Caps and Heads in Grainger Market

Grainger Indoor Market in Newcastle is a very interesting place with lots of stalls: Cuban street food, speciality cheeses and a very impressive fresh fish counter, complete with a guy shucking oysters to eat on the spot, if that be your thing.  I had a great time wandering around a few weeks ago with the mju-1 for company.  Saw this:

HP5+ on Foma 313 RC paper.

The proprietor came out to talk to me about 2 seconds after I snapped this up.  A friendly chap he was, although I think he was a bit disappointed when he saw I was more interested in taking photographs than purchasing a cap. "Needs to get a bit colder", he said, when I asked how business was going.  By now, I reckon he's a happier chap.

Sweet Dreams

 I never did find out what the Sweet Dreams were in Central Station, Newcastle:

A grand old station building in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne
Olympus mju-1, HP5+ on Foma 313 RC paper.

Imagine Peace

The Millennium Bridge in across the River Tyne links the city of Newcastle to the town of Gateshead.  Missy and I walked across it a couple of weeks ago and I snapped this one up with the Olympus mju-1 on HP5+:

Foma313 paper
The 'Imagine Peace' building just across the river houses the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art and a fine place to visit it is.  When we passed through, there was a superb exhibition of the photographer Frankie Raffles.  You can read about it here and I will write more about it in another post.  Did I say it was superb?  It was!

I have to say again how much I'm enjoying the mju-1 and so far it seems pretty faultless for a (very) compact point 'n' shoot camera.  It's a DX camera, so reads the barcode along the bottom of the canister for film speed, number of shots and film latitude.  Since I bulk-load from 100' rolls I needed to remember to use suitable-coded canisters, although it isn't too difficult to make up your own DX barcode if you feel so inclined - there is plenty of online help available. 

Our daughter is in the first semester of her Masters and had a bit of wobble a few weeks ago - a good excuse for me to drop everything and fly over for a few days.  The flight from Belfast takes about 40mins - so that's about 2 hours and 40mins given the amount of time you need to leave for airport security these days, which is so hard to predict.  Once in Newcastle, however, it's a doddle - the metro takes you from the airport to the centre of town in about 20mins.   Anyway, we had a good few days together and talked everything out, so I think she's going to be OK.  It was harder for her than she thought, what with being in a new University, a new city (much larger than what she was used to with Oxford), and not being particularly close to her undergrad pals or her boyfriend.  To be fair, I think the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate is a big one.  At Oxford, she was surrounded by her pals 24/7.  Moving four hours north, knowing no-one and living pretty much on your own in a strange new city was all proving a bit much for her.  Completely understandable.  Your undergrad days are rather special and unique, I think - it does take a lot of adjustment to come to terms with the fact that 'those days are over' and that actually this next stage of life is going to be very different.  Fingers crossed she has weathered the storm.  

Waiting

These punts on the River Cherwell were waiting for, well, punters, I suppose.  I snapped them from Magdalene Bridge:

HP5 via the Olympus mju-1; Kentmere fixed grade paper
A bridge has been here in one form or another for a good while - apparently the first reference to one was in 1004. Eh, I bet it could tell some stories.

Just to the rear are the glass houses of the Botanic Gardens - worth a dander around if you are ever in the area, very peaceful.  

London-bound

Travellers from Oxford heading to the Big Smoke:

Olympus mju-1; HP5+ on Kentmere graded paper
These days the High Street is off-limits to normal cars during the day but that doesn't mean it's a pedestrian's (or cyclist's) haven.  Far from it - taxis, buses, coaches and emergency services all have access, so it remains a busy street, albeit one with a lot less pollution as the City Council move towards zero-emission streets.

I like the reflection above the door of the bus, showing some fancy stonework on the building opposite.  I think we were just beside All Saints Church on the High Street, as we made our way towards Cowley Road for something to eat.  Cowley Rd lies just past Magdalene College and bridge (the College is just visible in the distance at the end of the High Street).  I guess you could say Cowley Road marks the start of the 'real Oxford' - where ordinary folk live and eat.  There are lots of interesting places at which to dine - we had an excellent Indian that evening.  Next door was a fruit and veg shop.  Not that I recognised most of the produce on offer - certainly not what we are used to here in Northern Ireland.  Pity, really. 

Cowley is synonymous with the car industry - Morris Oxford and Morris Cowley were two very popular cars - the Cowley was the name given to various cars in production from the around 1915 through to the '50s and I suspect most families had a Morris at one time or another back then.  Today it's the location of the BMW Mini plant which was just across the road from where our hotel was.  You quite often see  Mini Plant coaches around the city as they bus workers to and from the factory. 

