Seashore after the storm

Today we have Portballantrae, or rather the Blackrock Strand to be more precise - or the Bushfoot Strand if you prefer.  'Twas a stormy day about a month ago and the beach was full of seaweed and stuff washed up by the waves.  Beautiful day, actually - and no-one else around to spoil it, just me and the Dog-Hound-Thing.

Blackrock Strand, Portballantrae

I know, I know - this is a poor print.  Wonky horizon and what's going on there on the top right?  And I burned in the sea&sky by 1/4 stop, probably slightly too much - those waves could be whiter.  Some days it just all goes wrong.  But on the plus side I like the effect of the strong sunlight on the seaweed in the foreground.  FP4+ on FS RCVC Oyster paper in brand new WT-10 developer, selenium toned if you are interested.  I might come back to this one another day, although I find it hard to go back to negatives unless I'm really excited about them - and that doesn't happen that often for me...

I think the main problem with the last couple of films is my developer was past its best - the results were low contrast negs which no amount of coaxing has managed to breathe any oomph into at all.  But that developer has gone now, so it's on to fresh (ish!) DD-X for the next few rolls and we'll see what gives.

Cows in the Mist

OK so it hasn't the same caché as Gorillas in the Mist, but we don't have gorillas in the fields, only cows - or cow, in this case.  This one was snapped one morning last week more or less from our front door - isn't she a beaut?

Misty Morning Cow, 2014 style

Cows are strange animals at the best of times.  Always look like their legs aren't strong enought o hold them up - at least that what it looks like to me.  Mostly very docile these ones are - even the Dog-Hound-Thing doesn't upset them that much when he makes a run for them.  Luckily the post and wire fence keeps them apart.  But when cows are riled there ain't much that will stop them.  A few years ago the farmer (David Cameron - but no, not that David Cameron) didn't get to give them their high energy feed one day.  Not a good move.  They spied some lovely green grass across the stone wall separating the field from Mother's garden and next thing we knew they were up and over the wall to get to the grass.  Not much of the wall left after several tons of hungry cow went over it.  And the garden wasn't in great shape either, hoof marks everywhere.  But no-one was hurt except a few stones, so it was OK in the end.  Still, a lesson for us all, eh?  

I use Ilford under-the-lens filters and used a G4 1/2 for this one, but I'm still not overly happy with the contrast - should be snappier methinks, no?  Perhaps the developer is on the way out - I'm not great at keeping tabs on how many prints I've used it for.  I love using the Nova slot processor - I mean, I switch it on to heat up the chems and 20 mins later I'm printing.  No fuss.  But the developer has been in there for a couple of months now and although I have replenished from time to time I think it might be past its best.  That's my excuse anyway.  I know I could have tweaked the contrast in PS, but that would be cheating, right?  I do a vanilla scan with the Epson, re-size it and upload it, that's all I ever do.

Anyway, the darkroom is due for a major renovation any day now.  It's been in the planning for a while and now the time has come to install running water.  It means building a frame and then a plywood sink before the plumber comes in and routes some water half way round the house.  Someday soon.  Perhaps. 

The Bann, the Big Cut and salmon fishing

Under the bridge over the River Bann at Coleraine, as it looks in August 2014

Here we have the new bridge over the River Bann at Coleraine.  While it may look like the stereotypical shopping trolley was placed there as a prop I can assure you it got there without my assistance.  The white horse you might just be able to make out on the opposite bank, having a drink.  The bridge was opened in 1975 to cope with the increase in traffic which went along with the expansion of the town at that time.

The bridge is just a few hundred metres downstream from the famous Cutts, or Salmon Leap, which was of primary importance when Coleraine was being planned during the Plantation in the early 17th Century.  Here's an old photograph of my mother, looking rather stylish - taken sometime in the 1950s when she was a lass.  Must have been winter judging from the trees across the river near where Mountsandel Fort lies.  I must take a recent picture from here just to compare.  I've a whole series of 'then and now' photographs brewing in my mind - with a bit of luck I'll actually get round to doing something about that...

Mother at The Cutts, c1952

Around 1600 the River Bann was between 300 and 400 feet wide at Castleroe, and a huge rock of basalt extended across the river which rendered it too shallow to navigate.  It was decided to cut through the rock, primarily so that timber could be brought to Coleraine from the woods to the south.  "The Big Cut" was started in 1611, paid for by The Irish Society at a cost of £1200.  Several cuts were required to finish the job, and so we have the local term 'The Cutts'.  Interestingly, the main use of this part of the river after that appears to be for the catching of salmon, hence the alternative name Salmon Leap.   In one day it was reported that 62 tons of salmon were netted here.  Most of the stone removed was used in Coleraine for building - at that time no quarry existed close to the settlement and transportation of rock was expensive and difficult.  Early 17th Century export records for Coleraine show the value of the work done - Salmon exports from 1612-1615 were second in value only to Hides, with a value of £1118.

