I am probably a cameraholic... or something

OK, so it could have been worse, probably. Or maybe not. It depends a bit on how you look at things. You see, having all those cameras around the house I still managed to get another one yesterday. Or two, as it happens, as the seller actually had two that he wanted to get rid of. At least it looks like I have got two new cameras. 
It was an offer I simply could not resist. Some dude that obviously had no clue about film cameras. Or, as it's still a couple of weeks until I get home to examine the things we still have to wait and see who won the race. They could be broken, but I doubt it to be honest. At least one of them, the Nikon F3 is hardly breakable at all I would say. And who would know more about that than myself, actually...?

Scotland, again. You might think I like Scotland, for some odd reason. Well, I do...! Same as yesterday, or whenever it was. Still no clue about which camera, lens, film, developer or anything. The snap is not that great either, but there's something about it... maybe?!

Anyway, another Nikon F3 it is. And a, to me, totally unknown thing from Japan, called Samoca 35. Looking at the extremely bad pictures and the ditto "limited" text from the ad, it quite clearly seems like we are talking about this odd thing here. And this was the first reason why I reacted to the ad at all, to be honest. You see, I have been asked by my step daughter to find her a "cool, cheap and real vintage camera with soul and a few mysterious ways" or something like that. So this must be the one, I thought. And then by looking further into the ad it suddenly became clear that there were two cameras... something named in the ad as a HPF3.
Well, knowing my Nikon bits a bit more to detail than this seller, I quite soon figured out that we might talk about the F3 in HP version. A further look into some even worse pictures confirmed that this was the case, and the price was on the ridiculous side as it happens. Just not that many norwegian kroner for the lot, including a probably close to worthless, for me anyway, 70-210mm Nikkor zoom lens. It seems to be the AF lens made from 1989 and for quite a while up through the years since it's the f/4 - 5.6 thing but still not the one in the newer "D" version.
And then there was the Nikon F3 itself, of course. The huuuuuge, heavy, bulky but still oh so great version it gets into when the MD-4 motor is attached, and all. You can't find this thing priced even close to normally over here in Norway anymore, so it seemed to be one of those great finds. If they work, of course.
I dealt with the dude for a very short while, got the price down a little bit more, then agreed to take them both. Then a few messages back and forth, then all quiet from his side. I don't know if he suddenly started to get other bids in, or whatever happened, but we will see in a fortnights time I guess. I am either two cameras richer, or the whole deal went somewhere else. I hope he's just offline or something... but chance is that he got bids in that made him regret the whole deal he made with me! Or the whole lot has been stolen from someone for all I know. In that case I will find out through the national camera register anyway. At least if the previous owner had it registered, as most photographers over here would. 

The not to very much crowded streets of Scrabster in between the ferries going north to Stromness out there in Orkney. It's not the busiest places around, but that suits me fine at times. This one was snapped another day than the previous ones, and I am absolutely sure it was done on a Nikon FM2. By the looks of it I could also guess that I used one of them 24mm Nikkor lenses I got. There's a bunch of different versions lingering around the house at times, but most of them are out on loan at the time. Need to track them down soonish...!

Enough about cameras for now. It happens to be a lot more fun using them and hold them, than writing about them, but I will do that some day as well. Write about them, that is. I know I have said that before, and even tried, but not good enough. I know. 
Need to try harder, at some point.

As I speak we are enroute to do a small job somewhere just east of the Aberdeen/Peterhead area. Some tiny gas leak out there they need to have a second look at. You know... things that need some attention, even though it's very small. Nothing that would harm anyone, or anything, as for yet anyway. Just a short look at them things, and then we are going in to Peterhead to do crew change. It's not me going off, mind you, but around half the crew will be changed out with new and fresh heads. The other ones among us will have to wait another two weeks yet before it's time to get our things packed and get off the ship. 

Bad scan, bad development and bad film with backing paper marks coming through and all sorts of flaws. And yes, it has also been posted before at some point. Even the road sign has been shot at with a rifle. I like it, though... 

