I've known A for over 40 years, which sounds like a long time when you read it out loud. She now lives in the Big Smoke over there in England but returns home to her roots every now and again and we usually head out for a walk on the beach or similar when she's here. I'm not sure A would thank me for this shot, taken on a windy day outside Babushka Café in Portrush but I like it a lot. Not solely because of the presence of my friend, but of the significance of the scene captured - our catch-up chat after the walk (inclement weather notwithstanding - raincoat and scarf were, I suspect, very necessary), the tabletop with tea (me), cappuccino (A), water, phone and with the sea and clouds just visible on the left. Pre-mask days, in case you were wondering...although I only just uncovered this shot and printed it yesterday morning. The story behind that continues below...
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| Sit down and a tea in Portrush, no doubt after a bracing walk along the West Strand. From the look of it most likely a 21mm lens, which means it must have been the M6. FP4+ in HC-110 (1:31, 9mins). Printed on Ilford MG Fibre Classic paper. I've not used the gloss version of this before but it's rather nice. |
You might recall I was doing a sweep of my 35mm cameras the other day and not only found a film lurking in the M6 but there was also one in the OM-1. So I finished it up on Saturday with some Still Life and headed into the darkroom to develop said film. It didn't go smoothly. I couldn't figure out why the damn thing wasn't going onto the reel (Paterson) as it should - the last 6 inches or so resolutely refused to budge, no matter how many times I 'gently' tapped the side of the reel. I decided the best course of action was to rip off the bit of film that wasn't loading, hoping that there weren't too many masterpieces on it. Fast-forward to lifting the film out of the Photo-flo prior to hanging it up to dry and What do I find? Two films! What the heck...two films connected by sticky tape - the same sticky tape I use when bulk loading. Somehow I got my cartridges mixed up and ended up adding a length of new film onto the end of a film already exposed. That's a first for me. So the reason the last few inches of film was refusing to go onto the reel was that the reel was full. D'oh!
It’s a nice image. The scarf has it. I’m away with friends I’ve known for over 50 of my 56 years at the moment in Norfolk for a week. Chasing those big skies, which had been elusive till last night. Plenty of wind mind. A bit more sun would help with the B&W as I’m not adept at getting the most out of a film in the typical UK greyness. I sympathise with your reel issue. I don’t bulk load myself as I don’t use enough film but I have been known to stick a few inches of the end of an unexposed but developed film onto the film leader to eek out two more frames from a roll. I know, tight-waddery at its best, but I love a bargain, and with film the price it is these days, I feel it’s justified. Anyway, think of the carbon footprint and all that. I’ve not rolled any of the taped section into a tank yet though, but there’s still time!
ReplyDeleteThanks. Norfolk sounds good - hope the cloud gods are kind to you! I bought a load of film last time I was visiting the brother in the States...it was quite a bit cheaper to buy Ilford film there than here at the time (always hard to get my head around that). I don't shoot a lot of 35mm these days so I've still some in the fridge. I usually load about 25 exposures per roll (or 10 if I'm running some tests) as I find that's enough for me - otherwise the film stays in the camera for too long. See above :)
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