Down Via Domenico Alberto Azuni, next door to the Chiesa San Michele lies this restaurant, although it didn't look like it was open when we passed. The outside rendering reminded me of Venice - a beautiful faded burnt red colour.
 |
| It's lacking something, this print. Perhaps the sunlight was too harsh at the time of day the shot was taken, or just my printing skills aren't up to it. FP4+ on Foma 133, toned. |
I'm sure it comes as no surprise to learn that Sardinians are generally more demonstrative than the Northern Irish. (I was going to write, Sardinians, being Italian but I thought I'd just check and lo and behold that's not something that would go down to well. Sardinians consider themselves as an independent ethinic group and apparently it is not uncommon to see graffiti that says Sardigna no est Italia).
Back to Public Displays of Affection, I snapped this lady up as she was about to greet her friend with a warm embrace:
 |
| OM4ti/85mm; FP4 on Foma 133, thiourea toned. |
Lamped has many meanings...including one that always made me smile: being hit very hard. Perhaps that's a nod to having your lights punched out. But here I'm taking a more literal meaning:
 |
| Ornate lamps outside the Chiesa Collegiata di Sant'Anna in Cagliari. OM4ti/85mm/FP4/Foma 133; toned in home-brew thiourea. |
I was looking forward to being able to show something of the inside of these beautiful churches, but I had a moment of madness. I'd loaded HP5+ and was rating it at 1600iso, as obviously things were a little dark inside. I think it was while I was in the third church of the day that I noticed the rewind spool wasn't turning as I wound on. I re-tensioned it, took another shot and as I wound on the tension seem to unwind on the spool. Heck, I thought - have I not loaded the film correctly? And not noticed all day? Ach...
So then I did a stupid thing. By then I had convinced myself I'd not loaded the film correctly. Frustration took over and I opened the back of the camera...and...wouldn't you know, everything looked OK. Except of course I'd opened the back. I know - I'm an eejit.
Anyway, I'm away now to develop said film and see if anything is salvageable. I'll let you know shortly. Go make a cup of tea in the meantime.
(Insert your favourite elevator music here)
Apologies - that took a bit longer than anticipated. HP5+ at 1600 in Ilfotec 1:31 needed 14 minutes, according to the Massive Dev App. OK so obviously the part of the film that was exposed to light is ruined, but at first I thought the start of the film looked OK, no obvious signs of fogging on the frames themselves, although the top and bottom edges were black. However, once dry a closer inspection showed it's all a bit veiled and murky, very low contrast so I doubt there's anything salvageable in the darkroom. I did go back and re-shoot the interior of two of the Churches we'd visited that day - the Chiesa Collegiata di Sant'Anna you see above and the Chiesa di San Michele, which has a stunning Baroque and Rococo styled interior, so once I get that film finished hopefully there will be something to share.
This was one of those 'difficult to print' shots...there was a wide dynamic range, from the shaded stall in the foreground to the light stonework of the impressive entrance to the Bastion of St Remy in the background. Some fill-in flash would have helped (perhaps!) but all I could do was hold the lower half of the print back a bit under the enlarger in order to try to keep some detail in the stall:
 |
| Bastion of St Remy, Cagliari. OM4ti/24mm Zuiko; FP4+ on Foma 133. |
The Bastion is hard to miss, since it dominates the whole city. Alas I was unable to scale the steps - well, I think I could have got up OK, but it was the coming back down that worried me. There were no handrails, so one trip and there would have been bits of an Ulsterman all over the pavement below and that would not have been a pretty sight, believe me. There was supposed to be a lift/elevator and we did actually find it up the road a bit but it was all locked up, which was disappointing.
The Bastion as it stands today isn't that old - it was built in a classic style around 1900, although it occupies the site of much older bastions that were built by the Spanish (What were they doing here, I wonder?) in the 16th Century. It took a bit of a battering during the second world war from the Allies (as did much of Cagliari, apparently) but it has since been rebuilt.
The street that I was standing in when I took the shot marks the start of the main drag in the city. It houses most of the main shops/boutiques and is the place to be seen for the daily promenade, which seemed to start about 7pm. So after the Sardinian afternoon siesta, it's get your glad-rags on, head up to the Via Giuseppe Manno to see and be seen, dander up and down for an hour and then sit at your chosen restaurant for the evening meal. Sounds good to me!
This is certainly one thing we miss over here in Ulster - the ability to sit out and eat in the evenings. In Cagliari everyone did it, every night from what we could see:
 |
| OM4ti, possibly 85mm; FP4+ on Foma 133 There are some weird artefacts on the lower left of this print and I'm not quite sure what's going on there. I don't think it's lens flare, more likely it's something not quite pukka in the darkroom. |
Italy is an hour ahead of us, so when we were getting hungry (after tramping the streets all day) at 6pm, it was 7pm there. Most restaurants were just opening then and usually we were first to sit down at a table - the locals started arriving an hour later, 8pm their time. A few times the waiter even apologised to us, saying the kitchen staff were eating and wouldn't be ready to serve food for a little while. That was fine, we were happy to sit, enjoy a glass of wine and engage in the serious business of people watching. A 500ml carafe of vino della casa came in at 5 euros, and very drinkable it was too. At home the price of wine in a restaurant is becoming a bit of a joke - at a minimum it's £20 a bottle and usually more. We rarely go out to eat, since both my wife and I enjoy cooking at home, so it was a pleasant diversion to eat out on holiday. Having said that, a couple of nights we did cook in our apartment - old habits die hard.
I've been finding it tricky to print some of the shots from Sardinia. I think this is due to a number of factors but the main one is the fact that strong Italian sunlight makes for harsh shadows. Sometimes that's OK, but it makes it difficult to get the exposure right for both elements; and then also when printing - it's not easy to keep detail in the shadows without losing the highlights completely (and vice-versa). I've had to resort to a bit more dodging that I would normally do - here in Ireland we get soft, even light a lot of the time due to copious amounts of cloud cover. I don't think Foma 133 is dealing too well with these negatives, so I tried Kentmere fixed grade paper for this one. At grade 3 it was a bit too contrasty for the negative and as you can see, the highlight in the middle distance (where the sun is illuminating part of the scene) is pretty much lost:
 |
| I'd like to say I saw and waited for the perfect moment but in truth I didn't notice the lady turning her head until I printed this. It's a pity its not a little more obvious. OM4ti/85mm/FP4+ |
I think I will try to make a better print of this one - it has potential, as they say. If I'm successful, I'll let you know.
Back home now after a week away. Got two films developed yesterday and a very quick darkroom session this morning to get something printed. I seem to have taken a lot of photographs of shutters. Here's the first offering:
 |
| Cagliari shutters; OM4ti, 85mm Zuiko. FP4+ in Ilfotec HC for 8minutes (1:31). Foma 133 paper, mild thiourea tone, which didn't take as well as I would have liked. |
Cagliari was superb - beat my expectations by a long chalk. Plenty big enough with lots of interesting streets to explore on foot and enough variety to keep it interesting. It was quite hilly, so challenging in the heat at times. Most days we just ambled around the different districts, stopping for tea and cake and wandering in and out of any church that happened to be open...and there were a lot of churches. For a bloke familiar with austere Northern Irish Presbyterian Buildings the Cagliari Roman Catholic churches were on the other end of the spectrum - filled with statues, art works, marble and gold. I did what I could to capture them on HP5+, not developed yet so I can't promise anything.
