No peace

Saturday was bright and crisp - a nice late Autumn morning.  I ventured down to Portstewart with the TiTAN 4x5 pinhole and this was one of the shots that offered itself up to me, via Fomapan 200 film (rated at 50) and dev'd in ID-11 1+2 for 11mins.  Cropped in the darkroom and printed on MGV paper.  Exposure was about 5 seconds.

Looking out towards Portstewart Strand and the headland of Downhill.  Not quite sure what this little area is called, but it's close to Low Rock Castle, Portstewart.  Low Rock Castle is famous as being the birthplace of Field Marshall Sir George White, VC, defender of Ladysmith (Boer War).  It was originally a rather beautiful seaside villa dating from the early 19th Century but was demolished sometime in the early 2000s to make way for apartments.   As often in these parts it was pulled down illegally and the Department for Environment's Planning Service debated for several years about bringing a prosecution against the then owner.  In the end it did nothing, but it was too late anyway to prevent another bit of this area's rich heritage being lost for the sake of few coins.     

I was surprised by the number of people out and about - not surprised 'cos of COVID, as most were outside enjoying the air or queuing (and masked) for their coffee and pastry takeaways, but surprised as it's late November and usually the place is dead at this time of year.  When I looked closer, there was a lot of expensive cars on show - Jaguars, Range Rovers and BMWs (which seem to be around every corner these days).  It must, I concluded, be second-home owners, down from the Big Smoke (Belfast) for the weekend.  Ach is there no peace to be had anymore?

The Temple

You can see why photographers are drawn to Mussenden Temple, perched as it is on top of the cliff at Downhill.  On the shots you see on this place it's mostly in the distance and from the other side (as in this one), but last week my wife I went for a dander along Downhill Beach.  I had the F2 and 85mm with me that day and this was the last shot of the film.  It was a terribly low-contrast day so I gave it the lith treatment in the darkroom to try to lift it somewhat - not terribly successfully, but here it is anyway:

Mussenden Temple from Downhill Beach, 2020.  Lith, on Foma 133 paper.

This part of Downhill Beach is short but very spectacular.  The rocks up where the lady on the horse is need care, though, as the tide can come in pretty quickly and you could find yourself in a spot of bother.  My wife took her shoes off and had a paddle on the way back - the water is probably at it's warmest around this time of year, as it's had all summer to heat up.  She said it wasn't too cold.  I took her word for it. 

Music Tree

Once a week after school Missy goes to her music teacher for singing lessons.  It's a half-hour long and just outside town, so it's always a toss-up to stay put or drive back into town and pick up some groceries.  These days I'm trying to avoid shops as much as possible and anyway, most times I feel I've driven enough and just stay put.  If the weather's clement enough I'll have a dander about, though it's on a working farm and they seem to have an inordinate amount of heavy machinery in use, so care is required...I don't venture too far from the car. 

Anyway, this tree has caught my eye several times but I never seemed to find the right shot.  Until, that is, I had the F2 with an 85mm Nikkor attached.  I developed the print in lith, on Foma 133 paper.  Not all papers respond to lith but a lot of Foma's offerings do - and very nicely too, I might add.  Prints on 133 come out not quite as warm as the other varieties from this wonderful Czech company, like their Classic 131 and that means it suits certain subjects quite nicely:

Tree. Early November 2020. Fotospeed lith print, Foma 133 paper.

This was taken a couple of weeks ago - by now it's almost dark when we get to Music so there'll be nothing much to photograph.  Which means I'll be sitting in the car catching up on online stuff and watching the clock.  Bored, in other words.  

The Clothworkers

The building you see here is known as the Clothworkers Building, on the West Bank of the River Bann in Coleraine.  The Clothworkers was one of the wealthy London Guilds charged with improving the town of Coleraine in the early 17th Century - which was a good fit as Coleraine had a long association with the clothworking industry, from wool to linen and cotton.  Many of my mother's family worked in the mills which stood not very far from this building.  It was hard, dirty, noisy work - many workers went prematurely deaf.  The average life-span of the mill worker was anything from mid-forties to mid-fifties and the mill owners didn't fare much better - copious amounts of dust, dye and fluff and other undesirables to damage health. Tough times - and in those days of course there was no Health & Safety or unions to help the workers.

The Clothworkers Guild was awarded a large swathe of land stretching from the West Bank to the town of Limavady some 20 miles to the West.  They re-built the bridge across the Bann (which runs alongside the one you see here, a modern pedestrian and cycle bridge), built many new houses and helped found my old school, Coleraine Academical Institution (there's a still a Clothworkers' Prize awarded every year).  They also commissioned construction of this building, which reportedly cost £2000 in 1844 - it was on, or close to the site of an old, dilapidated castle from medieval times.  Initially it served as a hotel but I'm not sure what, if anything, it is used for today.   At one stage there were retail outlets on the ground floor and I think I recall seeing something about serviced units being available for small businesses to rent but I don't know if that ever came to fruition.  

The Clothworkers' Company is still alive and well today.  If you're interested in finding out more about the history of the Guild, click here (it's well worth visiting, by the way). 

The Clothworkers Building, 2020.  Ilford MGV paper, sepia tone.  Via the F2 and 85mm Nikkor, on HP5+/ID-11.

