Coloring it up a bit on a gray day

Not that I like it to much, I have to inform you, but nevertheless I have been known to load a few of my cameras with colorbased negative film every now and then. It's not happening very often, but I seem to always have a few rolls dwelling in my dedicated film drawer. And from time to time I pick one out and load it into some old camera. 

I'm not too sure of why I keep on having them in "stock" to be honest, but it seems that they never quite dissappear from where I keep this stuff. I hear already people screaming in the background here. It's obviously a fact that many photographers are hysterical about the temperature of their film at all times, but I keep mine kind of warm. Or at room temperature, at least. It's always great to have some kind of excuse to throw out when the negatives comes out in a bad state. As they most certainly do from time to time. It's probably due to bad handling and too high a temperature, I would think! 

I am on facebook, as most people are these days anyway, and inside that area I'm a member of a few photography groups. I think what's common to most of them is the level of seriousness many of the members take it to. One of the latest things i read was a guy who never purchase film unless it was autumn or winter time. And that he had to be 100% sure that the film was from a fresh batch, and that the mail man had not kept his precious couple of rolls inside a too heated up car, and what do I know more. 
As I just told you; I keep my film warm, and the older it gets the more interesting results it will produce, maybe. That's the film, just to keep it clear. Me and myself produce more or less the same results all the time I'm afraid to say.
As a matter of fact I got a roll of film back home, in that drawer in my bedroom, which expired august 1958. Can't wait to curl that one through some old partly fancy camera from that same era. I would guess there's grain to find inside after it's been duly bathed in some old Rodinal or some other fancy juice. 
Color... it's just kind of a cheap trick, I would say. Like a magician that keep people distracted to look in the wrong direction. Personally I see the pictures themselves better in B&W, but that could be just me. 

I know people who tell me all the time that B&W looks like something from the stone age or thereabouts, and use every opportunity to inform me that the world has gone forward. That we see in color these days, that digital has arrived and all that kind of brilliant stuff. Well, it's to brilliant to my taste anyway. That's what it is. Just to shiny, to brilliant, to flawless, and way to blingbling. 

Colors might look bad on film, but electronic images take colors to a totally different level, at least if the operator of the tools is not of the careful kind. It's simple and easy for sure, and everyone seem to be a "photographer" these days, or at least quite a lot claim to be one, but the photos a good lot of them produce looks more like a christmas tree on steroids. Give me one more HDR "glowing" landscape, or one more beautiful young girl with eyes that seem to pop out of the computer screen, and I think I have to go stick my head over the side of the ship... for a short while. Sharpness has become a virtue, and these days the sharpness in pictures seems to be close to beat even the real world thing. Give me more of the things I have to struggle a little bit to find out of. Give me more to feed my brain, not only my eyes. Give me true stories in a way I can believe in them. And give me more of that beautiful film grain. 

Nope! I don't claim to be a photographer at all, but I do know how to make a fairly proper snap though... all the way from winding the film from a bigger box into a smallish box, load it into any old camera and showe some light through it in lots of different intervals and combinations of time and ammount, before the whole lot is rewinded back into the same old smallish box until it's pulled out again and loaded onto a different spool when me being inside a pinchish dark room. 
Further I know how to get negative things pop onto the strip of film, and also how to make a decent print by flashing light through the negative down onto various grades of beautiful and lovely paper, to, eventually after some humble bumble in a little bit lighter room, bring out a picture that some people think is looking fairly good, and some not. I can do all that, but I'm not a proper photographer anyway. In black and white that is... mind you. I don't do color paper. Or not as for yet, anyway. I might try that one day just for fun, or to check if I can.

The bunch running around snapping any of them fancy blingbling shots before they get themselves in front of their computers are not necessarily photographers either. Some of them obviously are, but not all of them. Just sayin'...!
You just can't buy the best camera you can get for money and claim you can take pictures like a pro. Maybe you are an expert in using that particular camera, which sometimes could be worth a medal anyway, but that still does not automatically make you a great photographer. 
Tell me a story with those pictures, and I will listen... carefully. I promise! 
Tell me nothing and I will definitively search somewhere else out there, because there will always be someone having something that really speaks to me. And how good is that? 
It's great, as it duly happens.

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. 

Medium format photography

Good morning, or whatever it is...?! I'm getting my mind flipped of this watch system I'm on at the moment, as you might understand.

I like to take photos. A lot! I also like the feel of a little bit bigger negatives than the more commonly 135 films. One of the reasons might be that my eyes are not what they used to be a few years ago. One grows older, and all that... you probably know what I mean.
Medium format cameras. I got four of them, as I got a few of them more or less handed over because of bad situation for the giver. Sickness, and all kinds of no good stuff. But enough of that here and now. 
I got 6x7 format cameras, and I got one 6x6 format. They are great, I must say, even though the bigger ones probably will kill my back at some point. They are huge and heavy things, as you might know. I'm talking about the Mamiya RZ67 system. The Rolleiflex is quite a bit more handy, and the one to go for when I want to travel a bit lighter, as I do, from time to time anyway.

 Developing medium format film is just the same process as doing 135 size, but I have to say the "thrill factor" is a bit more prudent. For me, at least. The above photo was shot in Orkney a couple of years ago, on a truly shitty day - weathervise that is. The day was great, with a good run around the southern part of the islands in with great Craig, the reporter, as a guide. Going on sightseeing with a reporter is a different story, I tell you that. Crazy thing is that these guys are always at work, somehow. One time I found myself part of a carchase searching for fire trucks and flames and whatever I don't know. How's that for a sightseeing? Now you tell me! Couldn't find any fire though, but they had impressive cars and blue lights and what do I know...

I don't know how many shots I ever did of this window! Must have been many rolls of 120 film in total. I have not printed it yet, due to a the lack of a dedicated dark room, but I sure will later when I'm done producing one. I don't have to chase the best angle, light and what have you, of this window anymore though, as I just realized this summer that it's eventually gone. Forever, that is! They picked the thing down. Can you ever imagine? My plan is to sell the print for a high price to the owner of the previous wall, and window. He can't resist that opportunity, I hope. Otherwise I might give him a copy for free. That's the kind of man I am.

The last one is a snap I shot down in the lower ends of The Strynd in Kirkwall, Orkney. The Mamiya RZ67 is not the typical stealth camera you would choose for any old street photo job, but I have done that as well, and it works. At least sometimes. You will get a few surprised faces stuck on film, that's for sure. 

OK, this is not exactly top notch stuff. I totally realize that. It's the only examples I got right here and now though, so they will need to pass no matter what. Well... I still think the snap of the window will surely find it's place and become a classic though. Or it might just be me that got this something about these old windows? I don't have a clue, so you tell me.

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 :))