Mission Accomplished

We're back home now, after a busy few days in Oxford.  The good news is that Missy is on her feet again, so it's mission accomplished for my wife and I.  It's only another week until she's back with us for Easter and while we would have liked her to come home early with us we left that decision to her, and she opted to stay put.  She had a couple of group assignments to finish so we did what we could to help her (cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, with a lot of hugs and tlc thrown in) and then headed back to the Liverpool ferry.  Normally that's a 3 hour drive, or slightly less if you've a heavy right foot (I usually don't) but yesterday it took an hour just to get around Birmingham, so it turned into a 4-hour drive.  There were a lot of roadworks on the M42/M6 but the main problem seemed purely to be the volume of traffic - it was nose-to-tail at a snail's pace for that section of the journey.  To cap it all, there were few places to stop for a break.   There was one about 45 minutes out of Oxford, which was kind of too early, and then none until we were well past Birmingham, which meant a long time sitting in the car.  My hips were screaming at me by then, so I was glad to get a break.  Mind you, I'd forgotten how grim some of those older services are.  I'll spare you the gory details but let's just say whoever has the cleaning contract needs to seriously re-evaluate their commitment to the job.  We didn't hang around.

Thankfully the ferry was spotlessly clean and we were able to get a hot shower in our cabin, which helped the recovery process.  But it was an early start in Belfast (5:40am wake-up call) so both my wife and I are feeling a tad wrecked.

Here's another one from my walk around the Uni campus a couple of weeks ago:

I didn't realise it when I was framing this shot but looking through the building you can see the hand on the Arts Centre poster you might recall from a couple of weeks ago (here).  

Not here

I'm not at home, which means no new work posted today, and probably this week.  Missy took sick last week in Oxford.  At first we thought Ah it’s just a bug, she’ll bounce back in a couple of days. But she didn’t.  Worse, she got sicker and late Friday afternoon her doctor advised her to go to A&E, as she'd been passing out from low blood pressure.  She hadn't eaten or drunk anything for a few days.  It's not like we can just jump in a car to go help her - that stretch of water between Ireland and England makes that tricky - but as my wife and sat down to eat early Friday evening, we looked at each other and both had the same thought: What are we doing here when she needs us over there?  So we literally dropped everything, booked the overnight ferry to Liverpool and an hour later we were out the door.   We arrived in Oxford 11am Saturday morning.

When she opened the door to us it was very clear: It was the right decision to come over. 

To cut a very long story short, she's slowly getting on her feet again.  My wife's mashed potato has helped.  We haven't got the bottom of what exactly is wrong, but we strongly suspect she has developed an intolerance to her medication for her spondylitis.  It's a strange one, since she's been on these meds for some years but there has been a bit of a pattern recently - getting sick a day or two after taking her injection.  Usually she shakes it off after a few days but this time around her body had a much stronger reaction.  So...no more injections for the time being until we can get her back to her rheumatologist in Belfast to investigate.  

Here's one of my favourite prints of her, from 2017:

If I remember correctly, I did a little delicate dodging around the face and hair.

Agherton Parish, Portstewart

 Another memorial stone from Agherton old churchyard in Portstewart:

FM3a, 85mm; HP5+ on Foma 133 paper.

Samuel Lewis' Topological Dictionary of Ireland lists Agherton (or Ballyaghran) as having 2,746 inhabitants in 1837.  The church (which is now a ruin) was built in 1836 at a cost of £960, paid for by monies raised locally and a loan from the Board of First Fruits.  Lewis identified a number of gentlemens' seats, including Flowerfield, which is close by the graveyard.  As he puts it, 'there are also several villas and handsome bathing lodges at Portstewart, a pleasant and well-attended watering place'.  There's a few more villas now, mostly overlooking Portstewart Bay towards Donegal.  As the saying goes, if you have to ask the price, you probably can't afford one. 

Coimetromania

Now there's a word you don't see every day - coimetromania: an abnormal attraction and desire to visit cemeteries, graveyards, and anything to do with the dead.  I think a lot of photographers are drawn to graveyards, presumably on account of the fact they usually have interesting artefacts.  In this case, it was the old Agherton graveyard in Portstewart, with this superb High Cross:

FM3a, 85mm.  HP5+ on Foma 133 paper.

The Bogside

The Bogside, in Derry, is quite the famous area, being more or less in the epicentre of the Civil Rights Marches in the late 1960s.  The famous Rossville Flats are long gone but the area retains much of its history with murals and the Free Derry Wall (the back of which is visible at the bottom centre of this first shot):

Looking over the Bog towards St Eugene's Cathedral.  I was standing on Derry's Walls when taking this shot, on rather a dreary day as you can tell.  The hills of Donegal are just visible in the distance. On Foma 133 Classic paper.

Free Derry Wall is the gable end of what was once a row of houses.  On one side is usually printed 'You are now entering Free Derry' but the message changes on occasion to fit various topical events.  Recently it read 'You are now entering code red for humanity' during the COP26 world conference on Climate Change.  During Covid the words 'We salute all our key NHS workers' were added. 