It was a very pleasant morning when I snapped this up, but it wasn't the easiest negative to print as the bridge was in deep shadow while the sun on the building was as bright as bright can be.  The print wasn't great but a good soak in bleach put a little life back in the foreground and then a gentle sepia tone added some much-needed warmth.  MGV seems to take sepia a little better than I recall MGIV ever doing, which can only ever be a good thing.  

Pumpkin Head

 Last weekend (or was it two weekends ago - I forget & time seems to be moving faster than ever these days) we all sat down and carved our pumpkins.  Of course the first thing everyone does is reach for the their phones to Google Pumpkin Head Designs.  Needless to say, some turn out better than others.  It's a messy affair, but we had a fun couple of hours, carving them, then putting tea-lights inside and finally judging them.  My wife is better at these sorts of things than I am - she had chocolate bars for the winner, runner-up and last place...so pretty much everyone under the age of 50 got something. I stuck the little Voigtlander 21mm on the M6 and propped it up on the table - shutter speeds were on the low side.  It was a risky thing to do, with bits of pumpkin flying about and sharp knives lying around but cameras are for using.  This was the best of the bunch:

Messy, but a whole lot of fun.  Pumpkin Carving in 2020.  On MGV RC paper.

Progress

Progress of sorts, I guess.  We're about to see our local Technical School Building demolished.  It's quite a Big Thing in Coleraine, as it taught a whole lot of folks who found work in the area - generations of the same family, probably.  Hairdressers, welders, brickies, electricians, plumbers, mechanics...any trade you could mention, I reckon. The original, red-brick building dates from 1930 and is architecturally interesting but there's an adjoining 1960s high-rise block which has no real aesthetic qualities at all and won't I suspect, be missed.  I took a walk around it the other day and I was glad I did, as there were one or two (only, mind you) parts that caught my eye.  Like this one, for example

A bit of Coleraine Technical College, 2020.  On Ilford MGV paper.  The jury is still out with MGV - I'm not sure I'm really warming to this paper.  It's not very subtle, from my initial experience of it.  

Strictly speaking this doorway wasn't part of the original College, but an adjoining Church Hall which was acquired by the College quite recently.  However, it is all, I am led to believe, about to be demolished and a new build started on the site.  It will certainly be a talking point in Coleraine for some time, as it occupies a pretty central location and one which most people drive past every day - sometimes several times a day if like me, you are doing school runs.   The School Run is a funny thing - I've only about 6 more months to do - and maybe less if Missy passes her driving test in the meantime.  I wonder if I'll miss it when I am no longer called to do it.  I doubt I will - there will be other aspects to home life that I'll miss more when that time comes...

Minor Miracle

Well the minor miracle is that I finally got to the end of the film in a couple of cameras. It’s good to be back in the game but I did feel decidedly rusty in the darkroom this morning (Sunday, as I write this).  This one I took when ‘up the town’ last week one early-ish morning, when the light was rather soft & lovely. I poked the F2 and 85mm lens through the railings of St Patrick’s Church and this was the result, on Foma 133 paper:

St Patrick's Churchyard, Coleraine, November 2020

I quite like the 85mm focal length - it's about the longest I use these days for general photography.  The 105mm Nikkor has the better reputation, but it's a longer, bigger lens - the 85mm isn't much different in size to the 50mm.  I think I'd even prefer something even shorter, if they made it - something around the 75mm focal length.  I can always use the Vivitar variable focussing 35-85mm but it's a bit of a beast of a thing and besides, I'm not a great fan of zoom lenses - it takes away from the spontaneity of the thing, I find.  I like to walk about with one prime lens and after a while I find that I 'get my eye' in for that focal length.  

The Fringe

 Not the TV series (which I thought was pretty watchable until the whole double-universe thing started, which just tipped over the edge of believability for me), but this fringe here, on you-know-who:

On Ilford MGV paper.  Cropped from the square, as it seemed to work best like that.

As you can see, I was breaking the rules here by taking Missy's shot as she squinted directly into the sun.  It's super-contrasty - and I find that MGV is a much more contrasty paper than its predecessor, which I'm not always in the mood for.  Anyway, I like the shadows of her curls falling across her face.  The fringe comes and goes as the notion takes her - I guess most teenage girls experiment a fair bit with 'their look' before they settle.  As for me, I'm still experimenting with my look - although not with the hair, since I lost most of that a good while ago...

Plant Sprayer

I'm a bit behind with my printing at the minute - there are several half-finished films inside various cameras which, no doubt, contain many, many masterpieces.  If only I could get my finger out and finish said films then I could share them.  For the moment, though, I give you one from earlier in the year when I was in 'Still Life' mode.  The thing, I think, is for spraying plants.  From the Sinar, cropped to square, if I remember correctly:

FP4+ Delta, on Foma 133 paper.

The original scan you see here - from my old Epson flat-bed - wasn’t particularly good, so I scanned it again at higher resolution and cropped it, just to see how the texture detail was resolved.   On my hard drive this comes in at just over 11Mb (I'm not sure if/how Blogger re-jigs images, though):

Higher resolution scan of the same print

 

It’s not the most interesting objet d’art but on close inspection the metal/chrome bits look pretty good I think.

Life is slowly returning to some sort of normality.  School starts again tomorrow, after an extended 2-week half-term break.  I might have to set the alarm for the morning, given the fact that we put our clocks back last weekend.  I'm usually awake much earlier than I need to be, but of course when you need to get up earlier than usual that's guaranteed to be the one morning you sleep in.  Then it's a horrible mad rush to the start of the day, which I'd rather avoid.