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.