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!