Gentleman, in Oxford

One from my last walk around Oxford City Centre for a while:

HP5+ in Ilfotec HC, on old Kentmere fixed grade paper

I didn't look too closely at the gentleman before taking the shot and when I saw the print it made me wonder about his situation.  He is very well dressed, complete with long overcoat and rolled umbrella.  But he does have a lot of cases with him and what appears to be a can of beer on the ground beside him (and a coffee cup). If he wasn't so well dressed I might think he was a 'gentleman of the road', but that doesn't go with his attire.  He shall remain an enigma.

I took a little Olympus Mju-1 point 'n' shoot with me this time, to see how it would fare.  The answer was it fared pretty good.  These are tiny wee slide-across-clam-shell cameras, auto-everything with a 35mm f/3.5 lens and it worked a treat.  A contrasty lens which focusses down to 0.35m, which is rather useful at times. It's so small you can stick it in a coat pocket and not notice it, so it was perfect for this trip.

I should have read up about the camera a bit more than I did before taking it, as I've a nice date-stamp on all the negatives.  This feature can be turned off, I now know.  

Wesco

An old oil can, via the macro/fisheye extension lenses:

On Kentmere VC paper.

Better news on the kitty front.  Maisie's leg has still got the bandage on, but the wound is starting to heal over, so hopefully the bandage can come off soon.  She's doing well, eating and drinking normally and starting to put weight back on.  Still has a bit of a limp, but that's improving too.  She's getting frustrated, or bored, with life on the inside though - keeps going to look through the patio doors and then crying up at us to get out.  There's no way she is well enough to go out, though - there are too many potential problems for a kitty with a weak leg: foxes, cars, trees.  We're thinking her wandering days might be over for good.  So we need to get her more stimulated inside the house - a cardboard box might do the trick for a while, something new to explore.  And cheap, which after the vet's bills is no bad thing.  

Tractor Grease

 You never know when you might need it:

HP5+, HC-110, Kentmere VC Select paper
Another one from the OM4ti/50mm combination, with close-up and fisheye attachment.

We're not long back from graduation and a very pleasant time it was.  The weather was kind to us and it all went smoothly.  It's been a tough week though, with poor Maisie and her bad leg meaning we cut our trip short.  We ended up driving from Liverpool to Oxford on the Tuesday morning, graduation on the Wednesday and than back to Liverpool on the Thursday.  Lots of early starts and short sleeps on the ferry means we are all pretty exhausted.   Maisie wasn't in great shape when we got home - her leg did not smell good at all and the vet confirmed an infection had set in.  With antibiotics she has improved a good bit since then, but she needs a lot of attention and comforting.  She's started to eat and drink which the vet said would be the best thing to fight the infection.  It's back to the vets later today (Monday) to get an update.  She's not putting the leg down properly yet but she is beginning to move it a little.  If we can get the bandage off I think it might help with the movement side of things, but I guess it depends if the wounds have started to heal or not.  Hopefully it will be good news.

And here she is, The Graduate of 2024 (phone snaps):

Castlerock Beach (and a cat's tale)

Hold the front page I was actually out on the beach the other day - early(ish), to avoid the holidaymakers:

HP5+, 35mm lens; Kentmere VC paper, bleached in cupric sulphate then sepia toned.

Too much of the old sepia?  Maybe this one is easier on the eye:

Castlerock beach, looking over towards Inishowen/Donegal.

Note the tramlines - looks like I've gone over the negative with a razor blade.  This is what happens when you mess too much with winding half a film back into the canister and then loading it in a different camera.  Must have picked up some dust somewhere along the line.  Said canister is now in the recycling bin.

My life, I have found, bumps along OK for most of the time.  Then a dozen things happen at once.  This week, for example, we are off to Oxford for the graduation of the year.  My wife and I had tacked on a few days to ourselves before getting the ferry back from Liverpool.  Then our Tabby cat, Maisie, decides to throw a spanner in the works.  She went AWOL last Friday night - it was a warm night and she was last seen running around the garden like a mad thing as dusk descended.  Woke up Saturday morning and she was not in her usual place (bottom of our bed) and her biscuits (by her own bed) were untouched.  Probably sleeping somewhere outside, we thought - it has been known; she'll come back when she's hungry.  Didn't see her all day and as dinner time came and went we became increasingly worried.  Went out a few times to call her name, up and down the road, nothing.  A while later and we were alerted by her cries - she'd managed to drag herself home, got through the cat-flap and then collapsed.  Her front leg was dangling, clearly she was unable to lift/move it.  Hard to tell what happened but her paw looked crushed and her leg was lacerated, as if she'd tried to free it from something by pulling it out.  She was crying incessantly, clearly in pain.  So it was off to the vets with her.  The news isn't great.  We don't know for sure yet as they haven't x-rayed it but there's talk of amputation.  What can you do?  She's young (just turned 4) and otherwise in good health - she wants to live.  If - and it's a big if - there's a big improvement today then they might leave it alone to see how things go, but so far they haven't seen much change in her, in spite of strong painkillers and fluids.  The vets seem good and helpful so we're confident they will do the right thing.  She's not insured though, so this is going to hurt me as well as her.  Payment plans are available, we're told.  You can guess what that means.  In the meantime we are still going to Oxford, but abandoning plans for our mini-break afterwards and coming straight home.  I'll keep y'all posted on progress.  

