A couple more shots of the flooded field at Elmton, although without any sign of the church this time.
Appropriately enough, the road that runs past the field is called Spring Lane. The spring itself is a little further up the road to the south east, but I’m not sure if it’s this which feeds the flooded area at the bottom of the field.
There’s something I find fascinating about water courses that takes me back to being a child where I would read Ladybird books or similar, and watch children’s educational programmes about the water cycle. There’s something in me that wants to trace the journey from source to destination. From that tiny bubbling spring all the way to the ocean.
I enjoyed making “boats” out of a twig or a branch and then watching as they navigated the straights, eddies, and rapids of a stream until they would eventually reach a place where I could follow them no longer, but from where I would imagine them making a grand voyage all the way to the sea.
The bottom corner of this field at Elmton floods in wet weather and makes for some interesting picture opportunities, including reflections of St. Peter’s Church.
I guess the shots also continue this week’s molehill theme. 🙂
This little scene caught my eye as I passed. The interplay of all the elements – the wall, the poles, the cables, plus the large bush and the bench – all came together in a way I found pleasing. The mole hills are just a little bonus extra.
Following the barn and schoolhouse pictures that I posted a few days back, here’s another subject that’s featured on the blog on multiple occasions (possibly because it stands right next to said schoolhouse and barn…). In fact, one of the pictures I’ve posted before is very similar to the lat one in today’s set. But, again, what the heck. It’s a nice subject, so who wouldn’t photograph it again? 🙂
My son had another job interview today, this one a little less impromptu and with support from his job coach. I don’t know what the outcome will be (apparently one of the other people being interviewed – for a job in a clothes store – was a marine biologist!), but he looked very smart and even if it doesn’t work out, every interview is more experience for him to draw upon.
I’ve been attempting to scan some medium format Provia 100 this evening and I’m not sure I’m happy with the results. Slide film can be a PITA to scan sometimes and it’s hard to get the results to look like the actual image on the film.
This has resulted in less time than anticipated to update the blog, so this is a bit of a quick post, although it does feature a picture that I really like.
Two subjects (which conveniently stand next door to one another) that have featured on the blog a number of times before (here, here and here, for instance). Sometimes subjects just demand further photographs, I find.
Today, I decided to roll up my sleeves and develop three rolls of black-and-white 120 film which I’ve recently shot. I had two rolls of Kodak Tri-X, and a single roll of expired Kodak Tmax 100 to process.
I have two developing tanks, a small one which will take two rolls of 135 film, or a single roll of 120, and a larger tank that will double the amount of film I can develop, so the Tmax went in the small tank, and the Tri-X in the larger one. My plan was to develop all three rolls using Ilfotec DD-X, but I realised when making up the solution for the two rolls of Tri-X that there would not be enough left for the other roll.
Not to worry, I thought, I’ll develop it in Rodinal instead. I’ve not developed Tmax 100 in Rodinal before, but expected it might look nice given it’s a fine grained 100asa film. So, after completing the Tri-X, I started to get myself prepared to develop the Tmax – the usual stuff: getting the water to the right temperature, making sure I had all the necessary bits and bobs required (including drying stuff I’d just used with the Tri-X). Then I encountered a problem…
I couldn’t get the top off my bottle of Rodinal. It has a safety cap which requires downward pressure while turning in order to remove it but, today, no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t come loose. It just rotated and clicked annoyingly. At one point I was using so much downward force that the bottle started to collapse in on itself! After five minutes of fruitless effort, I gave up on the enterprise, and decided that I would have to force open the bottle and store it in a different bottle. As I don’t have another suitable bottle (I’d assumed the bottle it came in would be fine) I ordered a brown glass medicine bottle from eBay, and I’ll re-home the developer when it arrives.
Later in the afternoon I searched online to see if anyone else had encountered similar problems and I found a recent Reddit thread describing the exact same issue. A few people had managed to remove the stuck cap with pliers or a wrench, so I’ll give that a try. The consensus seems to be that the developer crystalises in the safety mechanism of the cap, causing it to get stuck and no longer function properly.
Anyway, both rolls of Tri-X came out fine (although I did manage to drop one of them on the bathroom floor when taking it off the reel, coating it with bits of dust and a strand of hair, and necessitating me re-washing it).
No Rodinal was used in the development of the two pictures below. Perhaps that was for the best.
I’ve noticed this cluster of road-signs and various poles (for power lines and lighting) before, but this is the first picture I’ve taken of it, aided by the reach provided by the 28-200mm lens I used.
There’s a lone pedestrian in among the street furniture too.
I seem to have quite a backlog of photographs to post at present. This is mostly a good thing, and far preferable to having nothing new to put on the blog, but at the same time it can become a little overwhelming.
While film, by it’s nature, will always have some delay between shooting and being able to publish the results (I think I’ve only once shot, developed, scanned, and published a film photo on the same day), sometimes it feels like everything I post is out-of-date. I’m always posting stuff that I photographed weeks, if not months ago.
Part of this is due to the way I blog. Posting at least one picture every day means I need to keep up a ready supply of images, something I’m usually ok to do – I enjoy making photographs, and enjoy seeing them revealed even more, so taking a lot of them is enjoyable and something I feel compelled to undertake. At the same time, often due to time constraints (there never seems to be enough of it!), I’ll often only post a single image at a time, meaning a roll of film can result in weeks of blog posts is I’ve had a good hit rate.
Pretty soon I’m going to start posting pictures shot with a Kodak H35N half-frame camera – which gives at least 72 photos from a 36-exposure roll – so I’m going to have to clump those together or it will be autumn before I’m done.
I think some of my perceived problem arises from the fact that I have a tendency to collect (hoard!) things given the opportunity – maybe some ancient instinctive mammalian behaviour coming through – and this includes photogrphs. Whatever the case, I think I’m going to have to fight my instinct to save things, and push out more photos when I’m in this situation, which is why this post contains a bunch of pictures all taken during a hike from Baslow to Chatsworth house. Ideally I would have written a post about the hike, but instead I’ve spent the time on this outpouring. 😀
Yashica Mat 124G & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 for 8 minutes @ 20°
Steel City Snapper photography 