Crew change day...

...and half way into the working period. And I never seem to get tired of nagging about how busy these days are. But OK, I will leave it all inside myself this time.

Sailed in to Peterhead around one o'clock today, and have been sitting here alongside all day. No chance to even get a half decent snap of the small town from the bridge or anything. Work, and nothing but work, all day. It actually seems I need to fish out one of them cameras and go for a walk around the vessel one of the next days, snap up some collegues or something like that. Just to waste some film, you know.
Sometimes you just have to do that, for some reason. I don't know why, but at some point you can't just hold back anymore, and need to finish that old film off. Either way.

It's from that quite silent place, again. In Scotland, as you should know. Sorry, but I'm running out of snaps to show up here, it seems. I should soon dive into that hard drive again, probably. I have not even trimmed that right hand side of it. See how sloppy I am with the scannings.

I just had a discussion going on with my son over on the fb chat. He's all digital this and that, and are now searching for a good but not too expensive digi shooter. I don't know where he's ending up, but I have read that much between the lines that I know he has set his mind on quite a few of my old lenses. Should mean he's got his aim at some Nikon then, I guess. Well, he will have to learn a few old tricks if he want to run away with to many of them fine lenses, for sure. But he will find out. I'm not too worried about that :)

It's been a while since I have posted this, I think. Done using one of the big japaneese ones, Mamiya RZ67. Big boxes they are, with huge and heavy glass in front. They are drawing nice pictures though, at times, if the person behind it all are able to adjust those wheels into some useful combinations. I suddenly see that this one could use a tiny trim as well. On the upper right hand, as it happens. Must be some disease I have caught somewhere.

It's getting late, again. I better try to find that bed in here somewhere. Should not be too difficult, as there's hardly enough room to even stretch ones old legs inside this cramped place. 
See ya!

Film to slow you down?

Film slows you down, in some way. At least it slows me down a huge lot compared to the couple of years I was doing digital crap. 
Still, there is one kind of a blog I used to have a look at every now and then a little while ago, where things just went totally through the roof at some point. Like a hobby film photographer on speed, or something like that. I mean, what's the point doing this when the only goal you got is to send a certain amount of film through your camera in a year? And yes, as a result I think the results are quite dull, and at times horrible. The photos of this photographer gives me nothing anymore, and I can't find one single story told in the pictures. A shame, I have to say, because there's nothing wrong with the photographers technique or anything. Still there is something, at least for me, important missing inside the photos. Call it "mojo", "soul" or whatever. I'm not following this photographer anymore, so that's what I did about it.

And hey, get this right: I am not in any kind of belief that my own pictures necessarily is better than this photographer I was talking about. I got a lot of crap, you see! These are from some film I found lurking about a few weeks ago. I have gone through it before, mind you, but there was something there I have not stopped to look at, if you understand...
Like these two, of one of the AB's on board my vessel. A truly cool rocking old horse from down south in Norway. 

Stone walls in Scotland. I simply love them! Floating around all over the place, patterning things up neatly and just is there. Probably forever. This was a nice one I found in Scrabster during a short walk one day we were stuck in there for some odd reason. I think I need to revisit this one some day, if I ever get the chance. Walls, the rocky sort you find over here in Scotland, truly tell stories. There's almost a story in each and every stone if you look at it that way. At least there's been a lot of hassle involved.

Don't know why I post this actualy, as I think I even has posted it before on here somewhere. It's one of the first photos I did with one of my small, old and worn cameras. A german thing from the very early 60's. Great lens and everything on this one, but fireing it off at four in the morning at the bus station in "B" mode, only supporting it on a litterbin counting seconds in my head would be to just taking chances, and spoil film. I did anyway, and have to say that the result was quite good. That's reason enough to post it for me. I'm that kind of guy, you know. Taking bold chances like that, all the time. I kid you not! It's a great feeling, at times...

These pictures are all from german stuff, anyway. Three of them from M models, one from an E model of some kind. Some boxy kind, that is. Two lenses and everything, and good it is as well. The shutter is barely audible, for whatever good that might be. I like them, though. They got something to them that some times telling me to not screw things up. Not that I always listen to that crap, but it's there anyway. 
My japaneese stuff never do that. Noisy they are as well. I take the same kind of pictures with them as with the german things, which makes me think that I might be good at ignoring them all, in some kind of way. 

I should really have someone to knock me hard in the head when I write to much on here. It's just this head of mine... or a syndrome or whatever it is. I write to much in general, probably. 

