I'm back out here, in the big blue somewhere

Oh yes, at sea that is. At work and all, to see what that might bring towards me the next four weeks. It's always a bit of a struggle the first few hours, or maybe the first day or so, but then things starts to become a routine again, and the days more or less floats along as they should. 

Oh no, I hear you shout out! Not the Shetland series again? 
Hah... I reply. It's a proper series, you know, and will last for more or less one long strip of 135 format film. And yes, I'm going to post most of them right here. So only thing you can do is just brace yourselves, or of course either leave or turn around to look elsewhere as the posts are being brought on. 

I had nothing much to say today, actually. I know I thought of something yesterday, but that has vanished somewhere else for the moment, of course. Memory is a totally overrated thing, since you obviously are bringing the matter to the table...
Maybe I should just shut up more, and in that way post less? Or maybe I should just go ahead as I usually do? 

Just back from work, again. Had to sit in for one of the engineers as he joined an on-board course. All we have to go through, huh? And who else to call at these hours, but the chief himself? No one, I suppose... which is why I seem to be the chosen one when it comes to save the day. Anyway, I like it though, so no particular hard feelings of any kind. Still, I'm here anyway with nothing much to do right now.
Giving just that a short second thought I got a couple of fresh magazines. Black+White Photography, and the latest issue of Black and White. So I got things to do the next couple of evenings as well, as you might expect. 
See you soon folks! Hopefully with something better to come up with than this nonsense...

What's wrong here, anyway?

Something just have to be... because as soon as I put this, whatever I will write and post today, online, there will very soon be six or seven people looking at it (at least according to the statistics) and then there will never be any more. Never, ever! 
AND, not only that! The only visitors will be from either Norway or the big USofA. Nowhere else in the world whatsoever, at least that's what the same statistics map tells me. That's a bit strange, isn't it? 
Well, I probably just need to relax a bit about it, and just think that when the world finally finds this, they will probably jump in joy and I will have millions watching... for sure...!

I brought myself and my wife over to Orkney just after christmas last year. Or, I was already there, as my ship docked in there for crewchange, and my wife came over to have a good look at the islands. We like it lots out on these remote isles of britain. We have now done Shetland and Orkney, and the outer Hebrides will have to be next in line I guess. I like the open landscapes, and I really like the people over here. I work with a lot of them on my ship, and the ones living on-shore is not to bad either.
The above picture will be showing a tiny bit of the "entrance" to the beach of Dingieshowe, as posted some time earlier in the blog. A beautiful spot.

Not to forget, we got open landscapes on the coast of Norway as well! Don't misunderstand here! It's a bit the same same, but different. We were more or less totally asleep when cliffs was delivered, Doesn't matter to much, as they got loads of them further west in the ocean. We also lack something else. I don't know exactly what it is, but there's something about the people... so it's at a different level, which I'm probably not that good at. Or I will most definately fail if I try to explain it. Nevertheless, this shot was taken not to very long ago. You should see Alnes on Godøya here, and the lighthouse, even though I picked the wrong lens to give a good shot of only the lighthouse itself. That was not my point with the shot either, so no complaints please. See elsewhere to find a better one. 

Neither do we build our houses the way they do over here... sometimes that's OK, sometimes not. Have a look at The Reel in Kirkwall, a nice cafe and a place to sit down and relax and listen to live music, as there's a lot of that going on in there. 

I got to run! Got things to do before i swish over the sea and home tomorrow just before lunchtime. 

Just a few thoughts... at sea.

My uncle, or may I say my weird uncle, lives way up in the mountains back home in Norway. Not that he's any weird to me, but to a few other he probably is. Because he's bothering around with large format cameras and stuff. You know, proper big boxes with large format huge leafs of film stucked away inside of them somewhere. 
I used to learn to take photos from this man, or at least that's what I think I did, back in the days when I only had my small Minolta Hi-matic G to shoot with. He used to give me a roll of film every now and then, and then I learned how to develop it. You know I still got that little nice fella of a camera, and I still use it nowadays, over 40 years later. 
Well, this weird uncle has been a photographer all his life, more or less. He used to be a reporter, and thereby got quite a few meters of film to answer for if he ever have to. 
He's a great photographer anyway, and some day I really wish I'm able to say I know at least a fraction of all the stuff this man knows about photography! 
That's it of the tale of my weird uncle, for now... 
Ah... forgot my point... he, my uncle, lives in an area full of musk ox and stuff. Huge animals living wild in the norwegian mountains, and I am thinking about getting up there, visiting my uncle and have a proper look at the beasts. He knows where to find them at all times, and got a bunch of great shots of them as well. I was there a few years ago as well... lo and behold, on the very day when all the musk oxes had gathered somewhere totaly elsewhere in the norwegian mountains. Didn't see a single one of them. Pure luck, according to my weird uncle.

