Old boats

Delving back into the archives today - well, only to 2012, when a day trip to Rathlin Island was the order of the day.  Rathlin, in case you don't know, lies about 6 miles off the North Antrim coast.  It is inhabited and the only means of access is by boat - usually from Ballycastle.  It can be a rough enough trip and in the winter time often the ferry is often cancelled due to bad weather.

Rathlin is a fairly magical place.  Probably best known for its RSPB reserve, where in late July you can witness tens of thousands of seabirds nesting.  It is a visual and aural feast and well worth a visit. And Richard Branson crash-landed his big balloon thingy there a few years back.  Before that - around 1898 - Marconi staged the first commercial wireless telegraphy link between the island and Ballycastle. But today I only have a couple of old boats for you.  I found these two resting near the harbour in Rathlin - looks like the one on the left has been resting for some time, mind you, although the other one looks seaworthy enough.

Rathlin Island - the harbour, 2012

Not too far further along were another odd couple:

More old boats

Not sure either of these will float again.  That particular trip we took the kids along with us. The year before The Brother and I had gone on our own - and that was a never-to-be-forgotten trip.  We'd not booked a ticket on the ferry so had gone for a wander along Ballycastle Marina.  We spied a charter vessel by the name of Dan's Fastrack, so we paid our money and a little later were sitting aboard what seemed quite a small vessel for the journey to Rathlin.  Dan, it turned out, had some sort of physical issue - not quite sure what was going on there but let's just say he didn't inspire confidence.  There wasn't a life-jacket to be seen when we ventured out of the harbour walls and Dan hit the throttle - hard.  Next thing the front of the boat was up at an angle of about 45 degrees and we were holding on for dear life.  Well, that's not quite true - there was nothing to hold on to.  Our faces were about 2 feet from the water and that's how it stayed for the next 20 minutes or so.  To say I was terrified was an understatement.  As we pulled up in Rathlin, Dan helped me off the boat, grinned and asked 'How was that?' - I must have looked a sight.  But given some time to recover on the island I came to the conclusion that Dan knew what he was about and actually the return journey was quite enjoyable. But when we took the kids with us the next year we went on the proper ferry...

Roosting Rooks!

Sometime before Christmas I was in Ballymoney, waiting for the Wee One to finish her cello practice.  The light was falling fast and the car park was full of mums and dads waiting like me.  Most were sitting in their cars, presumably with the radio on, killing time until their little ones escaped from orchestra practice.  But it wasn't a cold night and since I like a dander about I took the old camera out to see what opportunities presented themselves.  And what a treat was in store.  It was one of those windy autumn days and the sky was full of rooks - and I mean full!  They were doing what rooks do best, swirling around in the wind like they are out of control, all the time communicating loudly with each other.  I love watching and listening to rooks as they roost - one of nature's treats for sure.  They are such sociable birds.  At one point a whole bunch of them descended onto the roofs of the school buildings, only to take off again and head up into the sky for more flapping about.  Like something out of a Hitchcock movie.  Anyway, I pointed the camera upwards and snapped off a couple of shots, as you do.  More in hope that anything else to be honest.  When I looked at the negatives the other day all I could see was blur - nothing there I thought to myself.  But I did scan them, just to see and this is what I found:

Rooks - loads of them!

What a sky!  I must admit I quite like this one and it might well see the darkroom once it gets commissioned.

The second one I like too - in a different sort of way.  As you will know if you are a regular reader (!) I'm a big fan of Titarenko - anything that goes against the prevailing obsession with sharpness.  I mean, there is a place for sharpness and all that - but sometimes you just have to turn things on their head, don't you?

More rooks

I think this captures the movement quite nicely.  It would be fun to try some more shots like this, perhaps using a tripod next time :)

Winter sun

This first shot today is taken in our front garden.  We are in our house 10 years now and this used to be a field - not much changed there, eh?  We didn't so much design the 'herbaceous' borders, as you can see, it was more a case of 'fill that space' with something - anything!  Anyway, some weak winter sun provided quite a nice effect through the tree-thing.