Nowadays the Bogside is something of a local attraction - tour buses regularly stop here for folk to see the murals and take photographs.  You can see one of the Bogside murals painted on another house just to the left of the wall - this one depicts Bernadette Devlin (McAliskey) using a megaphone addressing crowds in the Bogside.  In 1969 she was elected to parliament at the age of 21 - the youngest MP at the time and the youngest ever woman MP until 2015.  The murals (there are 12 in total) are the work of three local men.

I panned left a bit and took another shot:

Looking up Westland Street (on the right)

As you can see, the Bogside is a place of high-density housing, much of what is (or was) Council-owned and would have been a place of social deprivation and high unemployment.  Still is.  For many years Derry has had the highest unemployment rate of any UK city, running at more than twice the level of other cities in Northern Ireland.  Change is slow but there is a burgeoning Digital Economy in the city and the University Campus is expanding at a rate of knots - it now has a medical school.  Things are better than they were, although obviously there's still a way to go.

I placed the shots side-by-side to give more of a panoramic look:

More gems

 More diamonds, that is:

I liked the symmetry of the shadowed walls in this shot - and the satellite dish provides a nice buffer for the corner.
Fm3a, 85mm on Adox MCC.  

Normally when I walk around the campus I have a wide-angle lens with me.  On this occasion I took an 85mm.  I've said before I'm usually a one-camera one-lens guy when I go out - I try to get my eye for that one focal length and don't worry about what I might be missing by not having an alternative.  For this visit to the campus the 85mm worked very well for me.

It's March already but we're still stuck with wintery weather there in The Liberties.  No snow (although other parts of Northern Ireland have had plenty recently) but very cold and just a bit horrible.  No sign of that changing for another week or two by the look of things.  So we're still waiting for Spring, in spite of the daffodils trying to convince us otherwise.

Architectural lines

 Another shot and print from my recent walk around the Uni campus:

FM3a, 85mm; HP5+ on Adox MCC paper

Diamonds in the sky (updated with Adox MCC print)

The Uni campus next door to where I live was built in the late 1960s and has some fabulous architecture - a mix of classic 60s design with some much more modern buildings.  I really should go there more often.  Depending on the time of day, the place offers up contrasting shots with different aspects of the buildings illuminated as the sun moves around (or as the Earth spins, I guess - take your pick).

Part of the 'Diamond' building in the Uni campus.  Nikon Fm3a/85mm.  
I wanted to print this on Adox MCC paper, which has a very bright white base but when I searched in the darkroom there was none open, so I used Foma 133 instead, which is a much warmer paper.  The sky in this print has almost gone to black and I think the Adox would result in more contrast between the sky and the building, which might show the diamond design more clearly.  I have some Adox in the freezer so I'll get a few sheets out and try this one again next time I'm in the darkroom.

Update

So here's the Adox MCC version:

As expected, it's a lot brighter and the diamonds stand out a little more.  But...looking at the two prints side by side (they are both 9.5"x12") I can't decide which I prefer, which has surprised me.  I thought the Adox would blow the Foma away for this particular negative, but the Foma has a lovely look to it as well.  If anything, the warmth of the Foma seems to give it more depth. My wife prefers the Foma.

MCC is described on Adox's website as among the technologically advanced papers in the world and it gained a lot of followers when it was being produced.  A couple of years ago it was clear that there were going to be supply problems (Adox mentioned labour problems during Covid) so I bought 100 sheets of the stuff - the boxes have been living in my freezer ever since.  It was expensive, but perhaps I should have bought more as it doesn't look like its going to available to purchase again any time soon.  Adox say they have the capability, but they can't produce it at a market-acceptable price.  If they ever do start production again - and they seem reluctant to do so -  it's going to cost a lot more than I paid for it, that's for sure.  Their website states that stored below 6 degrees it's good for about 8 years, so I should be OK for a while yet.

The prices of paper (and film) has risen dramatically of late.  Sometimes I wonder if I will be able to justify the costs for much longer.  But then again, film and darkroom work is really my only thing.  I know folk around these parts who willing pay a couple of thousand pounds every year for Golf Club membership - and I don't spend anything near that on film and paper.  So for now I take a deep breath a couple of times a year, re-stock the darkroom and get on with it.

Students, eh?

I reckon the students who live in Uni accommodation at Ulster University's Coleraine campus have one of the nicest views around - looking pretty much due West down the River Bann, with Donegal way in the distance.  In the summer there are spectacular sunsets to be had.

Not bad if you can get it - student accommodation on the Coleraine campus. 
Nikon FM3a with 85mm; HP5 on Foma 133 paper.

The poster in the foreground is on a wall of the Riverside Theatre on the campus and the dude in the top hat is a local guy made good, James Nesbitt.  He's Chancellor of the Uni, I believe, which is largely a ceremonial role and not to be confused with the role of Vice-Chancellor, which is the title of the person who actually runs the place.  Our Mr Nesbitt is a TV actor - Cold Feet is one series you might have seen him in.  He went to the same school as me, albeit a couple of years below me.