How's that for a composition? Who said I only do boring stuff with all kinds of errors one can think of making? I have thought about putting this up on a wall somewhere, but no one seems to understand the value of it. Will need to get that darkroom done, and display it in there, in all it's glory! And yes, it's film! Done on either a Leica M3 or M6, with a good Summicron 35 attached.

There's this blog I'm following. It's called "Boxes and Bellows" and is really great! If you feel like a lunatic one day, or just simply lost, just go over and read a few posts and your life should be back to "normal" quite instantly. The pictures are great, shot on film and all, and the text is just brilliant. At least the parts I understand.

I actually had to start reading from the beginning after having looked through a bunch of the shots first, and have now reached the year of 2013. There Andrea suddenly asks the very essential question: How Many Cameras is Enough...? This has in fact bothered myself for a few years as well, and I truly hoped to find the answer as I read the post. Ofcourse she didn't know either, because there probably is no answer to that very question. Obviously she's thinking about it though, so maybe I'll find out as I read on further up through the years? I very much hope so!

And while we're talking about compositions...!! This is same same, but different... I think. Definately an old Nikon this time. Either FM2 or maybe even FE2, but I doubt it. Some film, and some Nikkor lens... and it's shot out on the western cliffs of Orkney Mainland, around Yesnaby.

I just heared that I am going to Oslo before getting myself home this time. Oslo is allways OK, as long as it's not for a longer period of time. This is only for a couple of days, so I will survive. I immediately checked my stock of film in my lousy camera bag with loads of hiding places, and could only find very few. A couple of HP5's and a roll of Fomapan 100. I checked the possibility of getting film down there, and luckily some hotshot still has some film in his shop. I need to unseeingly sneek in and get some during my stay down there, I guess. 

Just had to post this. Taken with a real delight of a camera, a Voigtländer Vito B, handed down from my father. See that lovely flare coming in from the left? That's partly because of the window over there, and partly the fact that the lovely little 50mm lens on this camera is totally uncoated. This is my daughter by the way :))

How is it even possible...?

As all 0 of you will know by now, I work on a ship. There's a lot of others working on the same ship as well, and there are offices not to far from my cabin. Every office and cabins have at least one, often a bunch of, telephones. We are calling each other if we need to speak to someone, which is quite useful and also quite normal in other offices as well, I would think. 
What's weird though, is that some times someone never give up a call when no one is answering the phone! You would think that if you call someone that's sitting 30 cm from their phone would be able to pick it up within a minute or so?? Why wake up the whole ship to get hold of someone that's obviously not there anyway? Someone on board probably have some kind of strange way to make themselves heard.

The beach of Dingieshowe in Orkney, a most lovely beach where norse people has thread before. Shot with a Leica M6, Summicron 35mm on Tri-X film. Not the best choice maybe, but I had a few rolls I had to finnish off.

So, you might think I actually fixed that separator yesterday, didn't you? No way! Tested today, and found even more issues with it. Worked on it for hours just to eventually find the photocell detecting oil in water to be bugging up the whole unit. A 25 sec. job to clean out. Now it's good though, so tomorrow will be a brighter day, at least seen in that perspective. 

Ever seen the view from our cottage by the sea at Sulesund, Norway? Well, here it is anyway. Taken some time ago with that same Leica M6, but with a different lens this time. Elmarit 21mm wide angle stuff. I have no clue of what film was used, as I am far away from the originals out here at sea.

Friday today, and weekend coming up. Not that it makes any difference out here, but it's allways good to know that time flies and that you soon will be home. Need to start the usual routine of getting all the paperwork done for my back to back. I guess I will make it in time this trip as well. 

Look what I found! A never before posted pinhole photo from Ona once again. It's shot in the middle of the island, in between the houses cramped together to get room for them all. Mind you, this is a super wide angle view of it all, and not to be taken for reality! It's kewl tho :)