Where we go

Not the best shot of my Fellow Film Shooter David but it shows the sort of place we end up on our weekly outings...down by Portstewart last week, looking out over the Atlantic.  That's a big ol' Pentacon Six he has on his tripod...East German thing made from the 60s to the early 90s.  It's a heavy beast, at 1.7kg without a lens.  A quirk of the loading system is that you can get 13 frames from a roll of 120 film - so that's a nice bonus.  Or, it means you've even one more shot to take to finish the film, which of course you always want to do when you get to the last couple of frames...

David at Portstewart, 2021.  'Blad, 50mm, FP4 in RO9, on Foma 313 paper.

It might not look it but this is one of the safer places to go when you want a seascape.  We're a good bit up from sea level and unless there's a really big storm on the main risk is from the wind rocking your tripod.  You get fishermen (fisherpeople?) who go right down to the lowest rocks before casting out and I think they are taking a hell of a risk.  As I think I wrote about before, when I was young our parents were friends with people who had a house very close to the sea in Portstewart.  One day the lady of the house was watching 3 people fishing from the rocks in front of her house and in the blink of an eye they were gone, taken by a freak wave.  She and her family had to move house as every time she looked out of her window it reminded her of the tragedy.  I get the attraction of the sea but it sure demands a lot of respect.