On watch

At work in the middle of the night, when normal people lie in their beds, most likely sleeping. That's my thing these days as we got a blown up computer in the engine dept. on the ship. Just need to step in and double up the manning a few days until we can get the electronic junk sorted, that's all. That's life on board a ship. For now, anyway. 

Watch, and drills... of course. Drills all the time, and they most likely go on when I was supposed to sleep. That's just because the captain and chief officer is sleeping at opposite hours from me. They decide when drills are to be done, and believe it or not, they will be done during daytime. I feel fine though! Fine, but tired... most of the time.

Enough about work, for now. I've been a little bit around a few weeks ago. Summer hollidays and things, as you probably know by now if you have read the words written a few days ago. I kind of travelled back in time, to the days when I was more or less a kid. Out to the island where my grandparents lived, way out west in the North Sea on the norwegian coastline. Nothing much had changed out here, but the ammount of caravan cars and german tourists is just insane these days. Can't get away from it, even out here in this hidden paradise from my youth. Well, we got away eventually when we started to think like the locals and choose the right places where no one ever thread... or hardly ever thread, as we did.

You probably had no idea, but at some point in time in the quite early 1900's they built a church on one of the outposts of this island. Quite a big one as well, when you take a look at the area around. Not a soul living here these days, except a lot of wild geese as we found out by stepping around in the area sliding in their, well... things left behind. No one probably lived here back in the days either, but the very small islands west of this place was inhabited back then. That's why they built this church, I believe. People had to row in from all around, in their small boats and what do I know. Lot's of struggle to go to church those days, and you better go if the weather was even close to good enough. To go to the service back then was probably something else than it is these days, for all I know. It was serious business, all the same.

As I am in the middle of the process of boring you guys to death anyway, I put in a snap from even further west as well. This is not Norway, as you might quickly figure out from the architecture things going on inside the picture. And maybe even from the text on the shops. It's from the big city in Shetland, of course, where I wander from time to time when I get the chance. As I did this day, a couple of months ago, or something like that. I like the smaller islands scattered around Scotland. Just had to say.

And now, more coffee!

Here you see!

I'm already back the next day as counted from yesterday, you see. Should mean that I'm back on track, sort of.
I might even have a great shot or two to show any one who might pass by this nonsense some time in the future...

Like this one, as an example. As seen through some german overrated camera a wee while ago on from the absolute perkiest peak of the vessel I work on. That's a helideck, by the way, and the wheelhouse of the boat. The rest is not seen from this point, due to structural reasons. 

And as you will most certainly remember from my last post, I was just in Oslo! The big town, depending a bit on where you come from as you read this. I kind of like this one, for some reason. I might even post something similar some other day. I don't like that town much though... to many folks around, and the weather is kind of boring for a guy used to more of the thing. More weather, that is.

Another one of the lovely fiddle lady from the other day, and one of her companions there out on the streets. Not the best shot, I have to admit, but certainly better than many others though. A sharp and shiny digishot would not do the same thing to this scene, in my opinion. The two last ones is from that now dead Nikon FE2, forever attached to Fomapan film, I think.

Hey...!

Just wanted to tell you, that I'm not totally gone or anything! I'm still around, just been a bit busy doing holliday stuff and things. You know what I mean. Waisting a bunch of film and such.

Not only waisting film, but also finally managed to put my beloved Nikon FE2 totally out of action. I will not say killed, as for yet, as I am currently struggeling to try a repair, but nevertheless managed to drop it from height down on one of the floor tiles in a shop down there in Oslo. The big city in Norway, that is. 
To that very camera was also attached a huge and heavy Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 lens, but that one survived for some odd reason. Happy days, you know...

As you might see, I have posted here a couple of masterpieces shot with quite long shuttertimes, as I'm feeling like moving in some kind of direction at times. It's not a constant move, or flow, but it might as well be a start of something I'm unaware of at the moment. I think I'll sit back and see where it takes me, if anywhere at all. Both shot in Oslo by the way, and you may buy a great print of the crow if you like something special for your wall. These are just scans from the negatives, mind you, so how it prints nobody yet know. But someday I will... at least... and maybe my wife and anyone who might get the chance to see the print on the wall before my wife realizes the horror and take it down.

See you around!

Not Forgotten!

I know folks! I've been away for quite a while. Well, not far away, as a matter of fact... just around the corner, but still away from the blog somehow.
I was just developing a couple of rolls, and thought I might better drop in just to give a short update to let all of you know that I'm still standing on two feet.