Nothing is perfect folks, and inside this blog there's a lot of things not perfect. But you get what you pay for, right? :))

Nah... I better be off to bed, I guess. I will have 7000 litres of lub. oil sitting on the quayside waiting to get pumped down to one of the tanks tomorrow before we are due to sail again some time in the afternoon. And then I will get a new engineer on board, someone never been on board this lump of steel before. That usually bring some excitement to my job as well, and not allways in the best of ways the first couple of days. She's got a million of her own ways, this old lady, and the human brain can't take it all in during the first 12 hrs. so I guess I will need to stay awake for a few extra hours tomorrow. But we'll see. I will take that problem when it comes. If it comes :)
See ya'

The sun throws rays into my monitor

The old sun is on it's way down to meet the horizon, and for a change it seems like it's going to be quite visible all the way until it disappears into the sea like. And for a change I thought I might just as well post a snap that at least got some kind of odd connection to the written words in here. 

It's one of the first frames snapped with that kind of "new" german rangefinder. And yes, I had to crop away a bit on both sides, and after thinking a bit more around the thing I ended up with a square result. This wall was found out there around the beach north of Aberdeen harbour somewhere. Years ago, so don't ask me exactly where. 3,5cm long lens, by the way. I kind of like it, for some reason...

The sound of silence...

Not that we got any much of that around here, as I am at work right now, but probably just because of that I started to think about it. What the right kind of sounds mean to us, and what influence they have in our daily work or in our time of leisure.
I am sitting here trying to get my weekly report done and dusted. It's the same struggle every week as it happens, but this time the vessel is working only a very few yards away from a rig out here on the eastern side of Scotland. Well, that's not an uncommon place for us to work, and I have not been bothered too much about it for the last couple of hours other than feeling the urge to walk out to take a few snaps of the thing and fun stuff like that.
I used the black and kind of new german rangefinder with the 35mm thing in front for a few good ones, plus I had a few frames left inside one of them old Nikon FM2 cameras I had to get rid of. You know... last frame and such. When the counter has been staying on "34" for something that feels like an eternity you get the itch. So I fished out that good old Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 lens and went on. You might see something some day if all went well.

I seem to get back to this theme, again and again. This time the pattern is kind of repeated in that fence as well. Clever, huh? I can't tell you much about what camera was used or anything. It's a long time since this happened now. Probably some Nikon. Maybe a FE, FM or maybe even an F3? Something like that for sure. 

Back inside to continue the work on the report, the gas alarm suddenly start off over there, on the rig. And believe me, you will hear the gas alarm, even if you were forced to use the chief engineers ears! And it never stops, and it makes you wonder what's really happening over there, just a few yards away. And the alarm goes on and on, and you turn around just to see flashing lights all around the place, but not a soul to see. I would think that some of the people over there would have instructions to go to the muster station, or to a life raft or something, but obviously not. They might have some safe zone inside the big thing? Or some other bright idea of where the safest place to be is. And then you think; hey... what about me then? With me window facing a million of pipes and stuff, close enough to touch'em... where am I supposed to hide if hell breaks loose over there?
Well... better not think about it would probably be the clever thing to do. But that's not easy with that alarm going off all around you. Just believe me!

Sure! On that tiny small road towards the lighthouse in Scrabster it is. And it's powered up, the lighthouse, probably by the power inside those cables running along those lovely pylons. I can feel that the sounds are of the right type and kind, inside this snap.

Then I thought, or at least tried to think, about the sounds back home. You know at the cottage down there by the sea, away from it all. What would it be like to sit down there to write this report? What background noise would there be? Well, it depends a bit if the doors would be open or not, but in worst case there would be birds singing, some water dripping (most likely) and on a good day there would be one or two careful swosh'es from the sea as it gently hit the rocks. And that's it. Unless I played music, of course, but you can't count that. That would be my own fault, and not to count as background noise as such.
I think the work would have floated along like nothing at all, and be done before I even had started the writing. Or at least it would have felt like that. At least that's what I think, being out here at sea listening to the bloody gas alarm, the engines, the engine fans, the thruster noise and the forever going on talking in the hallway just outside my cabin. And my slight tinnitus, of course. I don't know if that's what I got, but I suspect it very much. It comes and goes, as it happens, and is a lot more absent than present. Which is a good thing I suppose. 

The right kind of sound is somewhat important. I think that would have to be the conclusion of todays theme. And there it stopped, lo and behold, the gas alarm... thank you, whoever found the stop button eventually. 
Well... I better go back to that report then. The captain have been waiting for it for a few hours now, but I have been busy doing other stuff, as you are when someone want something right now. I even got a blog to maintain, among lots of stuff. 