Weak winter sun in the garden, 2015

Never a good idea to point a rangefinder camera at the sun for too long - no mirror between the lens and the shutter, but I think I got away with it on this occasion.  Now, a word about composition - that's the thing that results from the direction in which you, the photographer, are pointing the camera thing.  Did you notice I cut the top of the tree off?  Was this deliberate I ask myself.  Don't know is the answer - sort of, I guess.  The sun is roughly sitting on the 1/3 line and the rule of thirds is well-known in photography.  The shadow of the tree in the foreground occupies slightly more than 1/3 of the image, but since this is a major feature of the shot that's OK - it leads the eye into the image.  I think if I'd included the top of the tree then the detail in the middle of the frame would have been even more compressed and the whole thing would not have worked so well.  Of course none of the above was in my mind when I composed and pressed the shutter release!  Well maybe it was, but sub-consciously, lol.  One final note - the digital peeps would have removed those sticks intruding into the shot in the top right...but that's not what we do here, right?!

Now we like a wee stroll in the country, so we do.  We are fortunate to live in an area where there are beautiful walks all around us - walks of both the seaside and the country variety.  This next shot was taken in one of my favourite places, Mountsandel,  just last week. I've written about Mountsandel previously - it of the Bronze Age settlement, earliest known man in Ireland and all that.  The River Bann runs alongside this path, just to the left.  Perhaps a tad too much contrast in this one, but sometimes you have to experiment, right?

River walk, Mountsandel

I've decided I rather like the winter.  Overcast skies are just the best for B&W photography and when the skies aren't overcast - a rare event in this part of the world I can tell you - then the sunlight is usually quite weak and soft.  Bare trees are good - although trees are good with leaves too so that's OK.  What isn't so interesting for B&W photography are clear blue skies - luckily that doesn't happen very often where I live haha.  The great thing about our climate is that the weather conditions change frequently, so if it's bright and sunny now you just have to wait a couple of hours and things will be different.  Ditto if it's raining.  Now what could be better than that, I ask you.

I was caught out that day in Mountsandel - this was the last shot in the film and I'd forgotten to bring another film with me.  How could that happen?!  My esteemed former colleague Dr Charles laughed when I told him and suggested an alternative - how dare he mention the d***tal word? He knows my views on that subject well enough, I can tell you.

A field near us

Wintry scenes for you today since I only got round to scanning these negs recently - I've been busy!  Thought these were quite nice - taken on HP5 for a change, which is a kind of a winter film, being rated at 400ASA and all that.  Still nice tones when developed in DD-X, as these were.  I might even get round to printing these at some stage...

So here we have a field.  Not just any field, but one very close to where I live.  Just to the left lies the Coleraine campus of the University of Ulster, where I used to work.  You can't see it in this photograph - just as well, really, as it's a bit of an eyesore.  Nice natural framing in this, don't you think?!

A field, somewhere near where I live

This next one is of another field.  Actually it's not - it's of the same field, just a different part of it.  There's a story behind this photograph.  This is taken from Mother's patio and this is the view she sees every day when she pulls back her kitchen curtains.  The reason I took this photograph will become apparent in a minute (assuming you read on...).

View from Mother's patio - as it looked late 2014

I found a print of this same field in the late 1970s - probably done by the Brother, since I don't remember taking or printing it.  So wind back 35-ish years and it looked like this:

Nearly the same view, c1978

Unfortunately I couldn't replicate the same view.  From the perspective I reckon this was taken from the back bedrooom upstairs in Mother's house.  Nowadays there is a 40-foot holly tree in the way, hence the lower perspective in the more recent shot.  But they are similar enough for a bit of comparison.  The hawthorn hedges have grown, as to be expected.  Electricity pole in the same place and the two trees visible in the 1978 print are still there, though the one on the right has overtaken the other one.

When I see these older prints it makes me want to just photograph pretty much everywhere around these parts, print as many as possible and just stash them away in the loft.  Maybe some-one will come across them in 50 years time and be mildly entertained by them.  Maybe I'll just do that...after all, I don't expect this blog will still be around then.

  

The Bann at Coleraine

A couple of older shots for you today.  Nothing spectacular, just of the River Bann at Coleraine, my home town.  Well I kinda grew up outside of Coleraine - in the North East Liberties to be precise!  But sure you know all that already (as a keen reader of this blog, right?!).  Anyway, the first is of the old bridge across the Bann.  We are told that the first bridge here was in 1248 and lasted until 1315 (destroyed during the Bruce invasion, presumably him of the spider tale).  A ferry was the only means of crossing until 1673, when a certain William Jackson built another bridge.  This would have been well after the fortification of Coleraine at the start of the Plantation of Ulster.  Another bridge was erected in 1716 and removed in 1843.  The stone bridge, which you see below, was completed in 1844.