Ramblings

It must be all the clearing out at my mother's place but I've taken to decluttering my film stuff lately, listing various bits of gear on that well-known auction site as well as locally.  I'd prefer to sell locally as the other place's charges are ridiculously high these days - 12.8% of the total amount of the sale (which includes postage, weirdly - how can they justify taking a cut of the cost of postage?), plus 30p (a bit random), plus a 0.42% 'regulatory operating fee', again on the total final value.   I had listed an old computer magazine (Personal Computing) from the early 1980s, just for fun really, to see if there was any interest; listed at 99p.  Amazingly it sold - someone paid £3.69 for it, included postage.  After fees, I ended up with...drum roll...41p.  Worth the hassle?  Absolutely not.  So I deleted all the things that I had listed for less than a tenner (which will now go to charity) and upped the postage costs on everything else.   

 Anyway, the point of today's ramblings is that I came across a lens attachment thing which I thought would be the perfect thing to sell, for maybe a tenner or so.  There were two parts to it - one was clearly a fish-eye optic and the other bit, which screwed on to the rear of the fish-eye, was a close-up optic. Bound to be rubbish quality, I thought.  But I noticed it had a 49mm thread.  Interesting,  I thought - both a bunch of Olympus OM and Pentax ME lenses take a 49mm thread.   Then I remembered I had half a film lurking in the Leica which I really should get finished and developed, which might mean I have something actually worth printing in the darkroom for a change.  So from the Leica I wound the film back into the spool (well, not completely, obviously), loaded it into the OM4ti, stuck it on manual, 1/2000 of a second at f/16 and in the darkroom, in a black bag for safety, fired off the half of the film that had been exposed.  Back in the light I attached the close-up/fisheye optic on the end of a 50mm Zuiko and headed to the garage to see what I could find to photograph up close.  This was one of the shots, after developing in HC-110 and printed Sunday morning on Kentmere VC Select paper that was kindly sent to me recently by an old friend whose daughter used to print some time ago.

Can you guess what it is?

I was right - rubbish quality, optically.  But the end result was most pleasing.  Bottom line, I'm keeping it.  I promise I'll try not to over-use it but it is tempting to go a bit mad with it, I reckon.

Oh, what is it?  It's a shot of an old (very old) motorists emergency Pifco lamp.  It has a red dome which would have flashed once upon a time and a headlight torch (the headlight is what you can see here, with the body of the lamp just about discernible to the right if you know what it is.  One of my father's purchases, no doubt, about 50-odd years ago.  Well done if you guessed correctly ;)

This man walked in space

Cet homme a marché dans l'espace was the headline in the Paris Match edition from 27th March 1965.  How do I know this?  Because yesterday, up in my mother's garage, I was holding this magazine in my hands, having discovered it (and a few others from that era) lurking in an old box.

The guy's name was Alexi Arkhipovich Leonov, a Russian Cosmonaut
- the first man to conduct a space walk (which lasted 12 minutes and 9 seconds). 

I'm guessing my father must have subscribed to Paris Match at a time; he was always interested in European languages and did all he could to keep up his knowledge of French, Italian, German and Spanish, having travelled all over Europe in his bachelor days - on his Triumph motorbike. 

Space exploration really took off in the 60s, of course and magazines like this would have offered readers a glimpse into these historic events - in colour.  It was still a few years before colour TVs became commonplace in Ireland.  We got our first colour set around June of 1976 and I remember being amazed by the fact that the tennis courts at Wimbledon were a vibrant green - who'd have guessed! 

From 1963 we have this edition which covered the coronation of Pope Paul VI - who looks like he's either about to go into space (or just arrived from space):

When I get time, I'll post some phone shots of the contents of these magazines.  For now, I've left them with my mother to peruse.

