365 moving on

Another tiny bunch from the slowly growing 365 series of snaps I'm doing this year. 

The following notes was written about the snaps at the time:

#056: The rack of a few of the many spare el.motors on board.

#057: Quaranteened (again...) pallet jack

#058: Tools in workshop

#059: Jàkup, the faroe man inside the lifeboat

#056

#057

#058

#059

Geometrical stuff, time and time again

If I'm out walking in my own company with a camera in hand I often find things like this, or a pylon with a cable or two going into different directions, or whatever else catching my attention for a minute or three. 

I do some walking around to try figure out from where it may make the most out of itself and at the same time suit the geometric part of my brains, and then I usually snap a few frames. 

Then I most likely forget about it all until the film has been developed, and sometimes I forget about them for a long time after that has even happened. I don't think these have been posted before, actually. 

I'm not even sure about where I found this mast, but it might have been in Lerwick, Shetland. 

Both snaps done on either a Leica M6 or the M3, but I'm sure it was with the 21mm Elmarit lens. No clue about the film here and now, but might have been FP4+ or something like that. 

Oh well, it's just the way my head works at times... it seems.

You go figure.

A different kind of selfie

We have all discovered how popular the selfie has become these days. I mean somebody even constructed a brand new word for it, and everything. 
I'm no good at them, I have to say. I even sucked doing them back in the days when they were called self portraits. I have tried, but I look like a fool no matter how many times I go for it so I have sort of given up.
This one was a bit simpler, though. Didn't have to think too much about what I looked like or anything. It was the shadow which caught my eye in the first place... and the lines all over the place, of course. 
Well, here it is. Done with one of the rangefinders with the wide lens attached and the orange filter in place, as you might see.

Even more 365@50 snaps

Just dropping by to tell you that I've not forgot about this years "big" project, my 365 snaps done on Ilford PAN400 film only.
Well, it's not that big thing when you think about it. Opening the shutter for a very brief moment each 24 hours or so on the Nikon F3 is not exactly a lot of hard work when you start thinking about it.
The only thing you have to remember is to bring the camera wherever you go if you are going away for a longish period of time, and to do the same if you leave the house for a shorter period of time as well and have not yet snapped your daily one.
And that's about it. Everything else is rather easy, sort of. You just have to decide what's going to be todays shot, and get it done at some point. Sometimes it's damn easy, other times not... and you end up with something totally stupid of course. But that's life.
Each and every snap will be posted, no matter what they look like and no matter how far off the exposure is. There might be a few strange looking ones every now and then, as you see examples of below, because the mechanics inside the old F3 is not what it used to be back in the days. The mirror locks up every now and then, but that's the way it is with old cameras. I'll just keep on keeping on, no matter.

Here's the batch of four for todays post, all snapped way back in February. I need to speed up on posting obviously, but will have to get a few more rolls developed before I dare to do so.

Looking back inside my notebook for the notations written about them, we find the following wise words written:

#052: DPO at "work" deep in his own thoughts.
#053: My notebooks on the table. Stuff found in my cabin.
#054: Duly tagged centercore taken on board. Carousel room.
#055: Olympic Taurus somewhere offshore Scotland.

#052

#053

#054

#055

Entering Irish Waters

In this kind of job you get to see the world sometimes. At least bits of it, anyway. For years you may see the same spots over and over again, until you suddenly find yourself in places you've only read about in blogs and what have you.
That's the baseline of the story from this last week at work, more or less.
I've never been to the western parts of Scotland before, even though I've been working out of this country for about seven or eight years all together now. About time, I would say, that I finally got the opportunity to sail down the River Clyde all the way from Glasgow, through Clyde Firth out to the isle of Arran and beyond. And not only that, but I even found the time to just stroll around in my t-shirt with camera in hand doing nothing else but acting like a tourist of some sort.

Since we have to wait some time for the snaps from Glasgow and the western part of Scotland, this one from one of the harbours on the east side will have to do. Done on one of the rangefinders and a wide lens some time ago. First thing we notice is the size of the bollards on this side of the country, as they are a bit more visible than the ones up around Glasgow area.

We got plenty of time until we have to be out there on the field where we're supposed to put a cable, or an umbilical, down to the seabed and also do a few other things. Not that we got plenty of time as such, because time is very much worth a lot of money in this game, but the weather out there at this particular spot is quite bad at the moment, meaning we are in no rush to get there.
So we're moving slowly. Very much slowly, indeed.
I woke up around 7 this morning, as we were turning west and about to start pass Rathlin Island moving straight west along the northern coast of Ireland. Which happens to be the home of my fellow blogger Michael of the North East Liberties, the owner of the blog with the same name, as you might even know by now. All day I have been sailing away along his coastline, but with no possibility to stop and say hi, of course. 
Or, in fact I had some sort of hope to get quite close to the coast as me and the Chief Officer had a discussion yesterday about where the best place would be to get the lifeboat test and the FRC (Fast Rescue Craft) drills done. We ended up agreeing on a point just off Portrush or Portstewart... for some reason. Close enough to easily reach the harbour with the small boat, I hoped. 
Everything seemed to work well, for a while, until the captain himself started wondering about where we were heading and why. 
You can see for yourselves, as the track we made on the screen of the electronic map looks a bit weird when you think about the fact that we should be heading straight west more or less.
It was still worth the try though...

