Campus of Shadows

I'm ending 2021 on a High Note.  The two significant ladies in my life were going into town the other day, so I got them to drop me off at the University Campus, where I proceeded to walk around with the TiTAN 4x5 pinhole.  Normally this requires a tripod (it has an effective aperture of f/201) but I didn't fancy lugging the big old thing I have around with me, so I took a small desktop one from about 40 years ago.  Ach, who am I kidding.  More like 45 years ago.  I wasn't exactly sure how this would pan out, since it's only about 8 inches tall but I thought I'd be able to find walls or similar to set it on.  As it happens I was able to use rubbish bins and planters so it worked out OK, just.  I think I might treat myself to a new, travel tripod in the January sales (are there such things any more?).

Ironically, the best shot of the afternoon came from one where I had to kind of hand-hold the gear on a post which wasn't quite big enough to take the tripod feet.  I think it was about a 20-second exposure.  Campus of Shadows is of course a nod to the insanely talented Alexey Titarenko.

University of Ulster building, on pinhole.  Fomapan 200 rated at 50, developed in HC-110 1:50 for 6mins40s on the Uniroller base.  Foma 313 paper.

As this is the last post of the year I get to make my annual statement about this place, which is now 5 years of showing only scans of darkroom prints.  I don't think it's been a memorable year in terms of my photography but in my defence other things took precedent - getting Missy through her A Levels (I was #1 Maths Tutor) and then off to Uni before embarking on a number of home improvement projects that had been put on the long finger for a while.  Now that those are out of the way and Missy is settled and happy at Uni perhaps I can give more attention to where I'm standing when I've a camera in me hands...