The Lower Bann and its tributaries including The Agivy and Moyola still offer some of the best salmon fishing in the country - catches numbering around the 450 mark for the last few years, although a mandatory catch and release policy is enforced nowadays.  The Honourable The Irish Society, founded in 1613, still have a presence at The Cutts and continue to maintain their interests throughout the whole of the county of Londonderry - they will sell you day fishing licences, for example, should you fancy outwitting a River Bann salmon.

It's years since I went fishing - my grandfather and uncle used to take The Brother and me manys a year ago.  Mostly we went to the Roe, near Limavady.  I remember a lot of tramping up and down the riverbank and not a lot of fish being caught, although it was a very pleasurable day out in the fresh air under Binevenagh.  Of course the term 'fish' was reserved for the King of fish, a salmon, and catching one of those was a rare event.  Mostly we returned home tired and maybe with a few trout if we were lucky, or even a plaice or two.  If no fish were throwing themselves at us Grandpa sometimes managed to liberate a carrot or two from the neighbouring farmer's fields - oops!

Some not very large trout, as caught, weighed, snapped and printed sometime in the 1970s

Grandpa, probably after a day's fishing, snapped and printed in the 1970s complete with period dust

Road Racing

For some reason road racing is an integral part of our culture hereabouts.  There are a myriad of meetings which take place around the country during the spring and summer.  One of the largest is the North West 200, where young and not-so-young men (and women nowadays) hurtle round the roads connecting Coleraine, Portrush and Portstewart at a high rate of knots.  The races take place on normal roads, complete with white lines, kerbs and manhole covers.  And alongside the roads you have the usual furniture of trees, lamp-posts, road signs, walls, pillars and houses. You can imagine the dangers - particularly now when speeds of 200mph are not uncommon on the straights.

When I was a lad, back in the late 1970s, the annual NW200 was a not-to-be-missed event and the camera was always present.  Sometimes we would head for the pits and other years The Brother and I would stick our heads through a hedge along one of the straights and practice our panning technique, hoping for the best.  Nowadays the public are kept well back from the racing and it's not so easy to get close, which is probably a good thing from a safety point of view.  Names from the past included the famous Dunlop brothers Joey and Robert, Frank Kennedy (also from Armoy), Tommy Herron, Mick Grant and Tony Rutter (whose son Michael is currently a very successful racer).

Road racing, NW200 style, c1979

You can see from the above photograph that wet roads were a not uncommon occurrence, which must have added to the adrenalin rush for the racers.  In those days the circuit went the full length of the Cromore Road to the Shell Hill - nowadays the circuit takes a shorter route over the Coleraine-Portrush railway line at University Corner.

Safety was sometimes less than optimum in the old days - the odd bale of straw roped around pillars and lamp-posts, if you were lucky.  Riders really did take their life in their hands.

Not much protection if you came off

The NW200 is a proper race - the riders all leave the start line at the same time.  Well, at times of course the excitement gets too much for some and they fall over before the race even begins:

Fallen over on the start line - D'oh!  c1979

Unfortunately many of the top riders from that era are no longer with us.  It's a very dangerous sport, both then and now, and several have lost their lives as a result of accidents.   1979 was a particularly bad year and we were unlucky enough to be close by when two bikes touched on one of the fastest stretches of the Cromore Road.  

1979

As you can see one bike is in flames and the local medics are rushing to help.  This is what a bike looks like after it's been engulfed in flames - not much left:

Burnt out chassis of bike

On better days we got to see some of the best road racing ever - two giants of the late 1970s were Mick Grant (number 10) on the green and white Kawasaki and Tony Rutter.  These were top riders and I can remember this duel well.  This was taken around the Primrose Hill area of Portstewart, just after the stop/start line.  You can just about make out both riders picking their spot for the next corner.

Mike Grant leading Tony Rutter, late 1970s.

Spectators were able to get real close to the action in those days.  Yes it's safer today, but some of the thrill has gone, to be sure.

All the above photos were taken and printed around 1979, by either me or The Brother.  FP4 was the film of choice then (and now) and either printed on Kodak Veribrom or Ilford Ilfospeed Grade 2 papers.  I know that as the prints have been residing in old paper boxes for the last 35 years, while the negs are still sitting in their glassine protected Paterson Sleeves.

Iron Gates and Stone Pillars

Where I live, in the North West of Ulster, there's a lot of agriculture.  And cows.  And sheep.  Of course it wasn't always so.  Sometime around the 12th Century, when the Normans were in ascendancy, there was a move away from semi-nomadic clan life towards the creation of boundaries and, in turn, fields to demarcate small holdings, where tenant labourers could keep a cow or two and grow vegetables and crops.  Raised walls of earth were formed to make these boundaries, ditches were cut to channel water and raths were built to fortify dwellings.

