And I got this boat

More snow shuffeling today, as I also got this boat I need to take care of during the wintertime as well. Not that it was a big job compared to what has been done lately, but it all adds up as we know. The water line was a bit low this morning, meaning there was a tonne or two of snow on deck. No problem as long as the snow is dry, like today, but would turn into a nightmare if rain start falling. Happy to say that I managed to get it away before that happened.

Done on my pixel collecting phone... as you do when you're more busy doing other things than taking good snaps. Anyway, here it is again... my boat. I finally found it there, under all that snow covering every square centimeter of it. I'm looking forward to summer, I have to say...

I made dinner today. Fish, as it happens. Cod, lightly salted. A local speciality probably, and the best meal you can have. We ate a lot! I can hardly keep my eyes open at the moment. It's good if you need a good sleep as well.

We need a couple of real ones, as well. You see where these were snapped, not to long ago. 50mm lens, I think. An old dinosaur I got lingering inside one of my photo bags. 

Inside the house to get some heat...

Had to go in for a few moments. I'm wet and cold, and don't feel too much like going out one more time this evening, but I have to. 
I have spent all day outside to try to get rid of all that snow, but it's quite a task, I have to say. 

It probably does not tell you a lot, but it's really deep... trust me! 

Only had my pixel collecting phone available today, as I was a bit busy shuffeling white stuff around the property. Still I have to post a couple, just to give you some sort of idea what it's all about. Three days worth of snowing around here can surely make a difference. It's quite OK if you are around to take care of it as it falls. It's a totally different thing if you are away, at some cottage for instance, only to come home after the damage is done. 
Well, no damage as such, but it's a lot of work to get it all away when you only have a shuffle, a back and two arms to get the job done. 

What three days of snow looks like when you don't do anything about it until it's too late! That's a 80cm high table there on the terrace, in the middle of the picture. I hope it stops falling down, sooner rather than later!

Anyway, I'm on my way out again. It's been snowing a lot since these were snapped, you see... which means I better do something about it. I also got a big terrace to get done before I go to sleep, as it might end in horror if it should start raining at some point. The snow will get ten times heavier if that happens, and the thing will probably just collapse or something like that. Not a good situation, as you might have figured out allready...

Why on earth did we go home?

Suddenly we decided to go home today, don't ask me why as I got no particular clue. 
Anyway, my wife was going to work late afternoon today so we decided to get away from the cottage around two o'clock or thereabout. I walked up to the road quite early, because of all the snow that has been falling the last couple of days. Well, I should have brought a giant heater! One bloody meter of snow has fallen down the last three days, and naturally I found the car to be totally gone more or less. Found the shuffle, eventually, and started the long days work. 

He had his birthday just a few days ago, believe it or not. Nicklas, the swede 1st engineer I used to work with a couple of months ago. We will no longer work together, it seems, and it's a real shame. On the other hand that's also the world moving forward. He needed something else to do now. Stay safe my good friend, and I hope to see you some day!! 35mm german lens, Ilford Delta 3200 film.

Got the car loose after quite a while, and went further uphill for half an hours walk to get some firewood for the oven back home. We got a place up there with loads of woods that we chop through the late winter and early autumn, but it was a tough job to get there today. Had to shuffle my way hundreds of yards up the steep hill, to where my mother in law lives. She has been snowing in, as well, so a good thing I went up there me thinks. Shuffeled a nice path for her so she's able to walk down to the road, and all. She was quite happy to see me. I kid you not!

As usual there is no particular reason why I post this snap, or the other, but this time I really have to wonder! It's on Ona, the island, and it's summer and everything is nice and calm other than all the people gathered at the ferry quay. They soon disappeared, luckily, so the rest of the evening went along very quiet. As it usually does, out there. Still I can't figure any reason why I still decide to post the thing. German 21mm lens, orange filter... and some unknown film. 

Then another good hours work to get hold of that firewood, before I went down to the cottage again to pick up the wife and all the stuff that was going home. 
Finally coming home just to find out it has snowed even more around here, and nothing else to do than grab the shuffle and start all over again. Like big-time! We got a quite large parking space outside the house, as it happens, and I need to have it mostly cleared to get room for what we need to have room for. 
OK, to make it kind of short... it was a hell of a job to get it all done, but now I'm finally here, inside the house, and no heart attack noticed so far. My body is totally destroyed though, so it's going to be a very quiet evening me thinks. The only thing I want to do is keeping the fire alive inside that wood burner, and that's about it. And make coffee... and drink it. I'm going to do some of that as well!

