Ruuuufff - The Dog's Dinner Session

Firstly, can I say that if you've received this on your phone, please scroll down to the "Posted by . . " link at the bottom - and tap that - opens it up in full Technicolor.

Morning folks - a curious title I know, but in a month where I've been busier than I could imagine I should have been (if that makes sense) and an impending showing at the DCA forum at the end of last month . . . something had to give . . so it was a mighty trawl through some old negatives and a bunch of them printed on 6x4" Portfolio at an image size of 7x7cm.

Now it really does seem perverse to be taking a sublime image-making machine like a Hasselblad or a TLR Mamiya and printing something that is only a little bigger than a contact print . . . but hey-ho, it was an experiment, didn't cost too much in materials and was fun (and more importantly QUICK) to do.

Printing small has a lot of advantages, both in time, chemicals and (in my case) ease of moving the print about in the darkroom - as regulars might remember, my darkroom space . . well, you couldn't actually swing a cat in it, but I can print up to 9.5x12" without too much trouble. 

Anything bigger is almost impossible, so small prints get the job done comfortably.

Anyway, these 'ere Medium Format Postcards (MFPs as they're known around here) - the first thing that needed to be addressed was column height! 

Using a standard (for 6x6cm) 80mm lens was going to do two things - firstly give me a crick in the neck and secondly, not allow enough space to get a focus magnifier onto the easel.

The Micromega just fitted . . Paterson Minor . . nope.

Actually printing so small also reached the bellows extension limit of the DeVere too. 

Who'd have thought it! 

So, I switched up to the 135mm Vivitar VHE (100mm was too low still and 150mm gave me enormous amounts of extra light flying around on the easel, so 135mm it was.)

The easel by the way is my original (and first iteration) of a RR Beard 10x12". 

It was well used when I got it and it's been even more weller used by me - they're amazingly robust things and you can straighten the blades with not too much trouble if they've got off-kilter, which is admittedly rare.

It might not surprise you to learn I've actually got far too many easels:

Oh really? Now that is a surprise!

Namely FOUR (yes, I surprised myself there too) Beards; a Leitz; a Durst; an LPL  . . . and that one I wrote about last year, the Agimask. 

That's a bit mad really, but I suppose you never know when you might drop and misalign one of them, do you?

Of them all, the bests (by a country mile) are the Beards. 

I actually could do with a newer 10x12 Beard as my others are 16x12's and seeing as I can only manage up to 9.5 x 12" then they do seem to be a little overkill, however needs must, two were purchased and two were gifts from old darkroom codgers.

 

The humble easel is actually (IMHO) one of the most important parts of the enlarging process (along with a properly aligned enlarger). 

At college cos the easels that were available were all misaligned and so on, I actually used to use masking tape to hold the paper down.

It was actually pretty OK at doing that - the medium weight Kentmere was straight with little curl and the tape enabled me to maximise the size of the paper.

When they were dried, the good ones were dry-mounted and trimmed. 

Dry mounting gave a lot of gravitas to an image, even though these days it is regarded as archivally unsound.

I've heard good things about using t-shirt presses for straightening fibre prints and I am probably going to go down that route.

Anyway, back to Beard-stroking - when I set up my own darkroom, I thought back, realised that masking tape wasn't such a good thing and that heartbreak and wasted paper would ensue.

Scenario: your best bit of printing ever scuppered, mid-exposure, when the masking tape frees itself from the baseboard and the paper inevitably curls upwards . . . ah the blue air!

So I knuckled down and bought a Beard.

I soon realised what I had been missing.

Anyway, enuff of that old nonsense . . here's wot said pics look like. 

Did your Aunty Maeve and Uncle Tony send you a postcard back from Torremolinos? 

Well they're the same size as that - 6x4" or 10x15cm if you're a post-'65/73 sort of person.

Yes, I entirely agree with you - there's a lot of wasted paper . . and it ain't half expensive . . 

However, as a wee object you can take into the playground and use for swapsies at playtime, they work quite well.

Look at the curl though . . . and that's them flattened under three tons of angle-iron for two weeks.

