A house by a railway

Another large format attempt. This one is possibly my favourite so far that I’ve shot with my Chroma. But it’s still not as good as I want it to be.

There are two main issues with this picture. One, not visible in the image you see, is that I think I put too little developer in the tank as this picture and another developed at the same time both had a thin strip of underdeveloped negative along one of the short edges. I was sure that I’d used 475mm of solution are required by the tank I was using, but clearly not. This resulted in my having to crop the image. The second issue is the focus at the left side of the frame, which is soft. I think I must have had a little bit of swing taking place and it only seems to take an imperceptable amount to knock the focus out. I am going to have to take much better care over this in future.

Apart from the above-mentioned issues though, the image is very sharp and I’m quite happy with it.

Chroma 4×5. Fujinon NW 135mm f/5.6 & Fomapan 100. Fomadon R09 1+50 9 mins @ 20°

Taken 14 January 2023.

Seaside bungalow

I’ve made pictures of the bungalow in today’s post twice now. It’s a wonderfully photogenic little house.

This one was shot on medium format film with my Yashicamat 124G, but the previous picture was shot with a Ricoh GR III digital compact.

Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 160NS. Lab developed, home scanned, & converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 17 September 2022

Mill house

The house in today’s picture is clearly a former windmill. When it became a residential building, I know not. It looked like a good subject for a picture or two though.

I took a couple of pictures of the house and, while I was doing so, I was observed by a lady looking out from a window in a nearby property who was engaged in a telephone conversation. I smiled at her when I saw her watching, but her face remained resolutely stern and she didn’t return the expression. The first shot I took was with my Nikon F80, a fairly standard looking SLR camera, but I wonder what she thought when I pulled the distinctly old-fashioned-looking Yashicamat 124G TLR from my bag to make the photo below? I did smile at her a second time as I did this, but again to no trace of a similar response. I wonder what was said about me on her phone call that day?

Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 160NS. Lab developed, home scanned, & converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 17 September 2022

A mock Tudor house (and an injury)

A very quick post today as I’ve only just gotten home after a very long day (mostly due to an injury I’ve sustained). I’ll maybe post more details tomorrow, but for now, here’s a mock Tudor house I photographed a few weeks back.

Olympus 35 RC & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 20 June 2022

A big white house

I’m kinda eking out some of these Kodak Gold photos at present. This is not because I’ve run low on stuff to publish, but because most of the shots I’ve processed recently have been from a visit to a steam rally and I figured I might as well pop those on the blog all at once rather than via my usual drip-feed approach, so those should be up here tomorrow.

In the meantime though, heres a picture of a big white house looking resplendent in the summer sunshine.

Olympus 35 RC & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 20 June 2022

A house behind a hedge

As the Ronseal advert goes, it does exactly what it says on the tin or, in this case, the title.

Apologies for the very short post – I got involved with something else.

Olympus 35 RC & Kodak Gold 200. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 20 June 2022

House reflected (once more)

Today’s picture shows the same house I posted a photo of a few days ago. This shot was made on the same day, although mybe half-an-hour of so later. It was also shot with a different camera and film, and from a different vantage point – this one involved me venturing into the edge of the river (thankfully not deep or fast!) to get a composition I liked.

A little downstream from here is a small weir and I ventured down past it to try and get a picture of a bridge. The picture didn’t really work as the weir kinda seperated the foreground of the scene too much in the frame, but it did result in an amusing experience when a duck, just upstream of the weir, spotted me and swan towards me – perhaps expexting some food – and just nonchalantly paddled right over the edge and into the water below with a “plop”.

Olympus XA3 & Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 8mins @ 20°.

Taken on 30 April 2022

A house in the country across time

I have a tendency to photograph the same things on multiple occasions, it seems. I suspect I’m not alone in this.

As photographers we can appreciate how a subject can change though time, whether that be over decades of weathering, decay, or environmental change, through the seasons of the year, the time of day, and even minute-by-minute, second-by-second as the light changes.

In May 2022

I’ve never purposely set out (so far, at least) to document such changes to a scene as part of a project, but I do find that things that catch my eye the first time I encounter them will often catch it again on further visits. Today’s post shares two shots of the same house, the photographs made about five and a half years apart on different cameras, different formats, different films, and in different conditions. The viewpoints are different in both, but the central subject remains the same. Maybe I’ll photograph it again on some future visit to this location.

Back in early 2017, shot with my Olympus 35RC on Ilford HP5+

(first picture) Fujica GW690 & Fujichrome Provia 400 (expired 2013). Lab developed.

Taken on 30 April 2022

House (and lack of photography) reflected

We have a long weekend here in the UK thanks to the annual spring bank holiday being moved to Thursday (it’s usually on a Monday), plus the extra bank holiday we got yesterday to commemorate the Queen’s platinum jubilee. I’m not particularly fussed about the jubilee stuff but expected that I might use the extra time off work to get some photograpy done. As it stands though, I’ve been feeling pretty uninspired to go out (not helped by the dull weather that we currently have where I live), so have spent the last couple of days just loafing around the house watching TV (mostly Australian Survivor on Amazon Prime – I’m not a fan of reality shows at all, but really enjoy Survivor and The Amazing Race for some reason. It’s just a a shame we can’t see the US version by normal means here in the UK) and playing videogames.

I feel a little guilty for this, but sometimes it’s nice to just veg out and not put any pressure on yourself. I’ve still got enough new photos sat waiting to be published to keep the blog going for at least a couple of weeks of daily posts, plus plenty in the archive in the event I run out (which I don’t expect to), so that impetus is lessened for a while. I had planned on going out today if the sun had shown itself – I had an idea of an area I might photograph – but it will have to wait.

Fujica GW690 & Kodak Ektachrome 100 EPP (expired 2003). Lab developed.

Taken on 30 April 2022

A-maze-ing

I visited the village of Ashford-on-the-Water last month. It’s a quaint little place full of picturesque cottages, and old church, and attractive scenes where the River Wye flows through. This was the first time I’ve visited the place since a school trip back when I was probably about ten years old (on a residential week at the nearby Thornbridge Hall).

This house caught my attention with it’s maze-like pattern of miniature hedges in the front garden.

Yashicamat 124G & Fujifilm Pro 400H. Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 19 April 2022