Whenever I see pictures like this, Escape (The Piña Colada Song) springs to mind.
If you like piña coladas And gettin’ caught in the rain If you’re not into yoga If you have half a brain If you like makin’ love at midnight In the dunes on the cape Then I’m the love that you’ve looked for Write to me and escape
A colleague I used to work with told me he always sang it as “In the dunes in a cape“. 🙂
It’s very rare that I make prints of my photographs. Occasionally, I’ll get a bunch of cheap mini prints of random shots as they can be nice things to put in gifts, and I had a print made of a picture my cousin liked for her to hang on her wall, but rarely do I make a print for myself.
I might get a print of the picture posted here today though. It’s not a perfect image and probably not something anyone would buy commercially, but I like the photo – it’s evocative and also, because I was there when it was made, personal. It’s mine. It would be a nice thing to look at when I’m at work, I think, maybe even moreso when the dark winter days kick in proper.
Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 160NS. Lab developed, home scanned, & converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I suffered a wet knee for the sake of getting today’s blog picture, but think it was worth the discomfort and the soft focus on the forground grass along with the faint glimmer of dew give a nice sense of depth to the image. I had some expectation that the photo might be marred by camera shake as I had to hold it slightly off the ground to get the composition I wanted and felt like I wasn’t holding it completely steady, but it turned out nice and sharp. TLR’s – the flippy screens of their day!
Yashicamat 124G & Lomography Color Negative 100. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I was struck by the way that the lighthouse looked like it stood beyond a rolling sea of grass in this photo. I did wonder about cloning out the lone figure on the left but then decided against it.
In other news, I’m currently scanning a roll of 135 Tri-X that I finished shooting at the weekend. As I often get drying marks on my 135 negatives (although, oddly, never on 120 negs…), even though I use distilled water and wetting agent for the final wash, I’ve taken to using a squeegee lately. This has worked fine all the other times I’ve used it, but this roll of Tri-X looks beset by scratches along most of its length, which is disappointing.
Bronica ETRSi, Zenzanon 75mm f/2.8 PE & Ilford Pan F Plus. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 7mins 20°.
I’m feeling a bit frustrated at present. Nothing to do with my photography, but all to do with my ears. Which are blocked.
I have a problem with blocked ears, and have done for years. Every so often they will get clogged up and I need to put in drops and visit the GP to get them cleared out. This is the case at present. I visited the nurse last week to have them syringed (after a couple of weeks of putting in olive oil drops), and had been really looking forward to getting my hearing back. Unfortunately, my ears were so clogged that the drops had only penetrated part way and the procedure left further wax deeper in my ear. On top of that, after I came out of the GP’s my hearing gradually became worse through the day – my right ear wasn’t too bad at first but in the evening I tried watching some TV programmes on the iPad with headphones – trying to listen to the TV in the living room as fruitless, with all the sound becoming a bit of a mush and any dialogue being very difficult to make out – and while the headphones on the iPad worked ok at first, after a while I felt my right ear gradually close up with whatever was still blocking much of it. So that was that.
I’m now putting drops in several times a day in preparation for round two with the nurse later in the week. Sigh.
That had nothing whatsoever to do with photography, but a photo you shall get nontheless. Not of the inside of my ears thankfully, but some dried grasses that I photographed a few weeks ago.
My photography has dwindled over the past few weeks, coinciding with the new kitchen we’ve had fitted and ten the decorating that is still ongoing. I had hoped that I might be able to grab a few outings this week while I’ve been off work but, alas, there has been too much other stuff to be done unfortunately. Except for yesterday that is, when I had most of the day free.
Unfortunatley the weather wasn’t ideal – a mixture of boring grey skies punctuated by the odd rain-shower and glimpse of sunshine – plus I was tired from all the other stuff that has been taking place. Still, I didn’t want to waste the opportunity while I had it (I’m fast running out of new photos for the blog!) so I made the effort to go out. I dug the Yashica Mat from a box where it was being stored, along with my light meter, a cable release, and a tripod quick-release plate. I took four rolls of film (better to be prepared, eh?) and, as I was leaving the house, grabbed my XA3 too, which has an almost full roll of HP5+ rated at 800asa loaded.
This last item proved fortunate as, despite all my preparation (and remembering to take the Arca-swiss plate), I forgot to take the actual tripod, leaving it leaning in the corner of the kitchen where I’d placed it! If I’d loaded a roll of HP5+ or something in the Yashica this wouldn’t have been too much of a problem as I could have shot it handheld at box speed, or even pushed it, but I’d instead loaded a roll of 80asa Ortho Plus instead. Because of the dull light, unless I fancied shooting the whole roll at f/3.5, it was rendered pretty much useless without the tripod to hold the camera steady. So, instead, I took shome pictures with the XA3 – maybe ten or twelve frames, not enough to finish the roll. At least I made some photos though.
I might get the opportunity to shoot some more on Monday or Tuesday, but I’ll have to see how things go.
This decorating Is not helping to push my Creativity
Today’s photo shows another angle of St. Peter’s church at Elmton. This was the view that I spotted as first approaching the village by road, but there was nowhere at this spot where I could park (the roads being quite narrow with no verge that I could pull onto), so I continued into the village and parked my car on the road beside the church. After making a few photos around the church itself I decided to walk back to the vantage point I’d seen earlier. I could have followed the road which, in this picture, passes the wall just in front of the church, heads to the left of the scene, and then takes a 90-degree turn back towards a place close to this spot. But there was a shortcut…
Looking at my maps app on my phone, it was apparent that there was a public footpath through this field which cut the corner. Sure enough, I spotted an old wooden footpath signpost and a stile built into the wall beside the field. Climbing the stile I set off across the field. It quickly became apparent that the grass was longer than I expected and also that very few people must use the path as there was no real evidence of it’s existence, not even in the form of some slightly flattened grass. Nontheless I perservered and made my way down the slope to where my map showed the path exiting the field. As I progressed, the grass in the field began to be joined by clumps of large hardy weeds that I had to skirt and also, worse, nettles! Given I was wearing a pair of cargo shorts, thoughts of stung legs came to the fore of my mind, and I had to take even more care over where I walked.
Eventually I reached the spot where I made this photo, and I ducked into the grass to allow it to provide more prominent foreground interest. It turned out to be the final frame on the roll, so I continued down to the corner of the field and the exit. Unfortunately the exit was conspicuous by it’s almost complete absence, with all that I could see was a rusty kissing gate almose buried in tall weeds and more nettles and then continuous growth for about the next ten feet or so. I could have walked back the way I came, which would have been a sensible option, but the thought of forcing my way through the high grass didn’t appeal, so I decided to chance the overgrown exit instead. It probably took me as long to do this as walking back throuh the field would have done.
I had to procede with great caution, carefully placing my feet as to squash the nettles away from my legs with each step. By some miracle I wasn’t stung a single time, although the final four or five feet involved me making a daring leap across a clump of nettles right where the verge dropped down onto the road. No doubt this would have looked highly amusing to anyone passing by, but thankfully no-one was around.
In the end I had to walk back via the road anyway, so maybe it would have been simpler had I used that route for both legs of the jaunt. But then what would I have written about today? Plus the picture was worthwhile, I think.
These stinging nettles And not a dock-leaf in sight A peril for legs
I hope nobody is getting bored of mist yet? There are still more to come – some of them in colour! 🙂
I think the lone tussock of grass in this helps the shot a lot. It would still have had a pleasant abstract nature without, but it being there in the foreground anchors the image.
Apologies for the somewhat short posts this week. I’ve had some other things to keep me occupied so not enough time unfortunately.
Steel City Snapper photography 