Grass on lith

It's hard to resist grass or stone of any description when you have a fair idea how it will turn out in lith developer.  In this case, I was down by the River Bann one morning a while back and only got round to printing it the other day.  I can't get the scan to look anything like the print but it's the best I can do in the time available...

Grass by the River Bann.  Hasselblad/HP5+/Fotospeed lith on Foma 131 paper

This was taken on the West bank of the river, looking East.  To get there, I have to drive through Coleraine and then take the road to Castlerock.  There's a smattering of houses down near the river and a bird hide for those who want to see the wading birds on the mudflats - curlews, greenshanks, heron are all fairly common, as are ducks of various varieties.  I used to go there when I was young but haven't been for years - you're too far from the birds for photographs, so it's 'scopes only.

As I turned down the side road to the river I could see a tractor and trailer combination coming up towards me, albeit some way away.  I did the decent thing and pulled into the verge and waited.  Now usually in these parts this would result in an acknowledgement of some sort by the tractor driver - a hand or a nod of the head.  Not so on this occasion.  He looked directly at me but pointedly did not raise his hand or acknowledge my action in any way.  Interesting.  There are two possible reasons, I reckon.  Either he's just plain rude and reckoned that since he was about 20 times bigger than me I had no choice other than to pull over and so Why should he thank me?  Or, he's a local and this is his road and What business did I have in driving down here anyway?  Thankfully people like that are still rare enough in these parts (although perhaps getting more common, sad to say).   Most country drivers understand 'the code' and a hand or sometimes just a finger lifted off the steering wheel is enough to acknowledge the presence and decency of the other driver.  I've been in vehicles driven by older people who lift a hand to every car they pass on a country road - as if it's a throwback to times when cars were uncommon and everyone knew everyone else in their locality.  Nowadays of course no-one knows anyone (except those who live next door to you) and so these customs are dying out, to be replaced by....nothing.  All too often these days it feels like it's every man (and woman) for themselves.

El Alegre Burrito

Snapped up on the 'Blad during last year's visit to The Brother in the West Chicago 'burbs.  Although the plaque on the stone thing says 'City of Chicago' so I guess we had crossed some invisible boundary and were now inside the city limits.

Somewhere in the City of Chicago, 2018.  HP5+ on the 'Blad, lith print, Foma paper.

Not a cloud in the sky, as you can see - just heat.  The Brother is acclimatised now, after a quarter of a century living there.  Not me - it was too hot last August and I felt ill most days.  I was fine once I got back home to the cool Irish air where I could breathe again.

More lith, more Slavich

Another lith print from my Belfast Train Trip.  This one as we were coming out of Belfast.  The train was moving fast but as the giant cranes from the Harland&Wolff shipyards came into view I thought there might have been something there so I wasted a whole frame of HP5+:

Belfast, 2019.  Lith print on Slavich Unibrom paper

The two big cranes you can just about see in the middle of the frame are called Samson and Goliath, by the way.  And you probably know Harland & Wolff shipyards are where the Titanic was built.  And if you don't know what the Titanic was, well, Where have you been? (It was that big ship that Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet had something to do with. I think she was the Captain and he the First Mate, or something like that, although since I didn't see the film I could be wrong).

Lith and Slavich Unibrom paper

This was one of those films that had got stuck inside a camera for a few months, so I'd completely forgotten about 3 or 4 shots that I'd taken on a trip to Belfast I made by train a while ago.  I'd borrowed Missy's OM-1 and 50mm lens and just fired off a few shots as the train exited Belfast.  A couple of them looked promising so yesterday morning I had a short darkroom session to see how they printed.  I knew I had a box of Slavich paper lurking somewhere in the darkroom - it had been a while since I'd printed with it.  In lith developer it takes on a very graphic look - doesn't suit every negative but I had a feeling this one would work.

Passing through Belfast station on the train, 2019.  Fotospeed lith on 9.5"x12" Slavich Unibrom paper

I liked it. Some dark bits and some light bits and it tells a story.  I might even put this into a Club competition - if only to hear the judge's comments.

Race Week

It's the North West 200 road races this week and the place is chaos.  The event gets bigger every year it seems - about 100,000 people descend on our little townland and about half of those are riding bikes, or so it seems.  I've posted about it before (here and here among other times) but in case you're new to it all you can see some onboard footage by clicking here where you see the man known as Michael Dunlop ride around at a leisurely pace for your amusement.  Just after he hits 195mph is a road to the right and about 100 yards up there is where I live.  To get your bearings, the event starts on the road between Portstewart and Portrush, they start off heading into Portstewart then up towards Coleraine before swinging back down to Portrush and around again.  It's not known as the Triangle Area for nothing, y'know.

Mr Dunlop is, of course, living history, since his family have produced some of the best road racers in the world.  Actually, that's not correct - not just some of the best, but the best.  Their father was Robert Dunlop and their uncle, Robert's brother, the legendary Joey Dunlop with a record 26 wins at the Isle of Man TT.  But when things go wrong road racing doesn't take many prisoners.  Michael is, you could say, the last of the Dunlop dynasty since his brother William, father Robert and uncle Joey have all been killed doing what they loved to do - racing bikes.  Such was their passion for the sport that both William and Michael continued to race just days after their father died at the NW200 back in 2008.  In fact, Michael went on to win his first ever race at the event that year - you can read about it and what his mother had to say about it here.