A day inside the cottage

Finally! The written stuff before I attend the High Voltage Course next monday has been delivered. Hopefully I can relax a bit around that for now. At least for a few days.

Oh yes... it's those crazy guys from Kirkwall, again. The Ba-game and such... 

I can't see very far, from where I sit right now. I'm down by the sea, inside the cottage as it happens, looking down on the water. I don't think I have visual sight for more than 70 meters or something like that. It snows, you know. It snows a lot, to be honest. Everything has been covered with 40 cm of the white stuff only since yesterday evening, which makes me stay inside drinking coffee and just looking out the window. No point in even taking one of the cameras out for a short walk, as there's nothing much around here to capture, unless the air is clear and you can see for miles in most directions. 

A piano boy. Snapped a couple of years via one of those old germans and some Delta 3200 film. I finally got it developed a couple of weeks ago.

And it's dark, of course. As it is up here, around this latitude at this time of year. Good thing is that we start to notice a bit difference from the darkest days around christmastime, but that's if the sky is clear. It's quite far from clear right now! 

And where there's a piano boy, there's always a piano girl as well, I guess. At least that was the case in this show. 

Tomorrow is another day, though. So lets hope for better weather around here some time soon. I got things I want to capture, onto some FP4 or maybe HP5. I think I'm starting to run a bit low on film now, so better get something ordered sooner rather than later. 
I'm going to England quite soon, so I could probably get something around there somewhere? First stop will be up in York I think, so I better hit google to see what I can find. 

Shetland is different...

I'm a bit busy, again. As you probably know I discovered I had a few more tasks to be done as homework before the High Voltage Course is on, in not to many days from now. 

I'm still at the cottage, by the way. Still doing fine, and still having a great time over here. It's quiet out here, and that's good for me right now. 

Look at this one! Brutalism done the Shetland way. It's kind of cool though, in a strange way. I just discovered all those pylons back there in the hillside, to the right. Need to try go there some time to see if I can get a good snap or two. If I ever get to go there in that area again, of course. 

That's Bressay. It looks a bit nice and quiet over there as well I have to say. Why do I seem to get drawn to places like that, you think? Windy and weather beaten places where I could only be an observer to everything that happen in the harbor on the other side, without any chance to get involved in any way. That would suit me fine for a period of my life, I like to believe. 

Sure! They are sheep gathered together up very far north in Scotland. You are looking in the direction of Dunnet Head over there in the foggy weather. It's snapped from inside a taxi, again. It's also snapped on some not so great film containing delta grain. I'm not to fond of them... as you might know. I prefer the good old traditional films instead, as it happens. In addition I think I ruined this one during developing, as I seem to do these days.

I went over to the other side of our quite big and deep fjord a couple of days ago. Over there, you know. 
My daughter and grand child was moving over to that side, for her to be able to join school again after her months off after giving birth and all. I drove the big car with all her things inside, and helped her carrying all the furnitures and other stuff inside their new home and such. 
And it fell from the sky, loads of that white stuff we know very well as snow up here. By the time we had moved everything inside her new home, and I was ready to move on back home, we had another half of a meter of the stuff laying around the place. 
The big car was not built to handle it, the snow you know... just saying. Meaning I had what felt like a very long drive back home. I even brought a camera which I did not get any use of, since I had plenty to do keeping my eyes on the road at all times. I did see, though, that I need to go back with a quite different camera another day when the light is good and the snow still is laying deep up there in the mountains. I think I'll bring one of them big Mamiya ones, and some film. 
But that's for another day. 
Today I need to concentrate on those written words I need to deliver on-line to the school before tomorrow comes. 

It's still loads of fun!

I mean, doing work in the darkroom even though you don't have one. At least not a dedicated one, but I hope for it to come, some day.
I found myself having some spare time after the course I went through yesterday, and wanted to see if I could manage to shine some light through some medium format film and down onto some good old B&W photographic paper to get a decent print or two. 
Well... I'm not to sure about the results, as a matter of fact, but I hope they look good enough to put in an envelope for shipping all over the sea to hopefully hit Michael who lives way down here somewhere, in the North East Liberties of Coleraine. That's up there in the northern parts of Northern Ireland, by the way. We're trying to swap a few prints, you see. Good old darkroom prints, that is. 
He's got a great blog as well, my friend Michael. Go have a good look through it from here!! Loads of good photos, great stories and all. A true film passionate!

