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.