Film is alive in Ireland

A few years ago the local Photographic Club was gifted some old cameras and darkroom gear from a local school art department that was closing (the school was closing, not just the art dept).  As chief 'film and darkroom guy' at the club the stuff fell to me.  I helped one guy set up a darkroom in his house but he's since gone on to have a clatter of weans (that's children - wee ones - in case you aren't familiar with the vernacular) so I don't think he has the time for it right now.  Two other enlargers (Durst M670BW and Meopta Axomat) have been sitting in my garage for the last few years and there seemed little (i.e., no) interest from anyone else in the Club.  So I listed them on FB Marketplace, free of charge.  Yesterday a guy drove 3-and-a-half hours from the other end of the country to pick them up.  Over a cup of tea he explained his plans.  Originally from Belarus he started an online business a while back, digital printing service mostly, calendars, photobooks and the like.  He also offered a film processing service by mail order - the only one in Ireland, apparently.   Enter Covid and lockdown and his film processing service took off, since the shops were mostly closed.  He tells me he does about 500 films a month, so I guess film is well and truly alive in Ireland.  Though over 90% is C41 colour, for some strange reason ;)

He plans to open a community darkroom, hence his interest in the enlargers.  I wish him well - he seems to have the determination to make it happen and I was very happy to gift him the enlargers to help kick-start his efforts. 

What better way to start the week than with a photo of a cute lamb.
This one with my fellow Photo Club member Graham, who reared this little one a while back. 

Summer (what summer?)

This summer has been the worst weather-wise in a very long number of years.  A few warm, sunny days - and only a few.  Mostly it's been rain, rain, rain.  All day yesterday and more this morning.  At least it is warm. Yesterday I spent sorting out the garage, having a major clear-out that is needed every now and again.  I think it's partly because I am helping my mother clear out her place, little by little.  It's infectious.  And liberating, I must admit.  Mind you, usually when I throw something out I haven't used in years I'm looking for it about a week later...

Sand dunes at Portstewart, à la lith.

In other news, the Oxford adventure is over - Missy has finally vacated her shared house.  And...drum roll...the next adventure beckons.  She has been offered a place in Newcastle University to study for an MRes in Neuroscience.  The MRes is a Masters by Research - a 12 month thing.  There are taught modules in the first and second semesters - research methods, essential groundings in neuroscience and more specialist modules of the student's choosing, such as 'The biological basis of psychiatric illness and its treatment', 'Scientific basis of  neurological disorders', 'Sensory systems'.  Then it's into a 24-week research project where the student (under guidance of a supervisor) gets to grip with a lab-based project in the area of their choice, ending up with a 30,000 word dissertation.  Effectively the student takes responsibility for their own learning along the way and can attend various taught courses across the Faculty to support that learning.  I've always like the structure of the MRes - it seems to be more like how people learn 'in the real world' as opposed to being taught and assessed by exams (which were never Missy's forte).  Exciting times. My brother helpfully chipped in: By the end of her project perhaps she'll be able to finally fathom out what happened to her father's brain...

Stuff going on

One from the archives for your amusement today, since there's too much going on at the minute to get anywhere near a camera or the darkroom.  I dunno.  I thought being retired and all that would allow me just to kick back and sip expensive wine while I think about...nothing much.  But I'm getting busier every week it seems - and that wasn't in the plan.  Probably like others in my age group (I turned 61 a few weeks ago) I'm caught between helping the younger and the older.  Missy is trying to tie down a Masters course, in between her temp job cleaning the Oxford Colleges, so I'm helping with that (the study thing, not the cleaning thing).  And mother is needing more and more support.  She wants to try to clear out 60+ years of hoarding, in spare rooms, garage and outhouses.  Probably a good idea, but it falls on me to do it - under her supervision, of course.  Ah well, it's nice to feel needed, I guess.  There's a lot of spiders in those outhouses, that much I can tell you.

Street scene, downtown Chicago

A place to reflect

Inside another Sardinian Church.  I remember it being a nice place to cool off from the heat as well as being quiet and peaceful.  The perfect place to sit and gather your thoughts.

HP5@1600, OM4ti on Kentmere VC.

Imagery

Finally got around to developing that roll of HP5+ that had been lying around for a year or so - the one with the '1600asa' sticker on it, which meant a heady 11minutes in HC-110.  Printed on old Kentmere VC Select paper, which I think is fine but the negative was poor - a bit flat it was.  It was taken in one of those fine old churches in Sardinia and shows, well - you know who:

Via the OM4ti I think, probably 24mm Zuiko

No prizes for spotting where I did a little dodging under the enlarger :)

Triptych

A cloudscape, three versions, via an old Pentax on HP5 rated at 1600.  Kentmere VC Select paper.  Take your pick!