Coleraine Old Bridge over the Bann, 2014

A couple of hundred yards upstream is the Cutts.  I've written about the Cutts in an earlier post.  There's a really nice walk along Christie Park from the bridge to the Cutts, looking over to Mountsandel.  On this particular day it was a bit foggy, but pleasant all the same.  Quite often I've seen kingfishers along here and you sometimes get the odd heron or two, although mostly they reside downstream, between the town and the Barmouth.   You really need to be on a boat to get the best view of the wildlife along the river - and I'm not really cut out for boats, or dry land come to that :)

View towards the Cutts, Moundandel opposite

Not the best negatives these two - bit lacking in contrast, possibly due to aging developer.  But it was a murky day anyway, so maybe these are a fair reflection of the conditions.

Franka Solida

Franka Solida - what a name. I hadn't come across the name myself until relatively recently, when I began looking into old folding cameras, which were made from the 1920s onwards.  These particular cameras were built in occupied Germany after WWII and have a pretty decent reputation - perhaps not a par with Zeiss or Voigtlander, but not far off.  The one I ended up with is a very compact little beauty which takes 120 roll film, giving massive 6x6 negatives.  Well I say massive - compared to 35mm that is correct, since each side of the negative is 6cm instead of 36x24mm, so each negative uses occupies somewhere between 3 and 4 times the area of a 35mm neg.  The resulting images have a lovely smooth tone compared to 35mm - less grain is visible purely because you tend not to magnify the image as much.  Now sometimes you want grain, and 35mm is so much more portable and cheaper than 120 film, so there is a case for both.  Unlike 35mm film, you can't buy 120 film in bulk, unfortunately, since it requires a backing paper, so that makes it inherently more expensive.  And it takes a bit more chemical to develop it.  And you only get 12 shots per film.  But it's nice to work with - very nice.   Hopefully you can see some differences in these next couple of scans which came from the 1960s Franka.

This next one is of a subject which I've posted a photograph of before - the old lighthouse in Portstewart.   Very pleasing tones in this methinks.

The old lighthouse at Portstewart, 6x6 style

I've just realised - the lighthouse has had a coat of paint since the last time I snapped it about 6 months ago.  You can see the 'older' lighthouse photo here.  Ain't that something!  Who was responsible for that, eh?

This next shot was taken at the end of our lane.  It's not that interesting, but FP4+ has captured the softness of the early spring light quite well.

Spring has sprung, 2015 style

So I'm very happy with my 50-year old camera.  I wonder how many of today's digital cameras will be warming the hearts of photographers in 50 year's time.  Not many I suspect.  Thank goodness for film!

End of America

Well, not really the End of America - just the last post related to my recent visit there.  OK, some people for a change!  To kick off, double trouble.  The Brother's weans, to be precise.  Don't they just look American?!  They'll be breaking some hearts in the not too distant future I would say - perhaps they have already!

Double Trouble in Oak Park, Thanksgiving Morning 2014

And for good measure here's the Man Himself - looking all academic and everything.

The Brother as he looked late 2014

This wee shot was taken in the Buzz Cafe, in the lah-de-dah Arts District of Oak Park.  A nice wee place the Buzz Cafe - so nice we ended up there two days in a row.  He does a good job of looking studious, the Brother - wouldn't you agree?  I guess he's had plenty of practice, what with all that lecturing he does and all those conferences he goes to. The last conference he spoke at was in Canada and was titled 'A matter of lifedeath'.  Says it all really.

Here's another of the two babes, strutting their stuff in State Street downtown Chicago:

A strut down State Street, late 2014

So that, my friends, is the last of the Chicago 2014 snaps.  It was a quick trip, cold as hell and not the best for me personally.  My Meniere's acted up bigtime - with the inevitable conclusion on the pavement just outside Macy's...it wasn't pretty.  But these things happen and The Brother and his missus were just brilliant at taking care of things.  Thanks guys and hopefully we'll see you soon again.