A legend in swedish photography

I just felt I had to show you this thing.
It's a brand new documentary sort of film about the legendary photographer and darkroom printer, Jean Hermanson.
Born 1938, died in 2012 with a huge amount of negs archived and a massive printing job still undone. It's a bit hard to take in the fact that such an important and fantastic and productive photographer died rather poor, without enough funds to even buy the paper and chemicals needed to keep on working through his projects.

I just had a lot of stuff written about the film, but it all went south just because of my own stupidity with computers... I know, it's my own damn fault!
Anyway. You'll find a quite photographer, and a man truly not speaking too load about himself. You'll find passion, poetry inside pictures, and you'll find empathy. Bucket loads of empathy.

Following the death of the photographer, the maker of this documentary is being given his huge archive of negatives and prints. He decides to try to track down some of the persons in the portraits from back in the days, and actually succeeds in finding some of them who then gets to see their portraits taken decades ago for the first time.
There's also a few minutes dedicated to a series of photos of the late Swedish Grand Man Mr. Olof Palme some years before he became the Prime Minister himself. A truly remarkable series, and nothing like anything you could get on a few frames of Ilford FP4 today no matter what politician we're talking about.
The happy ending of the film is when a museum finally decides to take all the negs into their custody, and to agree to make a permanent exhibition showing this fantastic material to the people. It's about time, I would say, after so many years having been hidden away from the public.

Oh... and another one of my swedish photography idols is in the film as well. Mr. Micke Berg (who's blog you can find right here, should you wish to have a look...) was invited to say a few words about old Jean Hermanson, as he knew the old master very well. He is also seen when printing one or two of Jean's negs inside the darkroom, showing off his old printing skills even though he has not been printing inside a darkroom for years.
He is still doing a few photography workshops every now and then, old Micke Berg. I have been thinking about joining one or two of them if time and money is to be found somewhere. I hope I will, before it's too late.

A few new prints

Been rather busy, as you all should know by now. And things are getting worse the next few days, just saying. Going out to do some sort of payed photo shoot tomorrow, and I'm not exactly looking forward to it. It's going to be digital stuff, as most folks do today. I'm probably going to bring a couple of film cameras anyway, but don't tell anyone. 

Anyway. I was just dropping by to show you a small series of three snaps from the ballerina show I went to last week. Not that there's much more to show from that event, to be honest... but I sort of liked these. 
I don't know who she is to be honest, but she might either be A Prisoner of the Night, or maybe even some sort of Dancing Queen... for all I know.  

All three prints done on Ilford FB Warmtone paper, snapped on the Mamiya RZ67 using a rather slow wide angle 50mm lens on Ilford FP4+ film. All good stuff, as you all know. 

After a few days inside the darkroom

I've been working a bit inside what I call my "darkroom" here at home in our house for the last few days. Some of you will know already that I'm actually referring to the family bathroom... but that's just how it is. I was planning to build a real darkroom last year, but plans to sell the house started to materialize, and my plans were abandoned. No need to build something great for no one to use after the house has been sold off.
So, I'm just using the bathroom.
There's this exhibition event coming up closer to Christmas, where my photo club will show pictures from the old Devold Wool Factory. I've been there a few times before, as you might remember.
We just had a session snapping ballet dancers for a few hours. That was great fun, I must say. Very tricky lightwise, but I decided to throw any wish for sharp snaps out the doors and try my best to make something stick to the film anyway. I brought a few rolls of FP4+ and HP5+ plus a couple of Mamiya RZ67 cameras... while others were playing with high ISO pixel collecting sensors. I say nothing more about that fact. 
Oh, and I brought rangefinders... and a couple of films for those as well.
We were all having a good time though, and a couple of the negs might be worth taking a bit further. I've even made a few test prints inside the previously mentioned "darkroom", and they look promising... I think. I'll give you a couple just to give you a taste. And please don't mind the dust and the light leaking into the blacks... it's a scanner issue, not bad darkroom work this time. 