Banksy

 Around various places in Portstewart we have a bit of Banksy-esque street art.  This one is located half-way up the cliff walk, just below the Dominican School where I was a Board Governor for a time.  It's kind of tucked away in an alcove which at one time would have been a conduit from the School Grounds to the public walkway but at some point this has been bricked up - either to stop school kids playing truant or to stop members of the public walking onto the school property.  Either way, they used the cheapest bricks they could find, which clash somewhat with the beautiful old basalt stonework of the retaining wall around the school.  

The work represents (I guess) a small boy playing hide-and-seek (he's doing the counting bit, covering his eyes as he faces into the wall).  It's the sort of art work that I've found difficult to make a decent photograph from up to now - the location means it's all a bit dark and dingy.  Anyway, this represents the most successful I've been so far:

Our local Banksy-esque artwork.
On old Ilford Warmtone paper, bleached back and re-developed in hot lith.

If you are interested in the process, it goes something like this.  (Note - these are phone snaps from the darkroom). First, make a normal print (develop and fix as usual), give it a quick wash and then immerse it in a solution of cupric sulphate (hence the blueish-greenish colour of the liquid in the tray):

The bleaching process is slow to start but eventually things get moving:

Once we get going, the process accelerates and before long there ain't much left on the paper:

As you can see, just a faint image remains.  I pulled the print shortly after taking this snap.  Another short wash and then into the lith developer and after another few minutes you have the final print as shown above and below again (borders were added digitally to the scanned image of the print).  All is needs then is another fix and wash before leaving to dry.  The nice thing about the bleach and redevelopment process is that it can be done with the lights on, since the print has already been developed and fixed normally.  This is a good thing - normal lith work (i.e., using lith as the first development stage) means lights off/safelight only and it can be challenging to pull the print at the right time, ensuring good deep blacks while still retaining detail in the highlights.  

Black and...more black

Still not quite where I'd like to be vis-a-vis my photography and darkroom work, so it's another blast-from-the-past today.  This week the weather has finally taken a turn for the better, so it's been a week spent in the garden/patio, which is always enjoyable if hard work at times.  My wife took delivery of a new planter this week - built by a family friend.  It's slightly over-engineered (I reckon it'll still be standing should The North East Liberties of Coleraine ever experience an earthquake) but that's no bad thing.  And of course it had to be stained black (my wife has an obsession with black - don't ask me where that comes from but we have black kitchen door fronts, black appliances - which cost more than the white equivalents, of course; black framed greenhouse - you get the picture).  And a new planter meant a trip to the garden centre to populate it.  It does look good though, I have to admit.  I shall try to make a decent photograph of it for your amusement - black and white, of course :)

A hot day at Montrose Beach, on the shores of Lake Michigan

Peace

Peace has descended in the house after 2 weeks of busy-ness.  Firstly with Missy's 21st celebrations and secondly with catching up and having conversations about What happens next.  Still to be decided but her wish is to continue in education for at least another year.  That all depends on her degree results, which are due...drum roll...tomorrow!  Fingers crossed she will get a good enough grade to make her wish happen.

I've not managed to do anything photography-wise or darkroom-wise this week, so here's another oldie from a few years ago.  Appropriate, since I was out looking at this year's crop of gooseberries the other day.  They're coming on nicely.  I shall try to do something involving a camera with them again, before the missus gets to making her gooseberry chutney, which went down a storm last year.

Gooseberries.  The very devil to pick but worth it...I think!

Back in business

I was itching to get back to the darkroom yesterday so I took Chairman's Action, cleared out the junk that had been resting in it and did a short printing session.  Well it wasn't that short, to be honest, as I was working with the well-past-its-prime Ilford Warmtone paper.  So it was a normal print, bleached back in cupric sulphate and then washed in hot lith.  Takes a while, that does. This was it:

Ash, before the leaves came

Party's over

Today is a slow day - recovering from a busy yesterday when we had friends and family to celebrate Missy's coming-of-age (21).  It all went well, and we've plenty of leftovers to munch through today.  Although we didn't see much sun, it was pleasant enough to be able to sit out and eat in the garden, which is always enjoyable.  Various cats wandered by from time to time to see what all the noise was about.  Our own two, plus another stray that is trying very hard to attach itself to our household.  He's only a young thing and our Tabby isn't too enamoured at having him around (our Tortoiseshell is too aloof to care much about anything or anyone - she's too much of a diva to give a hoot).  The Tabby watches his every move.  Yet to see how that will pan out but it's interesting watching the dynamics. 

Down at the sea, near the Whiterocks just east of Portrush.  I remember this being a very windy day, and I tried to capture the movement in the dune grass in the foreground.