Oh, and the snaps today is from Scotland, just west of us here and a wee bit north. From Scrabster, to be precise. They got the right kind of sounds up there as well, at times. At least if you go over that hill, and a bit further up north to where it's nothing except sheep and cliffs, and sea... lots of sea.

I digged deep down inside that hard drive...

And found these. Nice little 135 film frames from almost 18 years back in time now. I remember this was the first test film I snapped with one of those early Nikon FM2 cameras I still got somewhere in my camera bag. Nice little memories they are for sure. 
The youngest of them girls will have her 19'th birthday on monday, as it happens. Time flies, you see.

I got no idea what kind of film I used, as there's no info anywhere on the files. Probably some Ilford or Kodak Tri-X if I need to give it a guess. HP5 is my best bet. I am absolutely sure about the camera though. And the lens, which was the very good Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 thing I still also got around here somewhere. 

Amalie, the birthday girl. She has obviously just been robbing her grandmothers currant bush for some berries. I think she was red around her mouth for the majority of this late summer of  -98

Malin, the middle one of the three. She usually was to be found somewhere up in a tree these years, no matter what clothes and shoes she was wearing at the time. And Teddy was never far away.

Glenn, the big brother. He got this brazillian jersey from his uncle or grandad this summer, or the summer before. I think he wore it for three years or so... and I mean more or less each and every day!

Photo equipment; what exactly do you need?

I have had a few questions coming through during the last few months, but lately there's been quite a few. They tend to circle around cameras, what to buy and why. 
So, what do you need to get going? 
It's a minefield, for sure, and a lot of good and bad advice can and will still be had by giving the forums a good search on the interweb. You can just as well get lost into the ocean of details as getting the last bit of good info you will ever need around those places, as you just as well might do in here as well for what I know.
But I will try to give you all my best hints and advice inside here, and only here, in what could become a tiny small series of posts looking at this as seen from my point of view, starting here and now with the most obvious gadgets; the camera and the lens.

If you have been taking a look at some of my latest posts I think I mentioned the end of the film at some point. This is the usual content of one of the film ends. Something more or less totally wasted. Anyway, there's a camera in there, and that's what we will be talking about today.

I would think there's just as many opinions about this as there are photographers around, but here's a few of my own thoughts about it. And yes, I am talking about the bare essentials here, like what do you really need to make a snap stick on film, and how to bring it up to a point where you can actually hold that film strip in your hand and see negatives embedded on that foil.
Loads of you will probably have deep knowledge of what I'm talking about, and I don't have a plan on teaching you guys anything. You know all of this, and probably a whole lot more as well. You may skip the entire post and wait for something completely else to appear some other day :)
Nope! This series is for my son, if he will ever read or listen to a single word of it, and to all of you others out there either too young to have tried this fun stuff before, or the ones of you having grown up with film but lost track of it at some point and now want to give it a go for whatever reason. Look at it as a guide, just like the ones you can find anywhere else around the internet. Some are good, some suck. I don't know which general direction this one's taking yet.

First of all you will need a camera, obviously. With some sort of lens attached that will somewhat fit the way your mind tends to see things. I know it might sound a bit vague, but I will try to explain what I mean a bit later on.
The camera itself can be just about anything you either find hidden away in the attics of your old grandmother, or it can be something you bought from someone via the internet or wherever.
My own experience tells me to stay away from the expensive ones in the beginning unless you are absolutely positively sure that you really want one of them slick machines. They tend to cost a lot of money, and you don't need them to get a good snap to stick on film. 
Find something that is more or less light tight, check that the shutter seems to work quite well on the majority of settings (if settings exists, that is), put a film inside and you should be ready to go. It's as easy as that. I kid you not.
Not light tight? Well, you will come a long way with some black or gray tape of some kind. Be creative. You will probably not find out if it's light tight until you have developed your first film anyway, but light tightness usually is not a big problem on any camera. 

And it sure is. Another end of another film, and believe it or not another camera in there. With a lens attached and everything. 

A point and shoot camera would be the absolutely simplest way to get started, and normally it's also the cheapest way. You should be able to easily find a handsome and still working camera for just a few quid either at a flee market or somewhere inside your own, or some relatives house. Then, after a while if you decide you want to develop either your skills or widen your horizon a bit, you can move to a bigger camera. I am not telling you to stay away from e.g. SLR cameras from the start, if you allready got one available. I am just saying that you don't absolutely need one of those to get the job done.