A couple of test prints from the ballerina sessions @ Devold, Langevåg. Snapped using the RZ67 handheld in a sideways and strange manner to be able to shoot through some very dusty and dirty windows installed inside this building. I would have brought the prism finder if I knew this could become an issue, but I didn't. It weighs a quarter of a tonne, and I certainly prefere to work with the waist level finder, even if it means I have to look even more stupid than usual to get what I want.
Printed on Ilford ART 300 paper, snapped on Ilford FP4+ on rather longish shuttertimes. 

I also went to Ona last week. We were celebrating the 150 years anniversary of the lighthouse, and it was a grand party for sure. Lots of interesting stuff to listen to, but nothing much to snap, I'm afraid. There is of course a few pictures from that event as well, but nothing much has yet materialized into prints. Nothing much will be either, but there is three or four I plan to print. One is already partly decided to go to the family now living in the lighthouse keepers house, as a gift for arranging the whole anniversary thing. It's a detail from inside their house... and it looks smashing when printed on some ART300 paper. At least the print itself is looking good. The scan of the print is not up to standards, I know. It's me and my totally useless scanning skills again, plus the laziness of not cleaning the scanner glass before I start...

The lower part of the stairs leading up to the upper floor of the lighthouse keeper's house out on the island. I might print it bigger as a gift, but we'll see. This is a scan from a print of 5"x7" size on Ilford ART 300 again. Snapped with a RZ67, 1/2 sec. in rather bad lighting on Ilford FP4 film.

I've been developing films as well. At least twelve of 120 size, and three or four 135 films. Still got four or five 135 films to get done, but I'll get there. I developed all of them in Paranol S from Tetenal, a to me rather new thing. Bought it over in England this summer, and it's not a bad developer at all. I really like the result when developing FP4+ with this stuff, anyway.

The plan for the week to come is to take a trip up to where my parents live. The wife is joining some sort of conference not too far from there, so we'll use their house as a base for that thing. There's work to be done up there as well I heard, so I better bring a few tools and some elbow grease. Might come in handy, you know.
I'll bring cameras, of course... but I don't know to which extent I'll get the chance to use them.

Oh... and I finally got around to print a series of three prints for the living room wall. They are already hanging there, looking good. From the Yorkshire coast, they are.
This sums up the last week, at least. And nope... no time for scanning any of all the new negs I'm afraid. Which means you have to be patient for a while if you like to see a few more of the ballerina snaps or anything. I'll post them as soon as the scanning is done.

This Blog might be in danger!

First of all I'm very sorry for the huge hole in the blog. It was nothing I wanted, just saying! 
Some bright minded person in the IT dept. of my company have found out that google (and everything attached to it... which is a lot, I can tell you) just has to be taken away from the list of stuff we may have access to when at work at sea. Serious amounts of 0's and 1's are being downloaded, you see, without any of us knowing it. 
In short terms this means I'm no longer allowed to log on to my google account, which also takes away my possibility of posting anything on my blog, check my mail, google anything I might like to find on the web... well, a lot of the fun stuff disappears as you might see.
I got no idea how to overcome this obstacle right here and now, but I'm open to suggestions and advice of course.

Something we stumbled over when moving all over the southern english countryside this summer. A nice tiny little home for a few people, I guess. I think this frame came out of one of the german rangefinders, but I'm not at all sure about it. 

I'm more or less just out of the darkroom. As you might remember I blew the bulb on my enlarger the last time I was in there, and had a real hard time finding a new one. Ended up buying a piece with a bit different specks than the old one, but everything seems to work fine enough with this bulb as well. I might just as well buy another 10 of that bulb, since it was a cheap solution compared to the original bulb. I guess you never know when the next one going south... or, in fact it will of course go black with some sort of bad timing. Murphy's law, you know. 

Anyway, I was in the darkroom and made four prints 30x40 size. The wife have been asking for them for some time now, so couldn't wait for much longer. It was good, I can tell you, to be inside the dark place again printing for a few hours. 

