Portrush

 View from the harbour wall looking at the West Strand:

Portrush, Spring 2021.  On MGV paper.

The big building on the left is the Town Hall (with a new block of apartments beside it).  Towards the right there's the clock tower of the Railway Station and in front of that you've got Barry's Amusements, which has been there for 70-odd years and is famous all over Northern Ireland.  There's a big dipper thing just out of shot to the right.  It's the place we all went to once a year, when we had our pennies saved up for the machines and the bumper cars.  I hear it's up for sale - either for redevelopment or as a going concern.  I suspect whoever buys it will knock it down and put up a whole load of apartments, which will command stratospheric prices given their proximity to the beach and the water.  It'll be the end of an era if it goes, that's for sure.

And if you click on the image for full screen you'll probably be able to make out a Dominos Pizza shop.  They're everywhere these days and to my mind they make awful pizzas (though Missy disagrees).  Almost as bad as the big yellow and red M. 

I've lots of newer negatives queued up to print but it was a scorcher here yesterday (that means 70 degrees) and I just couldn't bring myself to go into the darkroom.  We sat outside and enjoyed the warm air - a rare treat in this part of the world.

Lines and washing

 See what I did there?  Washing lines - geddit?  Here's today's masterpiece for your delectation - lines everywhere and the aforementioned washing out on one of them:

Washing Day, Portrush, 2021.  MGV paper.

I've a thing about washing out on the line and some day I'm going to have a whole series of shots on this subject.  I don't know why it attracts me but it does.  It's not what's on the line, it's just the fact that the washing is hung out to dry in the wind (not that the washing in this shot would get much wind, mind you - hat's off to the folk for trying, though).  I think it's because as we get more gentrified it is becoming less and less 'the done thing' to hang your washing out.  I suspect in parts of the world there are bye-laws which prevent people from doing it - "It's just so common, darling - don't you think?" The only alternative is to use the tumble dryer, which consumes electricity and costs £ but it means the neighbours can't see the state of your smalls or the fact that your whites aren't that white any more.  First world problems, eh? Newer houses and apartments often don't have the space for a line but older properties do and thankfully it's still relatively common around these parts to see the bed-sheets out blowing on what my mother would call a good drying day. 

Hopefully if I get the chance to point a camera at a few lines of washing I'll not be arrested for being some sort of perv. You never know these days - a lot of people seem to have a problem with people touting 'proper' cameras, whereas if you're using a phone you're more or less invisible. Strange times we live in...

Portstewart by Pinhole

 Another suitably moody shot of our little Portstewart, via the 4x5 TiTAN pinhole, some Fomapan 200 and MGV Deluxe paper.  Cropped a little as there was a tad too much foreground in the original shot:

Portstewart Prom, 2021

I've been having 'issues' with my 4x5 development recently.  As you might recall, I switched from Uniroller Drum to processing in open trays and the last few times there have been weird white lines appear on the negatives - like there:

Strange artefacts on me neg

My first thought was I've a light leak in the darkroom, since (a) I'm working with open trays for the best part of 20 mins (11mins dev, 1 min stop, 5 mins fix) and (b) it's summer and there's the chance of more light coming in from the door, or window, despite curtains and black-out material.  But it's not light leaks, since light on a negative appears black (white on the positive print).  That really only leaves a processing error and I'm at a bit of a loss to know what that might be.  I'm wondering about uneven agitation but I turn the negatives over every 30seconds for the first 5 minutes (and then once a minute) and with each turn the tray gets rocked a few times so an agitation problem seems unlikely.  The lines are too closely spaced and too regular to suggest the negative is not fully immersed in the chemicals.  I've already lost quite a few negatives and given the cost if it continues then I'll go back to the Uniroller, which is a lot easier anyway since once the negs are loaded and the tank is closed then the whole thing happens in daylight. 

Any suggestions?

Patterns

Still at Downhill Beach, but looking East this time, towards Portstewart/Portrush.  I liked the patterns in the sand (as well as the rocks):

Downhill Beach via the 'Blad/50mm/FP4+ in RO9, printed on MGV.

I think I've gone a little Fred Picker-y with this series of prints on the rock formations.  In my defence, the closer I look at the rocks the more interesting they become.  I guess at one point, a few years ago, it was all rock here.  These craggy old dinosaurs will disappear too in the fullness of time, I guess, as the Atlantic Ocean continues to do its thing...  

Inishowen...

 ...as seen from Downhill Beach the other week:

Downhill Beach, looking over to Donegal.  Via the 'Blad, 50mm Distagon and some FP4+.  Printed on MGV paper.