A couple of months ago, as we were going home from the ship but had to stay over night in Bergen. Alex has become a father since then. Kjell, to the left here, is still moving around like a shadow all over the place. All over the place on board the ship, that is. I don't know what he's doing when at home. No idea which camera, but could have been a Nikon FM2 with the old 35mm lens attached, and most likely was.

Anyway. As I was standing there inside the darkroom doing darkroom stuff as you do, I suddenly got a mail from the engineer school about this course I'm going to join on the 25th of jan. They were truly sorry to say that they had not yet received my 8 written homework tasks, which I obviously had to deliver two weeks before the course is starting. Hey, where did those come from?
Well, that was not the best mail to have, I got to say.
Tried to call them (for the 10th time or something) but the right person never answered (again). They answered my next mail though, so now I got things to do for the weekend!! Loads to do, in the weekend. I will get through the course though... so no worries please!

I seem to do stuff like this all the time. The last couple of snaps on any film would look something like this. Meaningless and just random things I would not do in any other situation... I think. Anyway, I give you the opportunity to have a look at one of my smallish german rangefinder cameras. This one is from 1960 and is called M3. I like it because it's of a preferable size, and it does not go "CLUNK..." as the Japanese. It's more like "shhh..." 

Days off... well, not exactly

I work on this ship, as you probably know by now. Top officer in the engine dept. and all. This means you got to do all this stuff on your time off, just to keep all national and international authorities on the happy side. Or, they don't care too much, to be honest. They look at your paperwork, and that's more or less it. Papers good? OK, you're most likely good to go for another limited piece of time. Right now it's the STCW 78 (Manilla certificates) we are all struggling to get hold of. Nothing extreme, but there's a few courses we need to take to get updated and comply with the rules. Cool, since I was one of the happy dudes at the time I got my first marine engineer certificate who got a STCW 95 certificate. The ones before me were all certified after the STCW 78 rules, and had to take all sorts of courses to get in line with the 95 rules. Now we all need to go back to the 78 thing. Nice, huh...? 

I drove past this point a while ago. Snapped it through the car window, as I do. I hate that reflex from the window, but the rest looks good... me thinks. German rangefinder and a 3,5 cm fitting lens

Anyway, I'm almost there now. I took a pre- course on the internet today, and are due to go to the real course from the 25th of january. 5 days on a Hi-voltage course to make sure I know all about how to deal with the safety on board any vessel using more than 1000 Volt on the main switchboard. 
Well, the pre- course went away quite well so I hope the rest should be more or less going down the same road in some way. Luckily I don't have to travel away to take the course, as my old engineer school back home are running the right course at the moment. 

I drove past this point as well, a few seconds later. Same thing, more or less. 

Other than that, nothing much has been happening today. I had to get this stuff out of the way before I can start doing anything fun... 
Maybe tomorrow?! :))

We went away for a few days...

We disappeared! Just a few minutes drive away from home, mind you, but still we disappeared. Sometimes one just have to! We went to the cottage by the sea. The one I have told you about quite a few times already, but probably not for the last time.

Went over here we did... from where you can see this and that, a bit depending on the weather at the time of looking out the window. 

When we arrived yesterday evening, we found the water supply to have frozen. Nothing serious, luckily, but I had hoped this would not happen to be honest. I did not believe it to happen, either, but that's a different thing!
On the other hand it's probably as cold as it ever will get out here right now. -10 deg. C is nothing like we are used to even in the winter time out here at the west coast of Norway. But anyway, -10 deg. here must be like -40 or something like that if you go a bit inland from here. Lots of moisture in the air it is, out here at the very coastline where the north sea meets this old piece of land... and then it's always a bit breezy. 
I heard there were several places in Norway having down to -45 deg. yesterday, forecasting around -50 deg. for today and tomorrow. That's bloody cold, I would say. Even though it's inland. Anyway, that's far up north from us... as you already have guessed probably.


We just had visitors. My son, and my grandson came stumbling through the door, one a bit more than the other. These guys... you know. 

Them! Only difference is the small one has grown a bit by now... as he should. And oh, yes I know... sprocket holes shining through and stuff. It's just a matter of sloppy handling of film!

The little boy and his proud uncle. The small one of them more or less managed to eat two plastic cups, one plastic spoon and half the fur of the cat before they just left. 
The big one was not very hungry for some reason, which means he managed with just a couple of cups of good coffee. GOOD coffee, it was! You see, I had just barely set up my very brand new coffee brewing thing before they came in through the door, so had to test that one of course. A brilliant piece of thing, as it happens. Supposed to be the best on the market, and what else have we all. But OK, the coffee was great anyway.