People ask me questions about cameras from time to time. You know, like what to buy, what's the best brand, how to get the best one for the money, is this one better than that, and so on. Maybe they think I know the answer because I appear to be a bit above averagely interrested in cameras and the mechanics inside them. Truth, however, is that I know very little about the things. Just because you got plenty of something does not automatically make you an expert in the given thing. I think you have to find out what suits you, your needs, your way of taking pictures, and how much gear you want to carry around. 
Then it's the fact that the previous use of the thing has a bit to say in how many years it has left to go. It's like any other mechanical device, they get worn out on an individual basis over time.

A totally different type of thing. I like this boxy camera a lot, but I would not exactly recomend this thing to a beginner. Medium format, as it happens. 6x6 cm negs on 120 type film.

You have to find out by using the time as your friend as you go along what suits you and your style the best, and at some point get a camera that most easily fall into your hands and become the right tool for the job you want done. But that's for later. First you simply just need any camera to make you feel the fun.
One thing I'm absolutely sure of though, that the old saying that the camera itself normally has very little influence in the end result, seems to be very close to the truth. 
I mean, have a look at the facts stated below around what's actually inside of that black box, and give them a quick thought:
- Light tight black box
- Shutter with standard timings 1s, 1/2s, 1/4s, 1/8s, 1/15s, 1/30s and so on...
- On fancy cameras there's also some way to adjust the aperture on the lens, which also got standard openings e.g: 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6....
And that's more or less it, to be honest. And this goes from the cheapest of the cheap plastic boxes up to the most expensive german rangefinder ever made. They all do the same thing. They do them things more or less complicated, with a different level of repeateable results, at different noise levels for sure. And some are flimpsy and others can be run over by tanks and still be good to go, but they all do the same kind of work if you look at it in the simplest of ways.
That's why I say and believe that any camera should normally be able to make a decent photograph if the box itself holds the light out, and the curtain in front of the film does not let light through when in closed position. And if the timings are more or less good, of course. They don't have to be very good either, but goodish helps a bit.
Then you got mojo, or feel... the things you can't explain. But that, as well, is for later. You will not understand what I'm talking about anyway until some day into the future, and then I can't help you anyway. You have come to a point where you know what you want, and why. For now, let's just be fair and say that a camera is a camera. Period.

There is always a way out, even from Scrabster. There's always a way out of the question on what camera to buy as well.

Following the camera would naturally be some kind of thing to keep everything in focus and help you get the right perspective on things. The lens, as we call it in our daily spoken language, at least over here in Norway. Others might call it something else, and that's fine. 
When I talk to my fellow hobby photographers, or even real photographers, I sometimes refer to it as the "objective". Objective is concidered among us to be a bit more correct than just the lens. Both terms will do just fine though, as most people will understand what you mean no matter which of the ones you prefere to use.
The objective will normally have been made of either metal and glass, plastic and glass, or even pure plastic all the way through. And yes, there's a bit of difference in the price between them.
A good lens is worth a lot for a photographer, and will be something he (I say he, but the truth is that we can just as well be talking about a she here!) cares a lot about. A good lens could cost a conciderable lump of money, and is nothing you throw around like any other piece of garbage. A very good and valuable lens could also cost a lot less or next to nothing these days, but don't fall into the temptation of throwing it around like any piece of garbage anyway. They are kind of fragile. Glass, you know...

On some cameras you can change the lens to give your camera different "eyes" to see through, while on other cameras you are stuck with one single perspective only. Typically small P&S cameras got a non removable lens attached, while on the various SLR (Single Lens Reflex) cameras you can change the way the film will eventually see the scene you point it towards, usually with the press of a button and a following twist of the lens.
Most of the camera manufacturers have changed their standard couplings between cameras and lenses up through the years, making old lenses useless on todays equipment. These would be the ones to look out for in todays market if you want to do things the cheaper way.
The lenses back then were usually built to last, at a high standard both optically and mechanically.
These days we see a bit of difference to that mentality in the production lines, at least for anything but the high-end stuff. More use of plastic, less metal. Some of them are good though, but they got a different feel to them than they used to have. No doubt about that fact. 

And what's the point about showing you this then, you might ask. I got absolutely no idea, to be honest. It's something I found deep down in the archives just now... It was kind of cool at the time I snapped it though. Can't see the big fuzz right here and now, to be honest.

