Why process film at work seemed like a good idea, and some early thoughts on the Foma Excel film developer

I need to put up a warning to you all before you read much further:
What was supposed to only be some little thing went way on to become quite a lengthy post due to the (in my head anyway) complexity of the themes brought up by myself as I went on writing on this piece. OK, there is nothing complex in here as such, but I needed a few more words than originally planned to explain myself well enough. As usual.
One thing grabbed the other, and before I knew any of it I was too far gone. That happens at times, as we all know. 
If you got no interest in a couple of different Foma developers or the Foma P powder fixer, or if you never travel with film (through airports and such) or if you got no interest what so ever in how to, and not at least why on earth, arrange a floating darkroom in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, and further if you couldn't care less why in heavens name anyone would see the benefit in doing so, well I suggest you save your heart from high blood pressure (if it's not too late already due to this sentence) and simply jump ahead to a different blog. This post is most likely going to be quite boring, or even lethal for some, I assume. 
I'll post a couple of film snaps all the way down below at the end, so you can scroll down there before surfing further on your way through the web and have a look at them if you like. I'll be quite happy if you do actually. 

Here we go;
As you probably already know if you did read the last couple of posts, we're in the process of building up a very simple and low tech film developing lab on board the vessel I work on. There are a couple of reasons why this still seems to be a good idea, but the original thought was for educational purposes and short term facilities only, as there are two or three young lads (anyway that's what you call them when you passed 50 yourself way too long ago now) on board, all eager to learn how this film magic works in practice.
Well, this was a couple of trips ago now, and it turned out during their time off they were actually eager enough to start some home education by themselves before they came on board on the previous trip to this one. Again, this of course means they are no longer in need of any direct hands on help from anyone at all, especially not me, and they are of course developing film more or less like any pro these days. Which is brilliant, of course.

So, this is it! Our little corner in one of the stories and workshop areas where film is being processed. Chemicals for most normal film processes is up on the shelf, together with most of the stuff you'll need to get the deed done. It's not fancy, but it seems to work well enough. As you might understand this corner doubles up as a soap and washing equipment area. Sorry about the pixels and and all that, but for plain documentation I have to admit there are benefits...

A little close-up of the point of interest. I see one of the Paterson spools has been hidden away somewhere else, but it will show up again some time I'm sure.

However, it turns out there seems to be another good reason for developing film on board when at work in 2020, and I am of course speaking of the fact that airport security scanners are getting more powerful these days. A new generation of machines (or not new as such, as the same technology have been in use for check-in luggage for about 20 years already) are being installed in all major airports as we speak, probably to speed up the process at the security checkpoints. 
I very much like the idea of getting through the security check a lot faster than the usual tedious way, but I don't like the new machines likeliness of frying my film in the process, which they probably will if you have been listening with both ears to what Kodak, Ilford and others in the film production business have been talking about lately. 
Up until now I have been bringing my unexposed film inside my carry on luggage, and just simply dropped-in-a-tray-and-through-the-scanners-they-fly without any issues at all. I have been doing the same thing with my cameras, loaded with film and everything. No problems at all.
I have been traveling like this with film in my bag for many years now, back and forth through anything between two and eight scanners on each trip every six weeks year in and year out. I'm sure some films in my bag must have passed probably 20+ scannings of the old sorts, and I have never had an issue I can possibly blame any X-ray scanner for.
The 20+ number is just taken out of the air of course, because I have not been counting, but I travel a lot for work and I sometimes travel far, and I usually would just grab a good little bunch of film before I leave home and just tuck them inside my bag. Some rolls will be leftovers and just stay inside that same bag during multiple trips without being used, and that's why the number of X-ray scannings could reach such numbers and probably above for some films. As time goes and everything in the world is the same, you start to relax after some time, and airport scanners is far from your worst enemy after a few years doing this. 
But now there's a new beast on the block, and we traveling film wasters have to deal with it in some sort of way. 

By processing film on board I will of course be able to reduce the amount of X-ray scans a lot compared to my previous "regime". 
In addition I will also have to do something about my earlier habit of bringing film back and forth multiple times. 
The idea is of course simply to bring un-processed film on board, but not back home if I can possibly avoid it. I might also get better at buying film in whichever country I'm working at the moment, but that's an even trickier task as there will most likely be no time for any shopping like that. I work on a ship you know, and a ship earns it's daily crest at sea, not by wearing out the ropes tied up alongside some half-rotten pier somewhere. 