Two days of developing... and scanning

I don't like the scanning process, to speak the absolute truth! It takes forever, and the results suck... and it keeps me doing things at the computer, which I'm not a great fan of... I kind of do that more than enough when I'm at work. Computer stuff, you know.
Either way, I can't post any snaps on the interweb if I keep away from the darn process, which is the simple fact of things.
The good news is that we got proper snaps, from the Ba and lots of other stuff.

Empty streets of Kirkwall, about 45 min before the Ba was thrown into the masses. This is in the harbor area though... where the thing ended with a score for the doonies, as you know from my last post about the game. 

Developing films is a lot more fun. I have gone through a bunch, as it happens, which means I have been idle for too long. I have probably also been a bit too trigger happy lately... but that's just how things are at the moment. Some times it's like this, and sometimes I can't for anything in the world get myself around to get a single one. Don't know why, exactly, but there's probably a few things playing a part in that game.

The uppies arrive at the scene! I was a bit bothered about the sunlight hitting that Nikkor lens, as you see, but you can probably figure out more or less what's going on. They were a bit noisy as they arrived. As they always are! 

Anyway... it's late, and I was up 04.30 this morning to start scanning negatives. That's what I would call dedication, if it was not for the fact that I woke up anyway as my wife had to drive to the airport around those hours. I thought I would be better off getting my back end out of bed and do something useful. Which I did. 

And it's been thrown out! The Ba, that is. First time I get it on film, I think, so better give it a good look I would suggest! It's right there, a bit to the left of the middle. I was a wee bit uncomfortable close to where it all happened, to be absolute fair, but somebody had to do it :)) It all went very well though. The Ba disappeared straight down this time, as it's supposed to, and was not thrown in my direction. That would be the end of this blog, I would say.

Oh, sure... they are all scans from a few of the more or less latest films. The ones from the Ba-game. I think I told you about that a few days ago.

Luckily, I found myself on the tiny bit less crowded side of this wall. The guys on the other side kind of couldn't get anywhere. They were stuck here with the Ba for hours... until darkness came and all. It was a good day though, for the game, even though it went the wrong way, again...

In the waiting

Up very early this morning, because I had stuff to take care of. Developing films, as it happens.
I did develop a few yesterday, as well, but a couple of the ones going into the bath today is a bit trickier!
You probably know the feeling when you at some point thought you were most clever, ending up feeling stupid and foolish without a clear idea of what to do with it? Well, that happened to me (again) last week as I was bright enough to expose two rolls of HP5 films, one of them at 800ASA and the other one at 1600 or maybe it was 3200ASA? Who can possibly remember details like that on such a day, anyway? And who would even bother at the time to mark them in one way or the other, just to be able to keep them apart and give them more or less the right treatment in the developer? Nah... not me, if any!

So what I did, this very morning, was to take a wee trip around the house to find that good old Rodinal bottle to mix up some lean brew I could soak them films in.
In my search for the right bottle, I stumbled upon a bottle of HC-110 as well! What's the odds for that, you'd say? I have not used the stuff for ages, so I picked it up and went down from the attic. I also picked up the Rodinal bottle, but did not use it as you might expect.
There's nothing much I know, about anything, but through my 48 years of living I have at least learned that if you own a bottle of Rodinal, or even HC-110 (or both...), you're most likely not to be able to get rid of them any time soon! They kind of last forever, as it happens. Good thing is that the stuff itself is poisonous enough to be just as good some 20 years after the "use before" dating on the bottle. At least that's what I aim and hope for, right here and now...

So, I ended up mixing a lean mixture of HC-110 instead. Around 1:150 I would say, as my scales and bottles would not be exactly famous for being accurate. Me myself neither, to be honest. Usually it's good enough though, for me anyway. At least when it comes to Rodinal. It's a long time since I used HC-110 now, and I'm not to sure if I ever have tested a stand development in that syrup either.
We should have a good look at some results in an hour or so, I would say, after I have slushed some water and fixer around the films as well. You might even watch scans of the negatives some day, if there should be anything at all on them. They are supposed to have been snapped at the Ba-game a few days ago.
I will report back to you, about the HC-110 stand development qualities... if any!

I'm ready!

Ready to go home, you know!
I got a life to live, elsewhere. That life comes and goes in turns, just like this one, the other life, comes and goes in turns. I get a lot more days away from home than I get days in there, which is probably why it feels this way when I finally get the chance to pack my things, leave the ship and go home. 

It feels good!