See, Michael? We were not that far away from sucess after all?! 

Terrible sorry about posting a snap full of 0's and 1's, but just had to get this one out...

Well, the work west of Ireland is not finished yet, so there might be a chance to get ashore in Ireland some day for all we know. And if not, I'm pretty determined to get over there anyway another day. It's a nice piece of land, as we know well enough both from Michaels blog and from elsewhere. 

I'll be back with something else quite soon!

She had it printed... believe it or not!

Sure, this thing as shown below. Printed on cheapish poster paper for a test, but she also claims to have put in an order for a canvas print of the same size made out of the same file. Digital ink... as they seem to like to do these days, 

At first I didn't like it at all, to be honest. To many white spots, which can of course be hidden away a bit if using the right tools for the job, but the size of the thing is totally out of proportions for a normal standardish livingroom. I mean it's huge, and to an extent that I'm not even sure about what the measurments of the finished product really is. I doubt I even got measuring tape enough to get you the numbers should I one day feel like sharing the facts. But then again I have seen people hanging huge painings on their walls as well, so it might be OK after all?

I have learned to like it a bit more now as it's been hanging there for a while, but I'm still not absolutely sure about what I really think deep inside of myself. 

The original negative is miles away from what you see here when it comes to contrast and things. It might be possible to get something out of it inside the darkroom, but I need a bit more experience and a couple of new chemicals. 

Mamiya RZ67, 250 mm APO lens and some old and expired film I think. Maybe ORWO NP22 or something like that. At least it was some kind of half slow and very dull film.

But OK, that's probably what you have to expect when giving away a couple of pixelated files for others to do as they please. The negative was a total disaster anyway, and not very much printable inside the darkroom I'm afraid. I have tried a couple of times, but there will have to be a good deal of work to be done on the print itself to somehow save the few details worth saving in there. I might try again some day, but need to get my hands on a few more chemicals before I give it another go at some point. 

It's a dilemma, I think...

I mean, should you write a lot of stuff about a few of the things you have seen lately and have no snaps to go with them, or would I be better off waiting until the films are duly developed and everything... which would be around the same time I have forgot about most of the stories to tell, obviously. 
I got no particular clue, of course, so I give you this one for a start. Just since I got absolutely no snaps to go along with the words anyway.

OK, so I put this one in here... just because I can. It's from inside one of the oldest churches still standing in Norway, looking out. I don't know exactly why I put this one in here, since I'm going to talk a bit about Oxford today. At least the story unfolded in Oxford, a few weeks ago. 

This snap was snapped a couple of years ago, or so, using one of the old Leica's and some sort of semi fast film, I think.

I went into this thing called "The Covered Market" or something like that while strolling the streets of Oxford one day not too long ago. Stumbled into a nice barber shop and everything, and since I never found myself sitting in one of them chairs before, I just had to try... for once.
It went all well thank you, and I still got me head in the somewhat right spot I should think, so no reason to worry there's going to be some story made out of it. 
After the barber shop experience I went further into the building (head bleeding, so had to return to the barber shop for some clean-up, but that didn't take (too) long...) and suddenly discovered there was this dude selling photographs from a smallish shop stuck into a corner in there somewhere. 
I peeped inside from the outside and thought I recognized a couple of rather well made lith prints, which of course triggered my curiosity a bit more than a little bit. So inside the doors I went.
And know you what? Real great darkroom prints all over the place, believe it or not. A few portraits that didn't exactly speak out to me, but still quite a few that really did, and maybe a few where a different photographer would have done things in a different way, but that's not the point here at all. Further on there were snaps from here, there and everywhere around England, Wales and Scotland as well. Places I knew, and others I definately didn't know much about.
A few lith prints as well, even though I must say I have seen a couple more interesting ones of that sorts around the interweb lately. A few of them really looked great though, and of course they did... I mean the dude's supposed to be a pro, right? With his own shop and everything!
I did some searching at the usual place and found his shop around here, as you do when you know how to use the available tools.  
Go have a look folks, the link is right here. His prints did look a bit better than his scans, of course, but we all know that's the way things are anyway, don't we?

The printer himself were inside the shop minding his business this morning, and we had a quick chat. I told him I liked his printing a lot, because I really did. I also felt like informing him of the facts that there's not too many shops like that around anymore, just in case he didn't have a clue of what's been going on in the world lately. Turned out that he knew a lot more about just those facts than myself, of course.
I can't do much more than wish him good luck, and throw the link to his shop around the internet for a short while. 