There was quite a few White Horses to see when traveling around the countryside. This one's from a town, though. Oxford, as it happens... And I know about the lack of sharpness and all that, but the exposure was fine though, don't you think? It was not a place known for it's great light conditions, to put it that way...

More news! You've obviously heard a lot about Ona on this blog, the tiny little skerry in the ocean where we got this tiny little place we use to stay every now and then in weekends and stuff. 
Well, this tiny little place is now going to sort of be our home for the next few years. My wife applied for a job up there not too long ago, and she got it. She will have to use the ferry to get to work every day, but that's not a bad thing compared to what she's going through every day in her current job sitting in the traffic jam in and out of town. There's no such thing as a traffic jam out there, with only a very small handful of people living there. 
It's going to be nice to finally get the chance to stay there a lot more for a period of time. I say a period of time, because the job she got is in the administration for the small county up there, as the head of school and cultural dept. 
The small county is going to be merged into a bigger unit in a couple of years time, which means she will probably get a choice at some point to either stay put up there to do her work, or move to a bit more central place to do her job. We will see... but as for now we're moving up there. From new year, that is. 
We're going up there this weekend, by the way. Friday afternoon at 16.54 it's the 150 years anniversary for the lighthouse up there. Of course there was a building period prior to this, but at least that was the exact time the light shone from the tower for the first time. So it's party time, of course. A little bit of partying, but also a bunch of what I'm hoping to be very interesting lectures about both the lighthouse history and other stories from back in the days. I've seen the program for the weekend, and it looks great. So we decided to join in to celebrate the old iron tower for a couple of days, and we're looking forward to it. 
I'm also bringing a few bits and pieces up there. I got this darkroom out on Ona, as you might know. Probably one of, if not the most remote darkroom in Norway. OK, I know there's a small one in Longyearbyen on Svalbard too, but that's in a different league I guess. Almost on the north pole, and everything. 

From one of my walks on the quayside around The Clyde, Glasgow and Scotland. Oh well... I guess it speaks for itself, to be honest. Nikon FM2, or maybe one of them rangefinders. I know I carried both sorts this day...

Well, I think I need to run. I promised this guy that he could borrow one of my Mamiya RZ67 cameras for a while, so I need to pack the thing down and ship it away. Need to decide what lenses to ship along as well, since I certainly need a few of them myself as well the next few days going to Ona and everything. I'm also joining the camera club for a shooting on Tuesday next week, and my plan was to bring one of them beasts with a good lens or two. We'll see. 

I don't know how many of you are still here to check the blog, but hopefully there's still a couple of you around. 

The Darkroom Cookbook

I've heard words spoken and written about it for years, the Darkroom Cookbook. Written by Stephen G. Anchell, published 1994 it seems. It's more or less full of weird recipies for more or less anything photography related. Developers, fixers, toners and stuff nice to have inside the darkroom. In other words there seems to be some interesting reading in there, as I'm now the owner of an example of this book. There's a few general darkroom chapters in there as well, as far as I can see without starting searching for my glasses and such.
You see my cousin once used to be a quite promising(ish) darkroom scientist, but at some point he just gave it all up. The pixelating age, a bunch of kids, a house and a million things to do... you know the story.
He got rid of most of his equipment, but somehow managed to find a bunch of darkroom paper (Agfa RC) in addition to The Darkroom Cookbook hidden way down in between the layers of things having added up down in his basement over the years.

A half-frame snap from the Olympus PEN. Nothing too interesting, perhaps, but there might be something for the right kind of person. Not sure about the film, but it could be Kentmere 400 or maybe something else. Ilford PAN 400 or something, maybe.

Long story a bit shorter he decided to donate the Cookbook and the paper, and will continue to dig for more interesting stuff down in that basement. I was trying to give him a hand during the searching for the Cookbook, and to be honest I think he'll be better off bringing in a (rather large) team of archeologists to go through that basement.
It's going to take some time. Let's just simply put it that way...