OK, so what's out there to expect when traveling halfway around the globe nowadays, and what has happened since some time in the second half of 2019? Well, much of the same as before, I would say. 
The few operators of the new type of X-ray machines I have bumped into have been quite cooperative up until now (with a couple of exceptions of course), but you never know when that luck is going to change on you.
For this trip I tested out my "new" concept by really bringing quite a few of rolls of 135 and 120 film on board. I dug deep into the film drawer and even deeper into my freezer (because we have now moved to a new location where I got a dedicated almost-film-only-freezer) and pulled out 80 rolls of film (just counted two minutes ago to make sure the numbers were right...) which seem to have been laying around for ages anyway. Since I can't see these rolls being used with any benefit at home I thought I better bring them on board to play around with. 
I brought some C-41 color negative film spanning from ASA 100 to 800, some rolls of E6 process positive film (low ASA stuff from Fuji), and finally a bunch of B&W film of various types from 50 to 3200 ASA. 
These were the ones picked to serve as crash test dummies through the various airports from home and over to where the ship is located, way off the coast of Louisiana at the moment. 

Leaving Norway (2 traditional and old fashion scannings) was no problem since there was no new type of scanners to be seen up north as for yet, but already down at Schiphol lies the first major test. No problem and no discussions at all about having all my rolls of film passing on the outside of the scanner to be "hand-checked" (whatever that really means), so thanks a lot for that Schiphol. Anyway I knew this was going to happen, as I have always been able to speak to the folks on this airport, and they always find the time and take the effort to listen to what you have to say. 
I went through the security twice at Schiphol, due to in and out of the airport because I had to stay overnight at a hotel before flying further on the next morning. The same friendly attitude were experienced both days. 
Then the next one on the list was Atlanta airport, USA... Heck, I finally managed to get my film hand-checked there as well, but I really had to speak out loud to make myself understood and/or heard, I'm not sure which of the two made it through to the receiver in the end. 
It's not my favorite game to play, coming in to a security checkpoint facing a fully wound-up security officer when I'm just out of a 12 hrs. flight without any sleep, and hardly had any sleep the previous night either... you know the deal. Add to this also the state you're normally in after well over an hour in immigration queue and interview... I say no more!
I must add that the minor issue through security at Atlanta Airport was probably due to one single operator in particular (could of course also be myself, but for once I really doubt it as I actually felt proud of my own reaction for days after this), as my friends who were standing in a different queue had no issues at all having their film hand checked, seeing only friendly faces and was taken very well care of. 
I also need to add that when leaving the US on the previous trip out of Houston towards Europe there was no problem at all. They were more than happy to hand-check my film both when coming in and leaving the country. In fact the operator of the new scanner in Houston actually suggested a hand scanning by himself when being informed that I was traveling with film. He knew everything about the new machines frying abilities and built-in film zapping technology. 

As a result of all this new extra hassle and possible show stoppers during traveling, I realized it was time to think seriously about developing film on board when at work. As liquid developers also are a bit tricky to travel with for obvious reasons, I decided to try bring some powder developer and fixer packed into my checked-in bag, and just cross fingers that no one would start questioning the content of the packs. Due to time issues (placing my order a bit late, as you do of course) and relatively long delivery time from a couple of different companies, I ended up having only one option if I wanted to bring any B&W developer for this trip. 
Foma in Norway was able to ship everything I needed on the same day, so I just had to go for it and cross my fingers that the two different and to me totally new and unknown developers worked as expected (or hoped, as I have also read very little about them). 

I had two types of powder developer ordered, the Fomadon P (also marked as "type D76") and the Fomadon Excel (supposed to be an X-tol type, or clone). I also ordered a few packs of crystalized or powdery Fomafix P, which obviously would be the fixer. 
The two developers comes well packed in a quite small and neat plastic bag with a cheap paper inlay telling you what's supposed to be inside the package. Nothing fancy, as usual from Foma, but it does what's needed and nothing much else. I mean why would anyone need a fancy bag anyway, as long as it survives the travel in one piece and one doesn't have to guess what's hiding inside?
The fixer comes in a nice little cardboard box of puke green color with proper mixing instructions printed inside the box. English instructions are printed in understandable phrases inside both developers and fix, just in case you wonder. 
The developers both consists of two equal sized paper bags of powder, noted in the mixing manual as "big bag" and "small bag". OK, it's not that bad, as one bag has only a small amount of powder inside, and the other is rather full of the stuff. I actually figured the most empty one had to be the "small size", and mixed myself 1 liter of the Fomadon Excel developer according to instructions as soon as I had film ready to get wet. 
The developer mix quite nice and easy with water at rather normal temperatures, and is ready for use quite shortly after throwing the powder in. I decided to go for a 1:1 dilution, keeping 1/2 liter of stock for later use. The user manual suggests to use stock solution, or at least there is no words about any dilution. It also indicates a 12 rolls capacity for 1 liter of developer, which seems to fit well enough with my finding of about 20 rolls. They are always operating on the quite safe side, and I've seen it often enough to know that's the way it works. More about that a bit further down.

