101 Uses Of A (Nearly) Dead Sheep

Morning folks - I'm not really meaning to paraphrase Simon Bond's classic book, but it was the first title that jumped into my head.
Thankfully, there's not really 101 uses of a (Nearly) Dead Sheep in this article, but it somehow fit with a sad story about a lone sheep, who is unfortunately now either a carcass on a foreshore, or has been carted off to the great vet incinerator in the sky.
You'll need hankies for later on - trust me.

Close-Planted Standing, Fife

Oh and it was nothing like this:

Or this:

I can't condone such behaviour - I am a cat lover - all the same though, they're pretty damn funny no matter which way you look at them.

Anyway, there I was, with yet another hillwalk planned and cancelled at the last minute - this Winter has been something else for that - allied with a dodgy knee,  another Plan B was wheeled into action.
It was what is becoming my default Plan B - Wormit to Balmerino, except this time I was planning on coming back via the back way from Balmerino Abbey.

So, prepped and ready to go - son and gf dropped off at work - weather not too bad, I parked up at Wormit 'beach' - in reality it's a semi-muddy shoreline with a concrete breakwater - the view is spectacular though, taking in the Carse of Gowrie, right through to Dundee itself and beyond to Barry Point by Monifieth/Carnoustie - quite something and when the light is good and quiet it has that strange air of misty change that you often find in a tidal hinterland.

If you've never been, the path to Balmerino is dead obvious (and signposted) and I set off at a pace with the added hope of maybe finding my watch (which broke free from its strap the last time I came this way).

I was toting the 150mm Sonnar and 500 C/M alone in the Think Tank bag that was detailed in this post.

It makes for a very tidy little package for such an awesome picture making machine.
I combined it with my CF Gitzo tripod - possibly the greatest thing since sliced peas - and off I went!

So here we go . .

Film # 66/54

#66/54, HP5 EI 200, 24/2/19

1./ 1/30th, f11, ZIII MLU Foreshore

2./ 1/30th, f11, ZIII MLU Foreshore

3./ 1/60th, f5.6, ZIII MLU Tree

4./ 1/30th, f11, ZIII MLU Horizon

5./ 1/8th, f8, Z? Sheep

6./ 1/8th, f22, ZII, Trees

7./ 1/30th, f5.6, ZIV, Catkins

8./ 1/30th, f5.6, ZIV, Catkins

9./ 1/60th, f8, ZIV, Shadow, Hut

10./ 1/250th, f4, ZIII, True, Pier

11./ 1/30th, f16, ZIII, True, Pier

12./ 1/4th, f22, ZIV, Shadow, True, Tay

PHD 5+5+500 22℃.

Agit 30 sec, then 4 per min, to 17 mins then stand to 21. No waterbath.

Nice results though I need to watch my readings.

All 150mm Sonnar,  and apart from 5, tripod.

And those are my notes.
Boring?
OF COURSE, but then again it isn't often one gets to look into anyone's work process is it, and well, if anyone can glean anything - like a tweak on the way they work that helps things along - then I am a HB (Happy Bunny)!
"True" by the way means I took the reading from the meter verbatim - no farting around.

Right - got your bicycle clips on?
Good . . here we go!

Wormit Foreshore, Facing West

It's a pretty scene isn't it - this is taken from a position on the bit of shoreline just before the Balmerino path takes you up into some fields - it's next to the prone wooden seal statue/seat if you need directions. The building you see is a fisherman's hut of antiquity - there's been no roof on it since me and the missus 'discovered' it back in the early 1990's.

There's another one (or rather the remnants of one) further along and probably there's more all the way to Newburgh, but I wouldn't recommend trying unless you're in a boat, as access to the shore is a tad difficult and with a tide moving around every 6 hours or so, unless you can be sure of getting back safely, I'd be very careful.

A few words of warning -  it is slippy and muddy as blazes - there's a good chance if you hit the wrong bit of shoreline, both you and your wellies will become firmly stuck!

The one possibly interesting thing I'll add is, y'see the shoreline to the right of the hut, and you see that bit of hill at the left side of the frame, well use your mind to imagine that hill climbing up to the top of the frame, and you've got a really steep incline that required yomping up by me . . . but more of that in a minute.

Right - I've had a break - here we go . . . y'see the sheep in Frame 5? 
Yeah? Good - we'll talk about her.
Well, there I was right on an inaccessible bit of shore  - I'd scrambled down off the main path as I'd seen the remnants of another 'hut'. I photographed the curiously CEMENTED INTO PLACE tree stump in Frame 3 and the bleak mudscape of Frame 4, and, I chanced across a small waterfall which I thought was beautiful. I started to clamber over a breadth of bramble and awkward vegetation and spotted the sheep.

I know sheep - stop the sniggering at the back or you'll get lines - they bolt as soon as you get near them. But despite my noise and thrashing and swearing where the brambles were tearing at everything, this one was going nowhere, nor moving. I baaa'd at it a few times and eventually it came to life - I'm good at impersonating sheep - and looked at me. I took it's (bad) picture - 50p of film I'll never see again - and moved closer towards it. It still lay. I didn't think this was looking good. Eventually it lurched to life and moved away a small distance dragging its front left shank.

Two things struck me:

The animal was in a severe state of distress - close to death actually. 

and

That's not just a farmer's profit, but an unfortunate creature needing putting down. 

I'm not a romantic with regard to farming - it is a hard business. 
I'm also not immune to the suffering of creatures. 
Given that I had no phone, my only recourse was to go somewhere and tell someone to call a vet.

I retreated back to the foreshore so as not to panic the animal any more, packed all my gear, and scrambled uphill at speed.