So, this is how we made our small buildings back in the days when teaching stuff inside huge universities had been going on for a couple of hundred years or so over there in Oxford and elsewhere. It's a nice church, by all means, but would not exactly stand out if placed alongside the cathedral of Canterbury or something like that. But then again, it's a bit easier to repair the roof of this one, should it be necessary some day. Old Leica, and old(ish) 21mm wide angle lens.

We also met this great dude from Belgium, of course, but that was on the next day I think... You might hear about him, me and my wife and one of the many guides of Oxford one of the next few days, if I'm feeling up to it. 
Oh, and we met a lot of great dogs. Millions, I think!

I got no clue at all...

...about where to start, that is. 
I've been away from here for quite some time, as some of you quite rightly already have discovered. It was probably for the better to all of us, after all. Been in holiday mode for a long time now, and that usually means that body and mind is all over the place but inside the webnet and thereabouts.

An oldie snapped from the island outside my home town a couple of years back on the Mamiya. The town lies just behind that strange looking mountain top there, as you might already knew. I sort of like this one, and should try to print it one day actually.

So, we went to old England, as you might remember. Just had to "do" the southern part of the country for once. Never travelled that way to any extent before.
And that's what I've been doing the last month or so. Travelling the southern part of England, driving 4522 miles, or 7281 km in our old Land Rover. That's a serious amount of brooms, grrrrrs, bumps and squeeks reaching your ears. Just saying!
We were able to stop around different places to have a good look at things in between all the driving, but we still have to wait in patience for the snaps. Or should I rather say we have to wait in patience to see if there's anything worth showing off. I don't remember many moments thinking I might have made any brilliant snaps, but we still have to wait and see. I could have been lucky without knowing about it. Things like that happens, you know. 

Another one from the archives. Bad times, as I have not been developing any film at all for some time. These are the mountains I see every day when at home, and the things you sort of miss when travelling here and there through Europe. There's nothing quite like it anywhere else, exept from Belgium... of course. At least according to one of the sort to whoom I spoke in Oxford during the holiday, but that's a story for another day, I suppose...

Anyway, this mountain is called "Jønshornet", peaks to 1419 meters above sea level, and you can (in theory, if you're a decent skier) ski downhill from the top and all the way down to sea level on both this side and the oposite side of it. In fact you can do the same thing from quite a few mountains along this fjord. Nice thought, actually. 

I only brought cameras for small 135 film this time. I was thinking about bringing the Rolleiflex as a medium format option, but then decided to leave it at home and travel kind of light instead. 
The Nikon F3 is still working and serving it's duty as the 365 camera for the year, so had to take that one of course. I also brought another Nikon, and one of the old German rangefinders. 
I had some hopes that my feet would lead me to some sort of camera shop at some point, as there's a couple of old Nikons around I would love to get my hands on if possible. 
Well, couldn't find any, so I saved the shillings for an even brighter day. 
Because bright it was, and hot. Way to hot for a norwegian, as you might have expected already. We're not used to this kind of temperatures for longer periods of time, but luckily there were pubs to visit every now and then. Very nice they are to find when others seem to have really found their shopping instincts, and are ready to go wild. 

Another one from home, looking straight across the fjord we're living at. I printed this one a few years ago and couldn't help from calling it "-og jenta hev eg lova" which actually is a few words from an ancient norwegian song about a man promising a bit too much to a woman at a time when people used to live very very far away from everything over here at this part of the world. This particular figure lived at a place looking something like the tiny little farm you might catch a glimpse of down by the water, surronded by mountains all around, with no hope to see other people every month of the year. And yes, the print was a wee bit better than this film-scan... 

I didn't find any Nikon cameras for sale anywhere. No F's anyway... but I did find something very different, and one that made me dig out a few pounds from my pockets. Actually I have been looking for one of these for a while, but the prices has gone far out of proportion these days. 
It's the nice little Olympus-PEN EE-3 we're talking about. Useless half format kind of thing, as you might know. Nothing for the masses, but might be great for a couple of extremely grainy, underexposed snaps every now and then. At least that's what I hope for. Something a bit better than the Diana Mini, but still into that same kind of weird and rough style. Maybe.
We will find out when the first couple of rolls are due for some developer inside that Paterson tank.

Archive again. From the seaside this time, and a place I really love to go for some nice snaps of the ocean during autumn and winter time. This was with the Leica M3 snapped on HP5 I think. I'm absoultely sure about the camera, because I had to empty it of sleet, snow and rain by the time I got to the car. That rather black wall out there is a mighty bunch of snow, as it happens, and it hit me big-time before I had finished off my stroll along the rocky beach.

OK. Enough bla bla for now, and hopefully I will be back in a very short time with more. 
I'm afraid this month is going to be very tricky for me when it comes to posting pictures, but I will try my very best. 
I will probably have to post a few you have seen too many times already, but I hope you can just follow along anyway. I have nothing new at all, I think. There is still a few from the 365 to post, but I'll wait a few days with that. 
I have been snapping some stuff, but I yet have to get all them rolls duly washed and bathed, according to procedure in this game.