As the Foma developers seems not to be among the most popular developers around, there was little or no words about developing times and the like to be found around the places I usually go to check for this sorts of information. Foma delivers data for their own films and developer combinations, but no other films was mentioned. Personally I was going to develop a roll of Ilford PAN 100, and Massive Development Chart wasn't very cooperative in this case. 
I could of course have used a lot of time asking around the web and as usual get as many different answers as the number of people answering me, so I dropped that and did it my own way. I mean it was just a lousy B&W film anyway, and normally there is hardly any chance that a masterpiece had stuck on any of the frames, so I went for X-tol times and decided to add a smallish fraction of time to it just in case. 
Well, I am happy to inform you that the trick worked well enough. The negs came out in a way that seems both lovely and fine, but I have to add that I have only been able to check them with a not too good loupe as for yet. I'll pull a lens off of one of my cameras tomorrow and have a better look, but they really look great from a distance to be honest. 
I mean I even developed a roll of good old Shanghai GP3 in the stuff a couple of days ago, and though you might have a hard time believing it, that bugger also came out as good as they ever get. You should know from years back that I really love that film, at least when you're lucky enough to not have issues with the numbers from the backing paper sticking onto the film emulsion. 
Well, there was nothing of that sorts on this roll, so it might be an over-layer from an older batch. The last rolls I bought of this film all had rather big issues with the backing paper, so I expected this one to be the same thing. Luckily it was not. 

And this is what they looks like, the packs of Foma developer and fixer I brought over from home. At least they don't take up a lot of space, or add too much weight in the suitcase when traveling.

I have yet to try the Fomadon P developer, which should be of a D-76 type if we are to believe what's printed on the front of the pack of the thing. At least the Excel developer looks very much like the X-tol stuff, but I need to warn you that I don't have any deep knowledge of that particular chemical either. In fact I've only had a few films developed in X-tol and that was years ago. Anyway, the grains came out on the fine side, and the contrast seems to be absolutely fine when looking at the negs. 
Since the Fomadon Excel developer was mixed about two weeks ago we have totally developed 9 films using half of the stock solution to make 1 liter of 1:1 developer. No visible issues as for yet, but I might not stretch it any further, and will probably mix a new batch from the rest of the stock we got up on the shelf. Value for money seems to be on the good side of things. I payed NOK 45,- for the Excel developer which I would probably have no problems getting 20 films out of if I could avoid storing the 1:1 mix for more than about one week. That's just a tad over NOK 2,- pr film which is good enough even for me. 
The Fomadon P (D-76) is a few NOK cheaper at 41,25 for a 1 liter powder pack.
The Foma P fixer is in the same area, NOK 42,- for a 1 liter pack. 
They are very handy packs to travel with, and I just realized when going into their website to check the prices that the before mentioned plastic bags containing the developer powder now seems to have been changed to cardboard boxes similar to the box the fixer was delivered in. The color seems to be a bit nicer than puke green though. Not that less fancy colors on their boxes should keep us from starting using Foma products if that's the direction we wish to throw our hard earned cash of course, but I will not start talking about that again.
What's obvious is that there is a quite huge difference in price when comparing Foma and Kodak developers. I will get three packs of 1 liter Foma developer for the same amount of money I would need to pay for one liter of the Kodak equivalent here in Norway.