On higher ground, such as the Antrim hills, sheep can still be seen wandering about the boggy areas, where turf or peat is still dug by hand (or hand and foot, to be precise) and few fields exist.   But the lower ground is largely made up of relatively small fields, even with the advent of modern farm machinery designed for larger areas.  Round these parts some crops are grown - mostly potatoes with the odd field of barley or corn, but by far the most popular use of land is to graze cattle, for either dairy or beef.  This makes sense, as our grass is very lush and green, what with all the rain and what have you.  Some fields are left entirely to grass, which is then cut for silage, to feed the cattle during the winter.

Drills for seed potatoes, c1977

Elsewhere in Ireland stone walls are used to separate field from field, but around these parts fields are mostly separated by thorn hedges - usually hawthorn, which is also known as may, whitethorn or just plain haw.  The common phrase heard every springtime is 'Never cast a clout till (the) May is out' - in other words, don't discard any clothes until the May has blossomed, which is usually around May-June time.    A wise saying, since our springs can be still very cold into early May.

But I digress, as usual.  The subject for today is our lovely vanishing gates and pillars.  Mostly these examples of old iron-mongery have simply rusted away and have been replaced by horrible galvanised vanilla gates, which have little character.  Unlike this one:

Iron gate and stone pillar, c1977

Now isn't this a beauty?  Cows and all in the background and a lovely pillar to boot! You can the problem - the stone pillar is falling to pieces.  This photograph, taken and printed by The Brother, c1977, shows a lovely 7-bar gate which used to be not too far away from home and is long since gone.  I like old gates and all being well you'll see a few more of them here in the future.

Zenit and Yashica

Here's one for all you camera-loving peeps.  Delving through my archive of old prints, I came across these stowed away in a box of Kodak 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" Bromesko WFL.2D paper.  The first is of my very first camera - a Russian Zenit B.  Built like a tank it was, coming in at nearly 2lb weight.  An SLR - Single Lens Reflex, which means you look into the viewfinder through the lens thanks to a series of mirrors housed in the prism.  M42 screw mount lens (58mm f/2.8), totally manual - no light meter!  And - remember this? - no automatic diaphragm!  You had to manually stop down the lens before pressing the shutter release - there was an 'extra' ring on the lens, just before the aperture ring.  So you set the aperture and shutter speed from the readings on your handheld exposure meter, focus with the lens wide open and then close the diaphragm before releasing the shutter.  Simple and effective, provided you remember to stop down the diaphragm, that is.

Zenit B - taken and printed around 1975.

Nearly a million Zenit Bs sold, apparently, and of course behind every camera lies a story.  The Zenit was my first foray into the art of photography.  If I close my eyes I can still see it.  It didn't have much smell, of course.  Talking of smells, it's amazing how opening a box of photographic paper in the darkroom can take me back 35 years - the smell is the same.  Now I'm not sure if it's the aroma of the black plastic pouch holding the paper or the paper itself (or both) but when I opened a pack last year - wham! - I was back in my youth, instantly.  Amazing what those olfactory sensory neurons can do to your brain...

I wish I still had it - the Zenith, that is.  Don't know where it ended up, but I guess ££ was tight enough in those teenage years so it probably got traded for something.

Now the question is begged, isn't it, what did I use to take this snap with?  Actually that's one of the questions I always had about the Apollo 11 moon landings - Who filmed Neil Armstrong walking down the steps?  But that's an easy one - there was (apparently!) an assembly attached to the side of the Lunar Module which housed the camera.  In the strange case of the Zenit photo above, it was taken using one of The Brother's cameras.  He had one of these:

Yashica TL Electro X, c1975

For some reason The Brother liked his Yashicas and as time progressed he spent his hard-earning cash from his Saturday job on a beautiful Contax RTS.  But at that time, around 1973, he had a TL Electro X.  Compared to the Zenit this was an advanced camera - it had a meter! A weighted TTL (through-the-lens) meter at that, so you metered the image that would end up on the film - weighted so that the bias was towards the bottom of the image and landscapes and the like wouldn't be overexposed due to the sky.  Lights, visible in the viewfinder, indicated whether the current settings would lead to over or under exposure and you could then alter the aperture or shutter speed accordingly.

This particular Yashica had a very advanced vertical metal shutter, unlike the horizontal cloth shutter in the Zenit.  It had a wider range of speeds - 1s to 1/1000 (vs 1/30 to 1/500 in the Zenit) and a hot shoe for flash (cold shoe for the Russian).  It came with a 50mm f/1.9 lens, a full stop faster than the Zenit's f/2.8 lens.