Fifty-odd meters doesn't sound much, but it is three quarters (approx) of 200 feet - take that over a quarter of a mile of rough scramble with no paths, at speed, and you've got a fairly intensive workout for the ol' ticker.

There was a rough grouping of farm buildings at the top of my climb, but they all seemed to have been converted into holiday lets. I found another house, rang bells, knocked on doors and eventually found a dog who led me round to an open door and a young, well-to-do woman who was hoovering her living room. She screamed and then switched off her hoover. I explained, and she said she'd let her neighbour (the farmer, who owned the whole chunk of land - presumably including her house) know.
She seemed as concerned as I was, which is a good thing, however, that was that. I'd done what I could do. If I go back and spot a sorry bag of bones and wool at the foot of the waterfall, I'll know nothing was done. 

RIP Ms. Sheep.

Anyway, utterly exhausted, I beat my way along a field edge and made it back to the path and continued on my way.

Close-Planted Standing, Fife

I'd always had it in my head to take this photograph, but it was rather hard with every lens other than a moderate telephoto - I wanted the feeling of being enveloped in trees.
Not sure whether I've achieved it or not - to be frank I was exhausted at this point - my heart wasn't in it - I kept thinking about the sheep.
The eagle-eyed might well have spotted that the original negative on the contact is severely underexposed - bad reading with a spot meter again - but fortunately I managed to rescue it for perpetuity with some printy stuff. To my mind there's a desparate bleakness about this photo - maybe the way I was feeling had wound it's way into the frame . . .
I know . . I can hear you muttering BOLLOCKS! from here . . .

Anyway, it's a Grade 4 on Ilford MGRC Pearl - actually all of these 'ere prints are that paper, but the rest are Grade 3.
The flecks on the trees are really sharp - Pyrocat has a wonderful effect on ordinary HP5 - it gives almost an etched surface - it is quite subtle, but apparent.

Catkin Lanterns, Fife

Further on, against the gloom of enclosed trees and grey sky, I spotted these catkins. They were like little fluffy beacons in the dark. I set up my tripod and camera and did some moving around and gazing at the focus screen along with checking DOF. To my eyes they looked best when shot (nearly) wide open - it looked gorgeous on the focus screen.
This being said, bad egg Bruce Robbins did say he thought the 'bokeh' looked a tad wirey.
I hadn't noticed till he mentioned it, but yeah, he's right.
I think it is a combo of f5.6 and moving twiggy stuff.
I'll bear it in mind for the future.
I still quite like it for some reason.

Fisherman's Hut, Wormit

Well, this is that 'ere 'ut, we saw from the other direction in Frame 1. Weirdly the iron doors (two of them) are both padlocked, despite the building having no roof.
As I said before me and missus 'discovered' this place back in the 1990's, on a day of extreme heat, vast clouds of black flies and the warmly pungent whiff of sewerage - it was dead romantic.
Oh yes, didn't I mention that?
The Tay has been an outfall for a lot of the shitty stuff over the years - it has improved greatly in the past decade or so but all the same, you can still catch a mighty whiff of it at times (old layers of it being exposed?) - all the more reason for wellies!

It's a shame you can't sit with a 10x8 print in your hands because it brings to life everything I like about the Sonnar - great detail, intense sharpness, not ott contrast, and living breathing (soft but detailed) out of focus areas.
I like this picture.

From there if was a distraction of taking a couple more boring pics of old pier standings and then, with one shot left to me, and the tide on the turn I thought Feck it, might as well, and I picked my way along the shore to the footings of the Tay Rail Bridges - yes, there have been two - I'll not detail them myself, but the tragedy of the original disaster it still writ large on both sides of the river.
You can read about it here.
It helped toward current thinking on safe bridge design.

If you are reading this and getting all fidgety about accessing them, I take no responsibility for your actions.
IT IS DANGEROUS GETTING TO THE FOOTINGS - there used to be a maintanance building ladder system, but it has been closed for years, so you have no recourse save the shoreline.
You can be easily lulled into thinking it is easy, but the rocks are weed and algae covered and are extremely slippery. Allied to this, the tide will come in fast, forcing you back onto said rocks and turning what might have been a slightly difficult walk into a messy, seweragy, slippy awfulness . . and that's you depositing said muck all over the interior of your nice new Audi - the Ford Cortina of the noughties 😉

In the words of our Roman friends:

Caute Procedere

So where does that leave us?
Well, after what seemed like 2 hours of rock picking and avoiding slippage, I set up my camera and took this:

Tay Rail Bridges

I deliberately left this till last as it shows the perils of the photograph making process. 

"What's wrong wiv it?"  I hear you shout.

Well, rather in the same way that some sheep farmer called out (on completion of the Moffat Ram sculpture):

"Where's his lugs?"

Then I too shouted similarly:

'It's all 'orrible an' squint innit!"

Oh yes, despite careful use of the Hasselblad spirit level (a very useful tool) and the camera being perfectly level, the weirdly sloping shoulders holding up the bridge have added an air of squinty-poo to the whole frame. 

I've left the rebates on this so you can see it is the complete thing. 

I find this very frustrating, because it gives the whole frame a distinct lean to the left.

Och well, them's the breaks - it's not a great photo anyway - I certainly won't be printing another, but I will be risking life and limb to get to the same spot again. 

That's perilous though - trust me.

I was physically and emotionally exhausted after this - the pain of the sheep kept playing on my mind - I daren't think that she might well have been with lamb too - it is the right time of year. 

Poor thing.

I packed up, got all slippy and slumped back to the car.

And that as they say is that.
There might be a bit of break before the next FB simply because I haven't taken any pictures or done any printing, but you can live without that can't you? 

Can't you?

Till the next time, try not to get crap on your trousers and remember the sheep, and The Bolde Adventures Of The Mudlark Of Olde Dundee Towne.