Some of us like wide lenses, some prefere normal lenses, and others want them to be long. Most of you know the differences between a tele lens and a wide angle one, but I just want to point out the fact that you will not need them all to start snapping away. You can easily get away with just one, at least if that one lens fit your style of photography, or the situations you most likely will use your camera in. 
As a quick guide and attemt in giving a good advice I would say, first of all, don't go extreme if you have no particular idea what your preference is. You will absolutely not need a 600mm lens with a 2x teleconverter to take snaps of your family and friends, or to do street photography or whatever. Neither will a 15mm extreme wide angle lens do you any good if you got no bright idea of why you want that particular lens. There comes a day, usually, when a bell is ringing and you realize that you are a "normal lens snapper" or a moderate wide angle one, or even a moderate tele user. Usually photographers tend to land somewhere inside the "moderate" area of the scale. That said, playing with extreme stuff is fun for most of us for a little or a longer while, and maybe we even need to do just that every now and then to understand what it's all about? Usually though, we end up feeling most comfortable and taking our very best snaps somewhere around that "boring" normal end of things. 

As you might have noticed by now there's not to much talk about the different brands around in this particular post. The ones of you having read more of my blog would know that when it comes to SLRs I use Nikons most of the time. Why, you might ask? Well... for no particular reason would probably be one of the best answers I can possibly give you. 
I originally started out with a Nikon completely by coinsidence as my first SLR back in the early 80's, and gradually changed to different (but older) nikons a bit later. Just because I already owned a Nikon system, and the fact that more or less all Nikon lenses fit whatever Nikon camera you attach them to just happened to make it the ideal system for me to build on, instead of maybe having cameras and lenses from a variety of manufacturers spread around the house.
What I try to say is that any brand will do the job, and that you can have all the same fun no matter what camera brand you like to go for. Just remember what I pointed out above; all cameras are doing the same thing. They keep the film hidden away from light until you press the trigger to let a few rays of light hit the film. That's basically it. 

Seems to have been snapped using a wideish lens. I got no idea on which camera though, but probably one of those Nikon FM2 things I got spread around.

You might draw out of this the conclusion that I am thinking the lens would be more a driving factor than the camera itself, and I think I will have to answer that with a yes. As for now, anyway. There still is a couple of things to say about the camera, and why I personally am a bit picky about what I use.
Batteries. For my own hearts well being I can't stand batteries for this and batteries for that. Power me up here, and power me up there. Wind this film on or off, wind it to the next frame, drive my motorized fancy automatically focusing lens please. Make this camera work... or not. Drives me crazy at times, both the issues and the sound and noise of all that winding. Sometimes I like it though, but most of the time not.
At one point back in time I just threw it all in, turned completely around and got myself a fully manual camera. The only thing inside the box using a battery was this totally stupid light meter disconnected from all camera functions, and the camera itself works just as well without that metering thing and also if the batteries drops stone dead, as they do. That's a good thing for me, and my heart, and my mental health.
But that's just me, and does not have to be valid for anyone else. My view on these things leave me with a bit more thinking and a bit more time used on focusing and winding film forwards and aft. It also excludes me from the world of automatic exposure and aperture priority cameras, more or less. 
But for the good sake of things, and just to have it mentioned; I own a couple of battery driven cameras as well. I am a stubborn man, but not to that degree... I like to think. 

And what more would there be to say? Nothing much, actually. Go find your grannys old Minolta, Pentax, Olympus, Kodak or whatever camera, and start having some good old fun. 
Open google and find someone still dealing with film, buy a roll of the right size and start snapping away.  

In the next section of this series you will most likely find out what basics you will need to get the roll developed more or less inside your own kitchen. At least if you remembered to buy a black and white film and leaving the fancy colored C-41 marked stuff be, that is.  
There's nothing much you will need, but there's a few essentials I'm afraid. Stay tuned, and I will do my very best to give you a simple guided tour through most of it. 

Wobbling around in the big blue somewhere

Another short post. And nope, not because I got any different or better kind of internet today than I did yesterday. The news is that the «Cable Ship» was stopped up there in my home town due to some trouble passing «Stadt» during the gale force winds they had over there yesterday. And by the looks of that thing they call a «Cable Ship» in the news over at home, I really got to say I understand a few bits more. A very small boat, looking like something that might used to be a car ferry back in the 60’s. That should say most of what’s needed about the case. The point «Stadt» on the norwegian coast has taken bigger ships down than this one, so I don’t blame her crew at all to be sitting idle just where they are at the moment, to be fair.