Anyway, we all hope that this year's event will pass off without incident.  I have to admit I find it hard to watch it these days - perhaps I'm too aware of the risk of injury or worse not just to riders but to spectators as well.  These days the spectators are pushed well back from the road - back when I was a lad I was able to poke my head (and OM-1) through a gap in the hedge and feel the wind on my face as they whizzed past.  Not so any more, which is probably a good thing.

So...after all that adrenaline rush it's time to return to the peace and tranquility of Ballintoy Harbour:

Ballintoy, one May evening in 2019.  Cropped from the 'Blad on HP5+ and printed on Adox MCC paper.

Zenit&Helios

A classic combo - like Fish 'n' Chips, or Mac&Cheese if you prefer.  There's a story behind this kit I'm writing about today.  I was gifted the Zenit TTL from a guy I was buying an old Fed camera from.  It just appeared in the package - without a lens and I had no idea it was coming but he explained later.  He had bought it from the Auction Site and kept the lens for his digital camera, as that seems to be all the rage these days.  No matter - the body looked in good condition and it was gratefully received.  I put in the back of the 'camera cupboard' and forgot about it.  Until, that it, my old Uni mate (who you might remember from this post) found out about it and very kindly send me a Helios 44-M 58mm f/2 lens to put on it.  He had similarly bought the lens from the Auction Site and tried it on his pixel-snapper but didn't like it much.  So, being the decent sort he is, he sent it to me, in the hope that it might be of some use.

Zenit&Helios, FP4+ in RO9, Adox MCC paper

I eventually got around to loading the Zenit with FP4+ and just to test that everything was working correctly I walked around the garden for an hour, snapping pretty randomly at anything and everything.  Including, of course, the hound:

The Hound, resting his old tired eyes in the sun. Printed on Adox paper.

I have to say I was mightily impressed by the Helios lens - very contrasty, sharp and of course that signature out-of-focus rendering.  It differed from the last Helios lens I used, in about 1973, which had a manual diaphragm.  This had an auto diaphragm, so not much to go wrong once you set the aperture and focus. And the camera did well, too - the speeds all seemed pretty accurate.  I particularly liked the old style ground glass focussing screen - well, I liked it at the time but it turned out to be harder to nail the focus than I thought, since I found out after developing the film that I'd missed in quite a few shots. Another classic combination, by the way, FP4+ and RO9 (1+25 9 mins if you care about such things).

All in all, a fine piece of kit and I would use it again in an instant. 

East of Eden

Well perhaps not the Eden, but Ballintoy Harbour comes a pretty close second I reckon.  Anyway, looking East from Ballintoy gave you a scene like this if you were lucky enough to be there last Wednesday evening about 9pm:

East from Ballintoy one evening in May 2019

It wasn't quite as bleak as it looks here but the light was fading fast when I took this shot.  From a wee Olympus OM camera with a 50mm Zuiko lens on it.  You can tell it was a slowish shutter speed as there's a bit of blur on the lone seagull whirling about.  A fair crop on the negative too, hence the rather nice grain on the Adox paper.

Ballintoy Harbour

About a 10 minute drive past the Giant's Causeway lies the now-famous harbour at Ballintoy.  Wikipedia tells me that the name derives from the Irish Baile an Tuaigh, or Northern Townland - which figures since we're more or less at the nothernmost tip of Country Antrim.  If you're a Game of Thrones fan, you might recognise the area since they did some filming here - as well as at numerous other spots along the North Coast.  I'm not a GoT person, by the way - I watched about 10 minutes of it once and that was enough for me.  I know that probably puts my in the minority, since the whole GoT thing is now big business.  You can take coach tours from Belfast which go all around the various locations - and lots of people do.  I heard once of a coach pulling up at Ballintoy Harbour (it would have to have been a smallish coach to navigate the winding road down to it, but that's another story) and a couple of dozen GoT fans emerging in full fancy dress battle armour, charging down to the beach and having a good old mock fight, oblivious to the wedding ceremony taking place on another part of the beach.  Well, to be fair, it would certainly make for an unforgettable wedding...

Ballintoy, looking towards Giant's Causeway, 2019.  On Adox MCC paper.

I was actually there one evening last week with our little Photographic Club.  We were supposed to be doing an outdoor model shoot with OCF (off-camera flash, apparently - I know nothing about flash photography, btw) but the models pulled out at the last minute.  I don't blame them - it was pretty chilly.  Anyway, since we were all locked and loaded (with film, in my case) a few of us went on out anyway and I was very glad I did.  Mind you, I think I was the only one that was happy, since the rest of them were after a good sunset and were disappointed.  I wasn't disappointed, for I was after some decent light and some good clouds and well - you can see for yourselves what it was like.

Side by side

Another one from the series of shots depicting the changing landscape around the North Coast of Ulster. This one taken at Ballyreagh, between Porstewart and Portrush - on the 'Blad and HP5+:

Ballyreagh, 2019.  Adox MCC paper

Number 15 there, on the left, typifies the changes that are happening before us in this part of the world.  On the right we have a 1930s style bungalow, which is still a common sight around here.  Actually this one looks in better shape than a lot of them, to be fair.  I'm sure there used to be another, very similar one where Number 15 now stands, with it's in-your-face cubist design, all wood and glass and not a curve in sight.  And definitely no chimney-pots - open fires replaced by underfloor heating. I'm not criticising the design of it, I'm just remarking on the differences, that's all.

Come back in 20 years - probably less - and they'll all be like Number 15.  I think I safely say there'll be very, very few of the old bungalows left standing.