I'm posting a few examples from this experiment with the Fomadon Excel developer below, but needs to put in (even more than) a few words just to make sure you know what you're looking at. 
The two snaps of the negs were taken with an iPhone by holding the neg in one hand and balancing the phone in the other trying to hit the shutterbugger using my right hand thumb at the same time. Ever tried that? Well, be my guest. Second the "window" I shot the thing through is a salted down and by all means dirty thing only there to throw some half decent light inside of my cabin, so there's a lot of stuff shining through the negative. In addition you get everything in the background all for free of course. Sea, clouds, a handrail on the outside and what have we all. Look at the grain, and nothing much else. Don't even look at what seems to be a very low contrast, because the neg is quite a bit more contrasty than it seems to be in the digital snap of it. I tried to crank it up a bit inside the phone, but the damn stupid software wouldn't allow me to do it for some reason. See why I usually go for film? Even the simplest task on any digital platform makes my blood pressure rise to dangerous levels because of things I got no way to control the insides of. 

Your personal blogger up on top there. One of them engineers had grabbed hold of the Rolleiflex for a moment and decided to "shoot the Chief". If you look away from all the faults brought in by the digital convertion apparatus, this is not actually bad at all. Shot on a roll of Kosmofoto 120 film, which effectively just mean Fomapan 100. Lovely film all the same, and I liked the results from the Fomadon Excel developer. 

One of our new Polish crane drivers and AB's. It's the same with this neg. There are stuff going on in the lower 1/3 part of the thing, so just look a bit away from that. Snapped in the Pentax 67 with the 45mm f/4 lens attached, on good old Shanghai GP3 developed in Fomadon Excel. Great stuff!

It's the 3rd engineer. The proud owner of a lovely Pentax 67, and the go-to chemist if anything like would be needed, which usually happen in this job, especially when you got a film lab on board and need something special to get something done. He just did something crazy to be able to develop E6... but more about that another bright day. 

The crane driver once more. Snapped with the Rolleiflex on the same roll of Kosmo film again. This was done hand held at 1/8 of a sec. due to rather dark conditions. Actually I think I might even would have got away with 1/15 on this one, but there was quite a bit too less lighty inside that hole of theirs inside their cave out on deck. They got good coffee out there though. 

Oh... and yes there's also a couple of snaps down at the very end having nothing to do with the rest of the post at all. They are only there because of the promise I made hours ago at the top of this thing to the ones who didn't want to read the whole post. I can't blame them for just jumping down here by the way...!
Did anyone actually read much of this nonsense at all?? 

Take care!

I just found this inside a batch of scans I made quite a while ago. It was snapped on constitutional day (May the 17th) a couple of years ago. It was a warm day, and the fury dog called Scot had found a nice place in the shadow to cool himself down a bit. I had the 85mm f/1.4 beast attached to the Nikon F3 and decided to give it a go at full aperture. I rarely do things like that, but this scene sort of asked for it there and then. Not sure about what sort of film this was though.  

This is a more recent snap and scan for sure. I was walking around the ship on crew change day with the M6 rangefinder in hand, grabbing a few shots here when possible. I even went inside the smoking room. I very rarely pass that way, but sometimes you see and hear things in there, and the world is no longer what it used to be before you went inside that door. 

Leica M6, Summicron 35mm with yellow filter. Could have been Kodak Tri-X film, but I'm not sure.

Oh well... it's obviously just another quick snap from the engine room. I think it was the light/shadow thing that made me open the shutter for a little while, but I am no longer sure about the point of doing so in the first place. Leica M6, Summicron 35mm with yellow filter. Unknown film, but might have been Kodak Tri-X

OK...!

OK, so I got it... I think! Looking back at my first two posts, I realize that you can't expect folks want to read a full novel every time I want to post something.

It's been to long since last post, and I hope to pull myself together and do a little more of this. Maybe even get a follower or two of this thing.

I'm at work right now, so no time or chance to do any extended photo tours out here on the big blue west of Shetland. 

I got a couple of shots on some hard drive though, so will post one or two of them.

The Alnes lighthouse, Norway.

I love this place! Alnes, on the Godøya island just outside my hometown. This was snapped using one of my dreadful heavy Mamiya RZ cameras, a japaneese wonder from some time in the 80's or 90's I guess. Some grass there in the front of that 250mm lens, but I let that pass. A lovely lighthouse it is!

Kirkwall bay, Orkney.

Done on a windy, wet and half dark wintery day as we were staying alongside the Hatston Pier in Kirkwall. I think I might shot this with some Nikon FM2 or something, but not to sure about that here and now. Could also be a crop from a medium format camera, and if so most likely the same Mamiya as above. I know for a fact that I somehow blew up the whole thing during developing of the film, but that's just how I tend to do things. I call it variables...

Alnes again, lighthouse in the distance. 