Worst thing is that I just got words that the tele and internet operator had offers in from a different company to help them out of this somewhat sticky situation, but they refused to take it. It’s probably a question about money, as usual, but anyway. Now the whole Bømlo island over there is without land line telephones, which does not cause too much trouble if you take into account most people use mobile phones these days. A bit on the worse side is that also all Cash Points and card terminals are down, which in short should mean no one can pay what they need from day to day. This is going to make some trouble for someone quite soon, me thinks. Inside the tele company, that is.

Finally the windy conditions went somewhere else this morning a bit out here on the east side of Scotland, where I think I am at the moment, and we are back in business if you take away the small issues with communication and stuff like that. Makes life a bit easy for us it is, not having a single e-mail coming in for a week or so. I just hate to think about what’s piling up inside the server on the land side, just waiting for us to get connected. I will get busy at some point for sure.

Photography… which is what this blog should really be all about, even though I might seem to forget just that from time to time; 

Todays photographs would be from our trip to Wales a few years ago. A lovely trip it was for sure. Good enough to make me want to go back some day. But then again, there's a lot of other places I have not seen yet either, so I might need to go there first.

I got cameras around inside my bag on this trip as well. I have been feeling the temptation on a couple of occations, to grab one of them and snap away towards something or someone. I have not fully done so just yet, but I will get there one day. Probably soonish.

I even got one of the battery driven things in there, inside of that bag. The plastic Nikon F-401 thingy. No worries folks, as I also got real cameras just in case the power-driven thing suddenly calls it a day at some point. 

I might even write something photo related one day quite soon, so stay tuned and don’t miss a thing from out here at sea! All of a sudden you might even read something a little wee bit interresting for a change. Who knows…?

Oh yes sure, there’s birds nerds up there on that cliff edge in Wales. You just barely see them, but they’re there for sure. I’m not too sure about exactly what they were looking for, but looked they did for a while, until they obviously found other things to look for. This was snapped from the South Stack lighthouse, just to make good track of things that happened a few years ago now. It’s probably about time to get back to this area soon. We need to stay a bit longer though. And we would also need to take the trip across to the other side of The Minch and all.

South Stack lighthouse, as it appears from not to far from the cliff edge of Anglesay looking outwards. Out in The Minch that is. Towards the green islands on the other side there, where I never been as for yet. Just stop looking, because you could not see very far out into it on the day I snapped this anyway. At least not all the way over to the other side, for sure.

No real internet, but we will get some soon!

Short update from the sea;

As you might see there’s not too many words appearing from this direction right now, and there’s an explanation to it all. We got no internet. Or, we obviously do, as I manage to post this, but it’s a bit on the expensive end to say the least. Usually we got free internet on board, but there’s been a minor happening over in Norway causing it to fail. Big barge, anchor, dredging in bad weather and there you go. No internet as a result. Hope they have it fixed some time tomorrow though, so we can only cross fingers and wait for it to happen.

In the meantime I've got to be on that expensive sattelite to get a few words out from here. And a snap, or two. 20 GBP for 750 MB of down and upload… that’s a lot of money for a tiny bit of pleasure.

Todays snaps? Well… old stuff, to be honest.
It's two that I like, though. 

The one from the backside, or actually the front side, of the lighthouse out there on Skjelten a short hour drive from home. The side facing the sea, that is. The one you never see from the land side of the thing. I just happen to like the lines inside the snap. That’s all. I have even got it printed. Inside the darkroom and all, you know. It came out nice, if my memory serves me right. This is just a scan of the old negative though. 

See what I mean? Lines... that's all there is in here actually. And some nice shades of gray, of course. Rolleiflex 6x6 negative. Scanned moons ago, posted here and now. Maybe before as well, for all I know.

And the one from close to the cottage. You probably recognise the stone from earlier snaps, but this one also contain a sign that obviously has travelled a long way out there at sea before ending up right here, in this position. I’m no good in languages and stuff, but my wife informed me that the words written seems french, and should mean something as simple as "Home"...?! Well, I don't know, to be honest, but since she's way more trustable in the french language than I will ever be, I guess that's what it says. Anyway, home it is, for me, so I thought it fits well enough. But I got to say that I wonder who made it, and where it's been around before it ended up on this beach.

"Home" it is! I can see that by the looks of that old stone back there, and the quite steep hillside up above. Mamiya RZ snap, from a few years back. I don't remember now what kind of film I used.