Half-frame snap from sludge delivery and provision carrying in Peterhead harbor last trip at work. I was working with the sludge while a bunch of the rest carried the provision. I snapped them with the Olympus PEN. It's a small and great camera to carry on deck inside a pocket.

There's going to be chemicals needed to get anywhere with the recipes, of course. Luckily the same cousin is very different to most of us, and would (don't ask me how and why) be able to supply whatever you may need in that respect. I might try one or two of the toners or something like that, but don't think I'm going to be making my own developer and such. Maybe...?!
I will read the book though! I'm putting it inside my bag right here and now, as I just got the message I'll be leaving for work tomorrow. That's two days early even though I got home one day late, which means three weeks and a few days at home. Too short a time off, just saying!

One of the piers on The Clyde, Glasgow. Half-frame again.

Offshore stuff, again

Another rather quick post, I'm afraid. 
I'm just out of the darkroom after a rather frustrating session in there. You see there's four or five pieces the wife has picked out for one of the walls, and I thought I'd just get them done. This night seemed to be as good as any other to get it done, so I went for it. The medium format neg was a tricky one, so I might have to alter the settings a bit I think. I'll let it dry and have a good look at it in the daylight, but I suppose it's not up to standard. 
But OK, it was a print, at least. 

Brent A. The only steel legged platform on this field consisting of Brent A, B, C and D (the latter now partly removed, see next picture). The Brent field has been producing oil and gas since late 1976. The oil is fed through a pipeline to Sullom Voe oil terminal in northern Shetland, while the gas goes to St. Fergus in northern Scotland. The field is very close to the norwegian border, and you can easily see what's going on over the border at the Statfjord field.

Then there were a series of four 135 negs on the to do list. Had to switch to the other enlarger as the bigger one is not very well suited to do 30x40 enlargements from small negs. Ping... and the damn bulb went dark as in really dark and no hope for any further work for either today or tomorrow. And before you ask, nope I did not have a spare one in stock. 
I'll put in an order for a new one, or three. 

Brent D, or at least what's left of it these days. 

I got no particular clue what exactly our mission this close to them old legs were, but I'm sure we had important stuff to do. We always seem to have, if you ask the right person. See that thing up there on that left leg? Every second day or so a helicopter will land on top of the leg, and some dude will come out of it and walk over to have it checked sort of carefully. I suppose they would soon find out if anything's wrong from hundreds of miles away, since it's some sort of navigation beacon or similar, but they still have to check it of course. It's probably written in some sort of procedure somewhere. At least they know how to spend a fair amount of money in places like these... 

The snaps for today is from a film I wasted about a month ago when at work. Leica M3 camera with Summicron glass 50 and/or 35mm lenses attached, Ilford FP4+ film developed in Paranol S. 

Ah... the little steel drum with yellow cable spooled on. We picked it up right here, on the bank of the River Clyde up in Glasgow, you know. Put the whole thing on the back deck, and off we went to drop all the yellow stuff into the sea west of Ireland somewhere. We were careful not to drop the drum as well, so no harm done. I got no idea what the yellow cable will do once they decide to power everything up, but they told us it was rather expensive and important. 

Nothing new, in other words.

365 - ongoing series

Three more from The Project this year. The 365@50 thing, you know. 

I have posted the notes from my book on the snaps lately, but since we were out there on the tiny little island of Ona and had to leave in a hurry about a week ago, the little black book is still out there.  Just had to leave both the book and a bunch of cameras, but I'll get out there to pick them up some day soon I hope. 

Anyway, I know what they are, the snaps. So I'm able to tell you what I think was most likely noted.

#068 - The Crane repair man traveled down the coast in a boat. They stopped in my home town, so I went for a chat and a snap.

#069 - The Cat, as it usually looks when I get home. Time for food, she seems to think.

#070 - Chain Saw Day. A lot of work done, but things look better in that area now. 

#068

#069

#070