Alnes again, and this time I know for sure that it was snapped through a big, bulky 37mm wide angle lens attached to that heavy Mamiya RZ67. The negatives will come out as 6x7 cm big, which is probably why Mamiya had to mention it on the front. It got a big front, so they had space to play with when they constructed the thing!

Well... that's it for today. Now I'm off to get some sleep, if possible due to a little bit rough seas this evening. I call it a day, and will def. try to find something more interresting for tomorrow! 

Changes...

The world seems to change even more quickly. I don't know this, but maybe things seems to change even quicker as we grow older? Besides, I always seem to forget how everything was back then, in the childhood days when I grew up. A few things have etched itself into the memory, and will probably never disappear, but then again a lot of things has slipped my mind and will never come back. The more daily stuff, that does not seem important at the time, has it's own way to just evaporate from my memory, quickly. A coltsfoot in a road trench, a red nylon Liverpool shorts pulled way up underneath my arms, a gravel road full of bumps and holes, the childish heaven to ride your bike on fresh asphalt, the envy felt as you watched your buddy being able to ride his bike on the back wheel for as long as he wanted... Then it's all the old houses and buildings that is no longer there, roads that has been moved, the forever changing landscapes as new buildings pops up. All those bigger things that you think you remember, but still will struggle to explain if you were asked to do so.

Of all things, why did I ever listen to my old dads words about saving all that good Kodak Tri-X for the real good shots? I did not listen to him all that much on anything else, so why didn't I just use it to shoot all those great streetshots back then, when I grew up?

Today I realize that it's just a shame, and nothing else.

The streets I grew up on are the same today as back in the days. They were a lot longer back then, but they are still the same.

The Thomas-field was great for a game of football.  Today it's a tiny piece of bumpy backtrack, squeezed in between two heavy traffic roads. Naturally, that was exactly what it was back then as well. The traffic was not the same, but the grass was just as bad back in the days as it is today. Everything worked back then. No one plays football, or use this field for anything these days. It's just lying there... between these two roads for no obvious reason. Back then it was there for us to use, as we played football in zigg zagg to avoid the worst bumps.

I doubt that any Thomas owns this tiny piece of land anymore. It's probably taken into some plans for future public use of some kind. The old man called Thomas has probably passed away 30 years ago or so, as he was an old man even back then. His house was yellow, and it's still there. I don't have any idea if it's still yellow, even though I drive past every now and then. I guess I don't have the time to even check a simple thing like that.

We are all more busy these days, even though we always had an important football match to play at that time.

Two Suzuki 550's speeding down the gravel... way to fast on that 30mph road. Our main road.

A blue one in the lead, soon to be overtaken by the red one. Loads of dust, roaring engines, speed, action. Huge beasts those bikes! The speedometers went all the way to 200 kmh, or even beyond. The eyes in a boys skull almost popped out.

Everything was bigger and faster back then. Well... not my fathers old Opel Kadet. I think the speedometer on that one maybe went to 130 kmh, but he never managed to go over 90, no matter how busy he was. The cars, at least my fathers cars, were always slow as hell. A few of my friends fathers had VW Beetles. They were never able to overtake any slow or fast car either.

For christmas in 1974 I got a camera from my parents. A real camera. All the shots on this blog entry is taken from a few of the first films ever to run through that camera.

In addition to being a helicopter pilot, my father was also a kind of magician. He could take film from any camera, and develop it in a tank in the kitchen. When it was developed, he could also make fine prints from the same films under red light in the same kitchen at night time. I was invited to watch every now and then, and I remember pure magic taking place right there and then.

A bit later, when our new house was finished and we moved in, a dedicated darkroom was made. I kind of grew up in that darkroom, when I was not playing football on the Thomas field, or skiing, or doing anything else outdoors.

The camera was a Minolta Hi-matic G. An automatic viewfinder camera. I realy hauled quite a few meters of film through that camera back in those years, but time and (ab)use always went along nice with it. I still got it, and I still use it quite frequently. I have shot a lot of great photos on it during it's lifetime of 40 years this far. I can't help wonder how my iPhone will look and work in around 38 years from now...

I got a few old cameras. For instance an old Rolleiflex from 1957. That's ten years before I was born. That one also is as good as new, and simply is a fantastic camera. You can hardly hear the shutter as it ticks. Ticking like a Rolex... and I can't help thinking about a fine swiss watch every time I use that camera. Great mechanics, and a lovely and sharp lens. Sweet like candy.