Out of commission

Not me, thankfully, but me darkroom.  Just for a couple of weeks as it's being used as a storage facility in preparation for our daughter's homecoming later this week and her 21st birthday celebrations.  Hard to believe she is rapidly becoming a young woman - teenage years receding into the distance.  Next up will be conversations about the plan for the future, which hopefully includes getting a real job.  She's not ready to come home any time in the foreseeable, that's for sure.  I think that's the right move - at that age I had no notion of coming back home either.  

So I'll revisit some old work for a week or two, until I can reclaim my dark place.  

One of my daughter's shots, at Portstewart Harbour a couple of years ago.
She caught the moment perfectly.

Bushmills

You may know of Bushmills from the whiskey.  The distillery lies just outside the village, and the river Bush flows through it:

On old Ilford Warmtone paper, printed as normal, then bleached back
and dunked in hot lith.  Didn't really give me the colours I was after - the water is a very dark brown, almost red - not that dissimilar to the whiskey, truth be told.

Just to the right of this scene lies the old stone mill house, now someone's house.  This is a very well photographed scene and the owners of the mill house have a sign up, welcoming photographers onto their property but requesting they don't venture past a certain point.  That seems very reasonable. 

Pointing it up

 Another one looking towards the heavens:

'Blad, 150mm, red filter, FP4+; on Foma131 paper

Just playin'

Take some very old Ilford Warmtone paper, print a negative, develop and fix as normal.  Then, bleach back fully in cupric sulphate bleach (takes a while to get going, but once it starts it motors along nicely) and finally dunk in hot lith developer.  You might get something like this:

I quite like it.  It has an old, rather soft look. For the right negative I think it could be an interesting diversion from the norm.

All I can muster

All I can muster at the minute is a walk around the garden.  Energy levels are low.  Having said that, 'tis a rather lovely time for a walk in the garden - spring is springing everywhere I look.  I did take the 'Blad and a 150mm lens and an extension tube and a couple of filters and a spotmeter with me on my walk - and my glasses, of course.  The damned lanyards and straps ended up getting all mingled and the glasses ended up on the grass.  Better that than a lens, mind you.  Still, that entailed a walk back inside to get my 'picker-upper' to retrieve them.  None of which put me in the right frame of mind to make good photographs.

So I ended up looking towards the heavens for inspiration:

Clouds over North East Liberties, April 2024.
Blad, 150mm, red filter, FP4+ in HC-110.  Foma 131 paper.

Rather wonderful things, clouds, aren't they?  You can see all things in them if you look long enough.  

 

The Nag's Head

 We seem to be on (an admittedly slow) roll with pubs at the minute.  The Nag's Head.  Nice.  Fancy a pint?  Why not, eh?  Abingdon, again - by the Thames.

The Nag's Head pub in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
On FP4+ thinking it was HP5+
HC110 for a good while, Foma 133 paper and then dunked in a-bit-too-strong freshly made Pot. Ferri.

The Broad Face

I read that the number of pubs in England are in rapid decline.  I guess the Covid lockdown was a game-changer for many - people stopped going out and maybe by the time lockdown was lifted their habits had changed.  A lot of pubs now rely on food to boost their profits - and then you have the dreaded 'gastropubs' (whoever thought up that 'orrible name has a lot to answer for if you ask me).  I do have a lot of sympathy for the pub landlords, to be honest - rising utility bills, rents, raw material and staff costs combined with fewer customers must mean many are in financial trouble.  Pubs, even ones which have been around for hundreds of years, aren't exempt from the basic laws of economics. The simple answer is we all just need to get back out there and support our local businesses - especially our pubs!

Anyway, pubs.  Or, more specifically, pub names.  You get the classic Rose and Crown, King's Arms, Red Lion, Royal Oak and so on.  Occasionally you come across one you've never seen before and that was the case when we had a little day trip to the town of Abingdon, just outside Oxford.  The Thames flows through the town and not far away from the river we came across The Broad Face.  Now that was certainly one I'd never seen before and I reckoned it warranted a frame of 35mm film.

The Broad Face, Abingdon, complete with 'Men at work' sign - 'cos there's roadworks everywhere,
all the time nowadays (or so it seems). 
FP4+ exposed at 320; HC110 on Foma 133 paper.

The various theories behind the name is written on the wall of the pub (an unusual curved corner it is too!).  Some say it was the face of the local hangman (the town jail was just opposite the pub) but I've read that the pub predates the jail so maybe that's not the origin of the name.  Alternatively, it's the swollen face of a man's body fished out of the Thames. That seems unlikely to me, but then What do I know?  I guess you can't beat a good old-fashioned mystery when it comes to pub names - 'tis a good topic of conversation over a pint or two, that's for sure.  Cheers!

