Nice lens mounted on that old Rolleiflex!

I was here just a few weeks ago, at the Fitjar island a bit down south and western part of the country of Norway. I always seem to find myself somewhere along the coast line by the way. This time we were laid up with the ship for about a week in between a couple of jobs. It was somewhat boring, to tell the truth. Got a couple of snaps done with the Rolleiflex though, so that would still mean it was good for something. 

I sort of like the one with the collection of abandoned road signs for some reason, to be honest. I might even find out why some day for all we know. 

 A tiny jungle of roadsigns leaned towards a steel wall. Looking at them now I can see a couple of them fitting rather well inside the engine room of the ship. I'm glad I didn't see that possibility that day, after all :))

We had a couple of other ships laid up alongside the same quay at the time. They've been there for a while, I think. Bad times for the industry, you know. 
As we were parked here for a bit of time my engine crew was appointed to take a good daily inspection round on board the two other ships as well, just to act as a support for the guys who usually have to drive for a couple of hours to get the rather small job done. 
The outer one of the two ships were a breeze to go through. The inner one not so. Not at all, as it happens. You will not believe me if I started to talk about it anyway, so I leave it be. 
Let's just say you're never completely all alone on board that one... Freaky thing, it was for sure!

A couple of snaps taken with the Rolleiflex, obviously with the aperture thing more or less fully open just to add some separation inside the frames. Seems like I missed the exposure a bit. I think the faster shutter times on that thing is a bit slow to be honest, but I've never got it checked or anything. At least it's getting a tiny bit better when adding a yellow filter as I did here. 

Too big for the scanner!

Getting rather close to midnight over here, and I'm just out of the darkroom. Seven prints done, where at least four of them will be on my list of prints heading for the jury deciding which ones are going to hang on the walls over at Devold towards Christmas. 
Having a quick look at things I would say I'll get a bit disappointed if not two of them will reach the wall, to be honest. To tell you the truth I'll also get a bit disappointed if one rather special one will not get sold at some point through the exhibition. 

Sorry for the pixels and everything, but the end product is as analogue as it possibly can get. 

Oh, and I also got rid of one of the blacksmith prints this evening. The man himself bought it, and I just realized I had another quite good neg lingering inside my archive so I printed that one as well. Turned out to produce a fairly nice print it did, so I might send that one off to the exhibition jury instead of the first one. I have to think about it, of course. As one does, sometimes. 
He's doing a blacksmith course this weekend, so I hope to be able to get there to maybe snap a few with one of the Mamiya's, or something. I might even just bring the Rolleiflex, for all we know. If I'll go I bring the print as well, of course. At least if I can find the time to have it selenium toned, dried and spot checked before Sunday afternoon. 

Oh... and they don't fit inside my tiny scanner, I'm afraid. That's why I only can bring you lousy snaps from my telephone thing, as most people do these days anyway...

A legend in swedish photography

I just felt I had to show you this thing.
It's a brand new documentary sort of film about the legendary photographer and darkroom printer, Jean Hermanson.
Born 1938, died in 2012 with a huge amount of negs archived and a massive printing job still undone. It's a bit hard to take in the fact that such an important and fantastic and productive photographer died rather poor, without enough funds to even buy the paper and chemicals needed to keep on working through his projects.

I just had a lot of stuff written about the film, but it all went south just because of my own stupidity with computers... I know, it's my own damn fault!
Anyway. You'll find a quite photographer, and a man truly not speaking too load about himself. You'll find passion, poetry inside pictures, and you'll find empathy. Bucket loads of empathy.

Following the death of the photographer, the maker of this documentary is being given his huge archive of negatives and prints. He decides to try to track down some of the persons in the portraits from back in the days, and actually succeeds in finding some of them who then gets to see their portraits taken decades ago for the first time.
There's also a few minutes dedicated to a series of photos of the late Swedish Grand Man Mr. Olof Palme some years before he became the Prime Minister himself. A truly remarkable series, and nothing like anything you could get on a few frames of Ilford FP4 today no matter what politician we're talking about.
The happy ending of the film is when a museum finally decides to take all the negs into their custody, and to agree to make a permanent exhibition showing this fantastic material to the people. It's about time, I would say, after so many years having been hidden away from the public.

Oh... and another one of my swedish photography idols is in the film as well. Mr. Micke Berg (who's blog you can find right here, should you wish to have a look...) was invited to say a few words about old Jean Hermanson, as he knew the old master very well. He is also seen when printing one or two of Jean's negs inside the darkroom, showing off his old printing skills even though he has not been printing inside a darkroom for years.
He is still doing a few photography workshops every now and then, old Micke Berg. I have been thinking about joining one or two of them if time and money is to be found somewhere. I hope I will, before it's too late.