Both these are SLR cameras - that was important back in 1973.  I mean, why would you not want to compose your image knowing that's exactly the way it would be captured on film?  What exactly is the point of rangefinders??  Funny thing is, in 2014, I love my rangefinders (as well as my SLRs).  Rangefinders are smaller and tend to have brighter viewfinders, since you're not looking through a mirrored prism.  And you have frame lines showing you what will end up on the film.  And they are much quieter than SLRs, since there is no mirror to swing out of the way before the shutter is opened.  There are pros and cons for each and often it comes down to personal choice and what kind of user the photographer is.  And if like me you don't mind using old cameras, you can have several varieties for not a lot of ££.

If you're into film - as a lot of people are, for a variety of reasons - then you are limited in choice if you want a new camera.  I suspect this might change and we might see a few more manufacturers adding a film camera to their stable.  In 35mm, Nikon has their FM10, and Vivitar has similar, although both these SLRs are marketed as 'student cameras' and not as full systems.  In rangefinder land, Voigtlander have their Bessa R3/4 and of course Leica have their MP and both have a wide range of lenses and accessories.  In Medium Format there are new offerings from Fuji, Mamiya and Voigtlander again.  Then we also have the Large Format cameras and at the other end the Holgas and Pinholes.

Notwithstanding the sole offering from Nikon, for film to survive as a medium it might be that we need the weight of a big consumer manufacturer to enter the market again.  But for now I'm not sure they would get many sales - certainly not among the professionals who normally need instant feedback for a shoot, where you might have make-up, designers, models, wedding parties all present and you can't bring them all back if you mess up.  Most amateur photographers who are into film - like myself - are happy to use second-hand gear to scratch this particular itch.  This is great for buyers&users - the market for s/h cameras is huge and prices are reasonably affordable.  As of today there are still places you can get film cameras serviced.  We don't know if this will still be the same in 10 or 20 year's time - time will tell but it would be safe to assume that a lot of service centres will disappear in time.  Even now, the 'newer' old film cameras - the ones using electronics to control shutters and meters - are less able to be serviced at economical prices and so these are more of a gamble.  But since the costs aren't huge its a gamble perhaps worth taking, particularly if you get 10 good years out of one before they give up the ghost.

Whatever camera you use, people who use film are by and large very enthusiastic about it.  It's physical, you can touch it, hold the negatives up to the light and print them.  Your skillset is very different to that of the digital photographer.  There are several very active web groups for film users - including APUG, FADU and Filmwasters as well as ones dedicated to particular camera users which include film users, such as the Leica Forum.

Somerset

Somerset Coleraine, that is, not Somerset as in The Levels, King Arthur and this place, what I used to live near after I left here and before I came back here, if you see what I mean.

I like nature and I like trees.  These were captured on film in late August, on a Sunday afternoon stroll what is known as 'The Trim Trail', in the Somerset area of Coleraine.  Taken on FP4 and printed on MGIV if you're interested.

Somerset Trees in late August afternoon sun

The Somerset area has, like so many places around these parts, a bit of history.  To put it in geographical context, it lies just on the southern outskirts of Coleraine, just across the River Bann from the famous Mountsandel, or Mount Sandy if you prefer - you know, the place what dates from 7000BC and is one of the oldest human settlements found in Ireland.

During the Plantation of Ulster, in the time of King James I, the lands around here ended up in the ownership of the Merchant Taylor's Company of London.  The Somerset Estate, all 18,159 acres of it, was purchased from them in 1727 by The Richardson family, who originated from Edinburgh.  Fast forward a couple of centuries and the land was divided up, the Georgian House (which you can see photographs of here) eventually being demolished to make way for housing and a retail park in the 1980s.  The American firm Chemstand (later Monsanto) built a large facility here in the 1960s, manufacturing acrylic fibre. This was also closed and demolished sometime in the 1980s around the same time the retail park was established.  A bit of a metaphor for 21st Century UK Economy, really - out with manufacturing and in with shopping.

Anyway, today we are left with a pleasant woody area in which to walk.  There actually isn't much of the original 'Trim Trail' left (we're clearly fit enough in this part of the world) - now it's just a nice place to walk around for an hour or two.  Apparently the US Army had a base here during WWII, or so a very nice man told us during our Sunday stroll.  He was complaining about the overhead power lines, which stopped him using his metal detector in the area.  He had, believe it or not, been searching for hidden booty left by the Yanks, who were well known (apparently) for digging a hole and burying valuable consumables that they couldn't take with them - like barrels of whiskey.  There still are one or two old Nissan huts that we came across during our walk, so it seems feasible that the US Army were indeed here for a time.  As for the whiskey, we may never know, but it makes for a good story.