopefully next year - if we're all living and spared - things will get back to something near normality and the Shows will be running again.