Holliday here in Norway right now, and that's the biggest reason I've been away for the last few weeks. Not that I've been traveling a lot this year, but anyway...
I've shot a few rolls though, and been developing a couple just this evening.
Basically it's all old stuff though, but I will probably get a couple more done tomorrow. If we're lucky I get some scanned by tomorrow, but that depends a lot on the weather and things that has to be done around the house... you know.

Just found this one... Done some time ago using my old Rolleiflex and some film... think it was Tri-X in Rodinal. Shot near Kirkwall in almost pinch black highlight.

My youngest daughter heading towards the head of the pier. Rolleiflex and some film. 

And that's it for today! 

I'll be in touch, I guess :))

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 :))

Lo and behold...!

The separator we have used the best part of the last few days mending, still seem to work. I put my hands together and ask that it will remain that way at least until next bunch of engineers comes on board, probably thursday. 
Today's been most paperwork and things. Nothing interresting, but loads of boredom.

From time to time I drive out to this island almost only to take this picture. Some times the weather is good, most of the time it's kind of bad. This seems to be a Mamiya RZ67 shot, and would then be a few years old. I like this place... Don't know about the film, but could be some Shanghai GP3 wet up in Rodinal and agitated more or less carefully for a long or shorter period of time.

I bought myself a new telephone just before I left for work three weeks ago, but it's still sitting back home because I could not find it when I had to run away. Now I just remembered that I also have changed the operator company, which means that I will be excluded from any line other than the emergency lines when I get ashore, because I left before my sim card arrived. 
I can't wait to find out about all the hassle that will be created by someone I know when I get to the big city in Norway in a few days, and have to find my family without having a working phone in my pocket. 
It does not take much energy to get ourselves into trouble these days, huh? Luckily I am old enough to remember the good old days, way before cellphone world. We actually managed, somehow, to live our lives back then, so I guess I will be alright this time as well.

Shure, it's a pinhole shot (from that same old coffee box) from the small island Ona, again. I like this, even though it probably looks like waste to most of you. By some mistake it went off (yes, in the developer...) to become a wee bit darker than intended, but that's the secret or way of art folks! You can't always get what you want... 

Suddenly I heard that we seem to have plans for at least one of the weekends when I get back home. A long weekend in kayak, living in a tent. That sounds like a helluvalotoffun!! I need to decide which camera I need to let take the sinking test. My guess is that one of the manual Nikons will be the one that makes it through, and thus will come with me on the trip. I should probably bring something digital as well, as I know that lots of my family and people will demand good shots posted more or less live, but I think I better leave it be! I don't have to many digital ones anyway... but I got a bunch of other stuff. 

Stay tuned to find out if a Nikon FM2 can take a good filling of sea water and still survive!

OK! It's truly a bad perspective of this totally amazing window! Next time I get the chance I will shoot straight at it, leaving no fussy lines and all, if anyone understand what I mean?! Straight on, to make it all square and fair. Well, not square actually... more rectangular and fair. Anyway, it's one of my favourite window. I got another one as well, and I bet you won't believe me, but they are just 50 meters or so, apart. How cool is that?? 

Ahhh...!

So! You can actually also put in a title at the top line nowadays?! A good thing that I found out then, already in my fifth post. 
Today's been quite a good day at work, as we (or I, myself actually) found out what seemed to be the plague inside our bilge water separator in the engine room! It's not the usual type, mind you! It's a high-tech wonder from either Finland or Sweeden, and it looks more like a moonlander than anything else. Almost as advanced as one as well, so no wonder we have been struggeling a bit lately with that bloody machine.

Ever seen the island called Foula? Probably not, unless you got a big ship and/or live in an area around Orkney or Shetland. Well, this is her silhouette, and I love it! I like grain as well, at least sometimes, when I find them in my photos. 

Last night I was going to move one of my cameras, a Nikon FE2, and managed to kind of throw it from the bedroom, through the bathroom door (not a great distance due to this being a ships cabin), and onto the floor tiles in there somewhere. The noise was truly bad, and the camera looks even more battered in todays daylight than it did in yesterdays daylight. It still works fine though, but I got to wonder how many lives a 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor lens really have?! If anyone knows the answer, please don't hesitate to give me a hint. This is it's second very hard fall, in addition to a number of ligher ones. 

Looks like I need to buy a few new (cheepo) straps for a couple of the cameras sooner rather than later. Not that any of the cameras are any expensive high-end stuff, but I use the bastards every now and then, and would like them to live for a few more years.

Ona, a tiny small wee island where I got a few rooms and a roof over my head. There's a nice lighthouse there as well. You see a lot of the island on this shot, done with a pinhole camera not to long ago. You see, it's complete with fingerprints and all. 

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...