Ah, the golden days when you could get around the backside of Duncan Of Jordanstone College Of Art and see what the crazee kidz had been up to . . . 

Nothing more than a demonic face on a wall and a bed/bath . .  of course.

This area has now sadly been fenced off . . btards.

An incredibly bright day and I

 was perched over my camera in the middle of a slow-running burn catching the reflected light on the overhanging rock. 

There was something about it that was incredibly appealing, but I think I failed to catch the delicacy.

My friend Neil did it so much better than me.

Edge of the dole office in Dundee's Wellgate . . . one of the most salubrious buildings in a run-down city centre that could be considered to be very salubrious these days. 

It's a real shame. 

I remember the place as lively, filled with shops and happy shoppers and a lot less graffiti.

This self-same window has now been turned into a free-floating It's The Arts window, showcasing local designers . . and quite right too.

I can see two or three faces in that window . . can you?

A famous staircase.

I have to state fairly categorically that I think I might have been the original person to photograph it in an architectural style.

Now every bleeder on the numerous city photowalks do/does . . .

Och well, so long as they don't copy my DANCE COMMANDER outfit, I am alright . . . (look that up on You Tube - it's a cracking song by The Electric Six.)

One of the Perth Road lanes - the house has always struck me as looking haunted.

In truth it's a student warren, so it's probably haunted by the ghosts of hangovers and kebabs.

It's a pretty mucky lane too, so watch out for that dog shite . . .

Wait a minute . . . are you sure you get dogs that big?

I couldn't believe my luck - there I was with (I think) the 500 C/M and 250mm Sonnar and no tripod, and I managed to capture a Wild F.

It was obviously just resting before heading North to it's natural nesting grounds in the Grampians.

You'll often hear one in the quiet of the glens:

 

"Who put that f-ing boulder there?"

"Ah, f!, I forgot my toilet paper!"

You get the gist.

I was once up a cold and lonely mountain in a heavy mist - it was wonderful and quiet, and the next thing I heard was what sounded like a billion teenage boys have a jostley fight.

In reality it was two middle-aged men with MLT (Mid-Life Tourettes) - their language was completely unbound to say the least.

Anyway, I hope the Wild F found its nest and a mate.

Quick, someone give Hamza a c

all!

Ah, dontcha just love a good bit of plastic adorning a lovely Cherry tree in Winter?

Although I've said Cherry tree, I am not so sure in hindsight. 

It IS a tree.

What I do know is that said tree has grown wild in an area of Dundee's Docks.

Not the proper docks, cos you can't get into them anymore (just in case you get up to some monkey business) no, it's a bit beyond them by The Grassy Beach.

That is local terminology . . and very old - kids from the deprived inner city areas used to go there for their holidays . . it's only a couple of miles away from the centre too!

The area actually is right next to the point of land where the young Mary Shelley used to watch the port (and indeed whaling fleet) of the city at the time and slowly started formulating ideas about the Modern Prometheus . . look it up - it is well documented.

Sadly Pedro Almodóvar was not seen enjoying an amazing curry at The Tay View . . . 

I think most Ferryites (people from Broughty Ferry) disown this bit of coast as it's too common.

Anyway, sidetracked again - it's a weird area - there's loads of scrub, trees, brambles, grass and underneath it all, showing through quite clearly in places, the remains of an old tarmacked carpark, still resplendent with lines and spaces.

The tree is a decent size so has presumably been growing wild for at least 25/30 years. 

Woohoo - go TREES!

I think the picture is very Zen and somehow the plastic reminds me of the gauze adhering to Mick's face on the cover of The Rolling Stones' 'Under The Covers' album.

Sadly, this isn't gauze, but solid sheet plastic and kind of indicative of the shithole we're making of our wonderful planet.

And that as they say is that. 

All prints were toned in Selenium too and on the whole I think it was a worthy exercise.

Whether I could continue producing at such a small size I am not sure - seems to be quite wasteful.

And I am even thinking now that given the massive extra cost of Portfolio over normal MGFB, I might just put up with some curly prints!

Till the next time . . watch out for the MLT

H xx

The Oldie

 

Morning folks - this is as brief as those mustard yellow Y-fronts you used to have to wear back in the 1970's.