Rookie Mistake (updated)

A couple of weekends ago we were in the City of Dreaming Spires, to give our daughter a little lift before her finals, which are approaching at the speed of a bullet train.  As my wife and I wandered around the city I was thinking to myself this could well be the last time we do this.  Next time we are there will most likely be for graduation - and that is probably going to be a quick-in-quick-out affair.  So I was making the most of it, complete with the M6, 28mm Elmarit and a bunch of HP5.  The icing on the cake was that as we passed by the entrance to All Souls College we noticed a sign saying 'Open to visitors'.  That was very unexpected, since mostly the colleges have signs stating 'Closed to visitors'.  So in we went.  Had a wee walkabout the front quad and marvelled at the interior of the Chapel.  I took a few snaps - glad I had the rangefinder since light was low and I was down around 1/15s, which is just about doable with the M6.

Fast forward to the weekend just past, when I developed the first of the films.  I knew there was something wrong when I saw the negs - too thin.  What had gone wrong?  Turns out I had somehow managed to load FP4 into an HP5 canister.  So not only was my exposure off but so was my developing time.  Rookie mistake - and one I have never done before.  But of course, it had to happen with an important film, didn't it.  Tried to print yesterday morning but it was pretty hopeless - this is about the best it got, taken from the inside Quad of All Souls, looking out towards the Radcliffe Camera:

Dreaming spires  

I've another film half-shot still in the camera, so I'm going to have to do a clip test and see if that too is FP4, or HP5 as I thought it was.  What a pain.

Update: Mystery solved.  I did the clip test, and good job I did as it too was FP4+ in an HP5+ canister.  So I developed the rest of the film for 17mins in HC-110, dilution B (1:31).  The negs look better, but I won't know for sure until I try to print from them.

I also did a clip test on the film inside my bulk loader.  That's where the problem lay.  The sticker on the top said HP5+ but inside was, you guessed it, FP4+.  How I didn't change the label I will never know - must have been half-asleep.  

Down by the sea

A right mess of rocks and waves it is. It looks like clouds but it's all just angry sea:

'Blad/250mm/FP4+ with red filter so a few seconds exposure - on a tripod but not that you'd know as it was very windy.  Foma133 with thiourea tone.

Onocentaur, or maybe not

Not the sort of doorways you see around The Liberties, I must admit, but I guess these sorts of grand entrances that we came across from time to time in Budapest aren't that uncommon in the old cities of Northern Europe.

Spotmatic, 28mm, home-brew thiourea tone on Foma 133 paper.

Interesting fact: it occurred to me during our short trip that this was the first foreign trip I've made where I didn't take - or need - any local currency.  Hungary uses Florints - and there were 450 of them to the pound.  Not an easy number to do on-the-spot conversion, unless you round up to 500 in which case it's a little more straightforward.  Still, when you see something advertised at 14,000F it's still hard to get your head around the fact that equates to £28, more or less.  I think that was the cost (each) of our open top bus tour ticket for two days, which included a short river cruise.  The guy taking our money - well, scanning our credit card with his machine - was very pleasant and offered to throw in a third day for free.  Not much good to us when we only there for two days, unfortunately.  The cruise was an hour long and everyone told us to go near sunset so that we could appreciate the lights of Buda Castle and the Parliament Building.  We weren't that organised though - we'd spent the morning and most of the afternoon hoofing around the city before we found ourselves near the river.  We were in dire need of a sit-down so we just decided to go for it, earlier than planned which meant we missed the lights.  It was interesting enough but a cruise is just a cruise - not much to do other than look left and right and listen to the commentary.  Still, it was a welcome rest and the commentary was pretty good with lots of historical stuff as you might expect in such an important city.

What was surprising was that the subway machines (well, machine might be more accurate as usually only one seemed to be working), which looked like they were ancient, actually gave us tickets when we tapped our card.  Every other outlet - restaurant, pub, shop all were geared up for contactless, no matter how small or large the transaction.  It still seemed weird that we were able to take a 3-hour flight, walk around a city in a foreign land for a couple of days and not even think about (or use) cash for anything.  'Tis the future, begorrah - right now.

Initially I had this as a Pegasus, but they are winged horses, so then I thought, Ah, a centaur.
But a bit of Googling (cheating, I know) tells me the centaur usually has 6 limbs - four of the horse and two human arms.
So this might be an onocentaur, but I'm not sure they have wings, so I'm back to square one on this.
Suggestions on a postcard, please (or comment below).