I love my Leicas as well, and the fact that you can hardly hear the shutter. No noisy flapping mirrors are good when it comes to noise, when noise is not a good thing. Mirror cameras can sound like letting an elephant loose in a china shop at times, which is not a good idea in certain obvious situations. By the way, it seems to be a rule that mirrors on the other photographers cameras are a bit more noisy than my Nikons... It's a feeling I get when I am in a situation that I have to use it in a quiet place. Really strange I guess...

Owning a good camera back in the 70's did put you into a few situations where you could really let every strict order from any parent bounce off like it was never mentioned. You were the recorder, the reporter, and you had to do your duty. It could be that a few of the situations was constructed by someone, but that seems to have vanished from my mind as well. There was a lot of action to be reported and recorded, and everything was great until the films was developed. Developing film was not for kids to do, so my father did that job. Not every negative made it to become a print... Luckily he was never to tough on the censorship, and at least all the negatives survived to this day. I got a few prints to make soon... digging out my old Tri-X films from the mid. 70's.

Scanning of film... yes, I have to go through this. As soon as I find myself working with pictures on a computer, I seem to try find a million good reasons to get away from it. As soon as I move from something physical into the world of 0's and 1's. Endlessly binary rows... Well, I get sweaty and a headache suddenly creeps into my body in some mysterious way. I don't like it. In fact I hate it, but know it has to be done these days. A real silverprint is so much more than the scanned file from a negative, but still I do the scanning and the posting of the files from time to time. I do it here as well, and on Facebook... and on Flickr and all over the place.

It's reality though, that the majority of pictures is viewed on a screen these days.

I would love to have a big white wall where I could go nuts with loads of good silverprints instead, but that will probably not happen. I can still dream though.

I never edit my scans to any big extent. I might crop away the ragged borders some times, and I might adjust a little bit on the light if I feel like it, but I hardly ever remove dust and stuff like that. Only in special cases.

I will do some spotting on the final prints of these shots when I take them to the darkroom to make prints of a few of them. I even think a couple of them might end up on a wall somewhere in a small music studio owned by a man I know well...

Another bullshit blogger?!

OK, so I just have to try write my blog in the english language. I thought about it a few times over a while ago before I started my norwegian language blog, and thought I wanted to write in my own language. That was a big hit! Not even one reader for many months. OK, I have not been advertising the blog around, so that might be one of the explanations. Well, one reason for anyone to use time to write a blog would be to have one or two followers or readers, so I'll try again with a small adjustment in language. 

Being a teenage father I have heard a few stories about blog writers the last couple of years, and how they according to my teenage daughters, earn a lot of money by writing empty words about makeup and commercial stuff. Then, after some time, they start to write about how selfish the norwegian government behaves when it starts hunting for tax money from the same bloggers... Yes, just like they hunt for tax money from everyone else who earns money. Luckily I'm old enough now to know all about that shit, and also am I old enough to not give a damn about all the tax I pay. I just hope my money comes in handy at some point, for someone.

I am also both old enough, and hopefully wise enough, to realize that I never will earn anything on any text I write or any photography I take. I might sell one or two every now and then, but it will forever be a project on the negative side when it comes to money. So I fear nothing! And I couldn't care less either.I can, however, always hope that a few of the words and some of my photos might find their place somewhere they belong. 

The Big Blue... the ocean! In it's simple form a dull and boring landscape, but no matter how you look at it still in a constant state of change. One moment like a mirror, the next it's a mix of salt spray and roaring inferno. My office is set up the wrong way. I got my back towards the sea, facing a boring wall and a computer screen that has seen better days. Every time I turn around, I see something different. The light might have changed, a ship on the horizon, an oil rig, or maybe even whales or other cool stuff. The moment I wrote this article, my office was at a location some 120 nautical miles west of Shetland in the North Atlantic Ocean. Other times my office is elsewhere.White waves. Is the weather turning worse? Or maybe better? Weather equals wave-height out here. That's the only thing that really matters. Low waves means work can be done, high waves means no work and just waiting. Wave-height matters big time.

The photography, either a quick snapshot or a more thought through photo, as a way to tell a story and to express a feeling or a meaning is just fantastic. A great picture makes time stand still, for me. As for my own pictures... well, time seems to go remarkably quick when I look at most of them. I both love and hate my photos. Sometimes I really like one, but after a couple of weeks I end up hating the same shot. A few times the opposite happens, and these are the ones that seems to be the best one over time. Strange. A few works, most of them sucks! I will most likely post both pictures I love and hate. I will probably not tell which is which, but I will really like to hear comments on them, either they are good or bad. 