Sometimes, light, film, developer, paper and of course camera and even emotions, conspire to give you something to which you can honestly say:

"I love this."

And that's what happened with the above.

It was early on a Winter's day, and I pulled up at my favourite place for seascapes, donned my wellies and headed off down to the beach. 

Leading up to my trip there'd been a couple of weeks of incredibly stormy weather, and as such the sea was all of a lather. 

Literally. 

I was knee deep in sticky (yes, sticky, had to be removed by hand and wouldn't just fall off) foam in places  - I've never seen anything like it, but a dog walker I met said I should have seen it the week before, when the entire cut (a small gorge with about 150 feet of descent) down to the beach was filled with foam. She couldn't get anywhere near the surf.

That must have been something else.

Anyway, a slippin' and a slidin' over foam on top of unsure footing and really slippy rocks made for an unnerving experience . . more about that at the end ***

The camera was the Hasselblad SWC/M; film was Kodak 400 TX rated at EI 200. 

I've always felt this form of Tri-X needs a lot more exposure than people say and 200 does it for me.

It's a definite weird one developed in Rodinal (sic - in this case Fomadon R09 at 1+75) because it really looks like you've overcooked the negatives (on my times) and yet they print easily and beautifully . . .

It really is quite strange.

Oh and the mistiness in the distance is actually sea spray as I neglected to say it was blowing a gale and I was sheltered behind a massive sea stack.

Being in such situations quite often brings a joy to my heart - no longer do I feel the post-Covid arthritis or self-inflicted need to really get that decorating done, no, I am more in mind of Joni Mitchell's lyrics to 'Free Man In Paris':

I was a free man in Paris

I felt unfettered and alive

Not that I ever feel fettered in everyday life, but I dunno, I suppose, when it is just you, the camera and the elements, there's a sort of subconscious attunement with the moment. 

You decide what you're photographing, how you're interpreting it (both visually and emotionally) and ultimately, in the case of film photography, you're the master of your own ship - it's up to you whether the ship (the negative) is a fine one on a well charted course, or founders on those rocks over there (OK, that really is flowery, 6th form English for:

 "Oh shit, I've just used the fix instead of the developer"

It's good for the soul to be able to deeply concentrate for these periods of time - I typically take 2 hours to take 12 photographs and it really is like 2 hours with the Maharishi.

And that's about it really. 

The image is a scan off a print made on Ilford Portfolio at Grade 3. 

I love the tonality of it - it's not too contrasty, and there's a good balance of mids and darks - it reminds me of some of my favourite landscape photographs from decades ago.

The print is actually slightly cropped from the negative, cos, ahem, with the SWC/M, the lens is so wide that sometimes you unwittingly (read, stupid twat) include a bit of the tripod leg, or even your (ahem) foot.

It was exposed on my DeVere 504, using a 135mm Vivitar VHE lens and RRB easel.

When the print emerged from the developer (not literally like The Creature From The Black Lagoon, no, you know it emerged, appeared in all its glory on t'paper in t'developer), I was still stuck with some too bright surf in the distance, so I turned the print over (emulsion side face down and still immersed in the developer tray) turned out the safelights and left it for around 5-6 minutes. 

It's not an exacting science, but it really does bring those:

Borrocks-I've-not-given-it-enough-burn-in

white bits out nicely.

 

You can thank Ralph Gibson for that one.

The print was developed in Foma Fomatol LQN developer (at normal dilution - a slow working but fine developer with a slight increase in image warmth); stopped in Kodak stop; fixed with Fotospeed FX20 Rapid Fixer (very reasonably priced and exceptionally reliable) and finally toned with Bellini Seltone Selenium toner, which I am now finding to be a decent replacement for Kodak.

And that's it - jings that elastic is really chaffing.

Till next time, take care and just keep being yourself.

H xx

*** Op-tech stretchy neoprene tripod strap purchased - makes all the difference as now I can carry a walking pole as well for some extra sure footing.

I actually use a fair number of Op-tech things from their pro-straps for the heavy gear, though their lighter duty straps. 

All brilliantly made and highly recommended.