Postcard from Budapest

Last year I had a milestone birthday (60) and as a special treat my wife took me on a short trip to Budapest.  Yes, I know - but I'm worth it.  Haha.  Budapest was a city I had always wanted to visit, ever since I found out about the trip my uncle made to the city in the late 1930s (documented here, in case you've forgotten).   It didn't disappoint, although we only had two full days to explore, so it was a quick in-and-out.  The best part?  - we could fly direct from Belfast, which made the journey so much easier.  Well, except for the fact that we had to get up almost before we went to bed in order to make our early morning flight home. We went in October, which was probably a good time to go, since I'd imagine it gets very busy in the main tourist season.  The downside was the weather wasn't great - the first day was very dull and overcast, with some rain, so not much good for photography.  The second day was a bit brighter.  To be honest, although I had plans to shoot lots of film, in the end I only shot one roll. I think because it was the first big trip away for my wife and I without our daughter - we kind of focussed on enjoying the trip together and although I carried a camera I didn't much feel like breaking away on my own to do a bit of snapping.  So I came home with a few postcard shots and that was about it.  Still, a good excuse to return one day - and maybe for a bit longer next time.

The Danube, as it flows through Budapest.
Old Pentax, 28mm, HP5+ on Foma 133.  Thiourea toned.
The retro style of the paper suits this scene quite well, I think.

We stayed some way from the main drag and that ended up being a good move, since we got to see parts of the city that looked like they hadn't changed much since the days of the Soviet bloc, of which Hungary was very much a part.  Amazingly, it was only in 1991 that the last Soviet troops left the country.  I guess that went a large way to explain why everyone we saw over the age of about 50 looked liked they'd lived several lives, with a definite sense of world-weariness.  There was some serious poverty in evidence too - both men and women sitting (living?) on street corners with a cup for money and clothes that you and I would have thrown out a long time ago.  Of course down near the Danube, which was full to bust with large river cruisers like the one in the shot above, it was a different story - fancy hotels (Ritz-Carlton, for example) and plenty of designer shops.  I'm glad we got to see the other side of the city, although riding on the subway was, shall we say, interesting.  Not that we ever felt unsafe, but the subway stations look unchanged from those Soviet days.  

Looking west

 Still in a very cold and windy Portballintrae, but looking west this time:

That would be Inishowen Peninsula in Donegal way in the distance.
Blad/250mm/FP4+/Foma 133.  
I had a 10-stop ND filter on this one which took me down to about 8 seconds.

Runkerry Head

I finally got those last frames of FP4+ wasted and actually made it into the darkroom on Saturday morning.  I was a tad rusty, of course, but got something out in the end:

Looking out over Runkerry Beach towards the Causeway, which lies just beyond the headland
Blad/150mm/FP4+/Foma 133. 

I took this shot not far from the car park as it was ridiculously cold that day, with a wind that would clean you, as my mother would say.  My wife and I had intended going for a walk along the beach, but after about 5 minutes we both looked at each other and said 'Let's get back to the car'.  We shall no doubt return when the weather is a bit more clement.  June, perhaps.

Stormy weather

I'm pleased to report that the various things that have been keeping me from the usual nonsense on this place are gradually coming to an end.  I actually got a film loaded into the 'Blad the other day and got the shutter release pressed, oh, at least three times.  Impressive, I know.  I hope to press it another few times soon and then you might get to see some new stuff.  In the meantime, here's a oldie from a few years ago - Ballintoy, on a stormy day:

On a side note, we've had an uncommonly large number of pretty violent storms this winter.  Missy was booked on the Belfast-Liverpool ferry a few weeks ago and at the last minute decided that was not a good idea and rescheduled for a couple of days later.  Good job she did, as we read later the incoming ferry was unable to dock safely and spent several hours bobbing about Belfast lough waiting for the seas to calm down sufficiently to allow it to come into port.  Even when she did travel, it was still a pretty rough crossing but obviously she made it across OK, although she's probably thinking it's a mixed blessing, given the amount of work she has to do this final semester. 

Docks, somewhere

One from a while back.  In my mind this was Birkenhead docks from the rear of the overnight Stena ferry from Belfast, but the big ballast thing on the top of the leftmost crane says 'Belfast Harbour'.  Hmm.  Well sure it's either one or t'other, makes little odds.

Not much is sharp, even though I was resting the camera on the big steel thingmy at the back end of the ship.

Missy has just left us again, to complete her last semester before graduating later this year.  It was really lovely to have her home for a good long time - we reconnected and we were all sad when the time came to say goodbye.  It's going to be a year of change for her - come August she'll have to move out of her accommodation and that may well signal the end of her Oxford adventure. To where she goes we don't yet know - jobs are being applied for and there is vague talk of 'travelling'.  I said to her last week, Don't worry too much about the future - it has a habit of sorting itself out.  For now, all you can do is get the head down and get those grades up.