Strange thing a photo! As soon as the shutter has been operated, with a bit of luck a tiny bit of history has been captured. Hence, when I some day see the result, the finished photo, I am watching history. Never future, always history! What's the deal in this human wish, or even demand, to want to watch history all the time? A bit strange if you just look at it in that way, but that's just the way it is. I know, because I got pictures from way back in the 70's. Pictures work in a way that they seem to get better if you stick them away in a whole lot of years, and then dig them out. I should do that more often. Take my pictures, develop the films, and just hide them away for say 30 years before I do anything with them. That way maybe more of my pictures would look better to me?

The photography is one of the real big inventions the last few hundred years. Big and important. Cool thing is that inside any camera the same thing happens today that happened in the early days of photography. OK, the world has gone digital and the equipment has been refined a whole lot... but we still only got a lens with an aperture, and a shutter in some form that let the light through to hit something sensible to light. Today it's most often a digital sensor, a few years ago it was film. We capture light and shadow in a big or small box. Just as we did in the earlier days. We save it inside the box for a short or longer period of time, before we transform the information into... a piece of history. And life is worth living. Why are we still doing this? Why is this of any interest today, when everything that is considered important always seem to contain the words "live streaming", "broadband" and God knows what. Why does photography, an ancient technique, still have such an impact on our lives? At least for quite a few of us? We have never shot still photos at a larger scale than we do now. I read something about this a few days ago, and it was mentioned that we have shot more still photos the last five years than we did in all the years before that, combined, since the technique was invented. That's quite a few photos! Sad thing is that only a very, very few of those shots will be for anyone to see in a few years time. It's estimated that only one of thousand shots survive the first year of living. Strange thing for someone grown up in a time when you never even thought about loosing a negative?!

Bloody hell...! What about all these kids around that will grow up without having seen a printed photo of their granddad? Well... that's probably a story for a post on it's own!

Everyone seems to consider themselves as photographers these days. There is all this great equipment around, and there is a lot of knowledge on how to make a dull photo look great on a screen, but that does not automatically make someone a great photographer? Or does it? I think many more of us would benefit a lot if we took the effort to pull our finger out of our ass and found some ground to stick it into, instead. Everyone with an expensive camera seems to have their own photo page on Facebook these days. A few of them are great, some are good, but most of them simply looks crap to me. No, I am not a photographer and will never be, but I still post photos on my Facebook profile from time to time. Some are good, and some are just shit. I can easily live with that. I am just a hobby photographer, but I still probably post to much. I should find some ground to stick my finger into, when I get ashore, some day.

Right now, in the afternoon, the sea and the sky almost blend into one tone. The sky is totally without contrast, and is around one aperture value lighter than the ocean. You will find out if you should start playing around with a light meter to find the truth. I don't care, because I know the facts, and I usually see the light in exposure values... around one aperture value, EV, or one zone in late Ansel Adams zone system. Just where you should find the horizon, the sky is creeping down into the ocean making the two elements melt together in some kind of weird way. 

I am no photographer! The majority of us is not a photographer, no matter how much we want to be one. A few of us might call ourselves bloggers. I guess there is no such thing as a blogger education, is it? Just as little as most of us can call ourselves rocket scientists, we are not photographers. To many of us is going to use a lifetime trying to become one, but still not be able to reach any of the great old guys even to their knees. We take pictures! A lot of pictures to be honest. Probably to many. You don't have to be a Micke Berg, Ansel Adams, Ingrid Budge, Dorothea Lange or Henri Carier-Bresson to take pictures. Not even to take great pictures, and thank God for that! It happens that I get struck by luck, and find myself having taken a great photo. Later, when I look at it, I always seem to wonder what I did, and I ask myself how on earth did this happen. Often the answer has something to do with some kind of feeling, something I can't put my finger on, which of course just make everything even more confusing. The explanation is never anything physical like aperture or shutter time. Those are maths, and something I definitely can put my finger on, and something I know a few things about. No, most often it's all about feeling. I think I need to start feel more...Micke Berg probably feels all the time. At least it seems like he does, because of his pictures. 

Breton lived to be almost 100. I might still have half a lifetime to learn...