It will be nice to be able to go over to Donegal again.  It is a lovely county and since it's in Euroland you feel like you are really 'on holiday' when there.  I think the travel restrictions have lifted but I'm not keeping up to date with all the changes.  For a while there we Northerners couldn't go over the border without a very good reason.  It didn't make much sense, though, since there were no restrictions for people living over there who wanted to come over here.  Not exactly joined-up thinking but there you go.  

Downhill by pinhole

 Pretty much the same shot as this one, but taken the day before and on the TiTAN 4x5 pinhole:

Downhill Beach, on the 4x5 pinhole.  Fomapan 200, ID-11 on MGV paper.

I had to wait for this one, as a couple passed just in front of me as I was all set up and ready to shoot.  No problem, I thought, they'll carry on down the beach and be out of shot in a minute or two.  Alas, not to be.  They turned towards the sea just past me and ambled as slowly as possible straight out.  Eventually, eventually when they met the sea they turned right and continued at their leisurely pace until they were out of shot about 10 minutes later.  Bear in mind we were the only people on the beach at that time.  Ain't that typical?  It's a free world and all that but why did the world's slowest walkers have to be right there right then?!

Gortmore and Manannan Mac Lir

 I was up at Gortmore the other other day with the pinhole.  It lies just west of Downhill - past the beach and then up the Bishop's Road towards the table-top mountain known as Binevenagh.  It's not quite on the scale of that other table-top mountain somewhere a bit south of here but it's still pretty awesome, overlooking Magilligan & the Foyle Estuary and with grand views North and West to Donegal.

A few years ago they put a sculpture of Manannan Mac Lir there, arms outstretched to the heavens.  Mac Lir (Son of the Sea) is a warrior and king in Irish Mythology and if you're interested in such things then you could do worse than start here.  The statue makes for a good photograph but I struggled to find a decent composition that doesn't include the road or the small car park below.  Although I had the 21mm viewfinder atop the 4x5 pinhole there was still a bit of guesswork involved.  Fortunately the pinhole seems to be a bit wider than 21mm so there was a bit of leeway for error, although this is almost full frame:

Manannan Mac Lir at Gortmore.   Walker TiTAN 4x5 pinhole & Fomapan 200, on MGV paper.

I find myself metering more for the highlights these days when I'm out photographing landscapes.  The Zone System (yes, that one...) gives an easy way to place the highlights (or shadows, if you prefer the other approach) anywhere you want on the scale, from black to white.  Usually I spot-meter the brightest object in the scene (sky, usually) and open up 2 stops.  It's an easy way to avoid blown highlights.

Mac Lir is a bit lost in the murk of the sky in the print above.  This was my first print (a straight print with a bit of burning in on the sky).  I made several more, attempting to dodge the sculpture without compromising the sky behind but none came out any better than this, so I gave up.  I think there's a better print that this one in this negative so I shall try again, perhaps making a mask so that yer man is a bit more visible.

Still here

 At Downhill Beach, that is.  And still alive - just.  Today is the day we've all been looking forward to in the McNeill household - the last day of A Level assessments. It's 7.53am as I type this and in about 30 minutes or so I'll be taking Missy to school for the penultimate time (tomorrow is her last official day - and end-of-year BBQ, weather permitting.  That last bit is probably the important bit, since we had sleet showers yesterday and temperatures are hovering around zero this morning, due to an icy blast coming from the North).   Anyway, the end of the madness is nigh - at 3.30pm today we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.  The house needs a serious clean and we are all in need of some R&R.  That's about as far as the plans go at the moment.

So this is the last of the shots from Downhill I printed last week - though probably not the last in the series.  I hope I'm not boring you - and I also hope I'll be able to get out&about a bit more regularly from now on, so a little more variety is on the cards for the near future.  

This shows the biggest stack in Downhill Beach and in fact its really only visible once you pass it and look back...from the other side it looks like the cliff face until you are really close to it.  We're looking West in this shot, so that's Donegal/Inishowen in the far background.

More rock formations on Downhill Beach.  On the Blad/FP4/MGV paper.

I'm standing almost directly underneath the Mussenden Temple at this point and when you look up at it, several hundred feet above, you get a new appreciation of how mad the location is, right at the edge of the cliff face.  It's nuts!

Rocks

 As I mentioned last time, the rock formations on Downhill Beach are quite spectacular. I don't think I would every tire of looking & photographing them - each one is unique and differently coloured.  Well, light gray, dark gray, black and every tone inbetween, so ideal for my sort of photography.

Downhill beach, 2021.  On the 'Blad, 50mm lens, FP4+ printed on MGV paper.

That be Donegal/Inishowen peninsular in the background, in case you were wondering. I burnt in the sky just a little in the print above and you can see I just caught the top of the rock a little as well.  I should probably have made a mask rather than jiggle a bit of card around and if I print this again that's just what I'll do.

Aren't the rocks amazing?