Here Come The Waterworks

I'm just back from possibly the biggest failure of a holiday ever! My friend Sara and I decided it'd be good fun to get away from things for a couple of days and head to the Isle of Arran, just off the west coast of Scotland. Arran's great, because it's so easy to reach from Glasgow by public transport - a train from Glasgow Central station to Ardrossan Harbour (about 40mins), then jump straight on the MV Caledonian Isles, the CalMac Ferry between Ardrossan and Brodick, the main town on the island.

Being poor and all, we decided it'd be a good plan to go camping. I had a tent and knew of a great wee camp spot at a place called Glen Rosa, about a mile's walk to the north of Brodick. I'd been to Glen Rosa the two summers previous to this trip, and it had proven to be a perfect base for getting around the island, in a quiet-yet-convenient-enough setting.

After arriving, we got our tent pitched up in a fairly nice spot by the Rosa Burn, the river running adjacent to the campsite. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great, so we decided just to sit in the tent and wait until the weather passed over. Unfortunately though, the weather didn't pass over for a while, and in fact, the heavy rain had caused the river to swell up. Luckily, another group of campers had been paying close attention to the river levels and had alerted us just in time to pack up all of our things and shift the tent to higher ground before the deluge came forth and swept us down to the Firth of Clyde!

We managed to get our gear to safety, and I managed to grab a few snaps of the last remaining tents getting dragged through the rising floods. Unfortunately however, in the rush to get everything moved, most of what we were carrying ended up getting pretty well soaked. While I had made what I thought to be a safe shout relying on one pair of waterproof hiking boots to last me the trip, I hadn't bargained on having to wade through a couple of feet of flood water, so I'd have had to traipse around in soggy boots for the remainder of the time.

We stayed the night at the campsite, but decided on hearing rain on the tent the next morning, that we'd just abandon the trip and head home early. Some bacon rolls at the Bilslands cafe soon lifted our spirits though, and we even got a top notch celebrity-spot in the form of former Deacon Blue drummer turned TV presenter Dougie Vipond. Obviously, Bilslands Cafe is the place to be seen for top celebrities when holidaying in Brodick. Of course, true to form, the minute we got on the boat, the skies miraculously cleared, making the rest of my journey home all nice and sunny. Damn.

Riding The Rails

Just got linked to a great set of images from Photographer Ben Speck on Getty Images, looking at the hobo subculture in the USA, specifically those hitching rides on freight trains. Quite an interesting read, as well as a fantastic selection of photographs.

The whole idea of hopping on and off trains has always interested me to a large degree, ever since first reading Kerouac's On The Road. Seeing the movie Into The Wild just helped hammer this fascination home, although definitely didn't show it as the easy-going free ride that it would be all to easy to think of it as.

Of course, my own rail experiences in the US were limited to regular Amtrak passenger routes, but even these were a good deal more romantic than the usual Scotrail experience!

Waiting For Film

Waiting for film has to be one of the most frustrating things about photography for me. Don't get me wrong, I love getting the films back from processing, but it's that anxious spell in between that gets to me!

At present, waiting is what I'm doing a lot of. I've shot about twelve rolls on my Hasselblad since returning from Hong Kong, and now I just need to get around to processing them so that I can see if I'm doing things right or not.

I'm living in Fife at the moment. That basically means I don't have a lab near me that does medium format film, which kinda stinks. Edinburgh's the nearest city that would have the facilities, but my biggest problem is that I don't know or trust any labs there to handle my colour processing. Thankfully though, I do know some labs through in Glasgow who do medium format processing, and even though I live about 70 miles away, I've opted to use Glasgow for my films. I use a wee place called Snappy Snaps on Byres Road, in the West End of the city. It sounds a wee bit like a cheesy holiday-snaps kinda shop, but their range of services is actually pretty great, even doing traditional black and white processing. Unfortunately their staff are a bit crap and unfriendly, but for convenience, I guess you have to put up with these sort of things.

There are (to my knowledge) only two other labs who do medium format film in Glasgow - Loxley Colour at Port Dundas and B&S Imaging in Govan. Loxley do a premium service with the prices to match, and are just a wee bit too out of the way to quickly drop films off to. B&S are more aimed at large-scale commercial operations, but their services are almost on a par of those of Loxley's, but at much more reasonable prices. Unfortunately however, B&S is really out of the way, being out in an industrial estate in Govan.

Labs though, are only necessary for colour processing, since I have all of the kit necessary to process black and white films here at home. It's been a good while since I've done any processing, but I'm looking forward to getting started again. I've decided to change films and developers since last time, to see if I can hopefully get some better results. I had previously been shooting almost exclusively on Ilford HP5 and processing with Ilfotec HC, but I'd found HP5 to be a bit wishy-washy and lacking the real punch I like from my images. In the last year of shooting, I've developed a real love for Kodak TMax 100 & 400 films, so I've fired through a load of TMax 400 over the past couple of weeks.

I've also decided to go with Kodak TMax Developer too - mostly because of how much easier it is to mix than Ilfotec HC. Ilfotec is a 1+31 mix, meaning a bottle can go for a crazy number of tankfuls. TMax on the other hand, is a 1+4 mix, meaning that it's much easier to mix, although won't go quite so far. I've also been looking a lot more into things like how often developer can be re-used, as I'd previously just used the Ilfotec as single-shot, using it once then pouring it away.

All I need to get down to business are a couple more Irn Bru bottles for storing water, and to find what I've done with my neg holder sheets, so that I've actually got somewhere to put the films once I've processed them.

If you've any feedback or hints/tips you'd like to share, please feel free to add comments to this post :-)

Shooting Fife

I've just not long returned from a long big extended holiday to New Zealand, stopping in to the USA, Canada and Hong Kong along the way. I took a lot of photos along the way, and had a lot of fun - it was great to not really have to worry so much about day-to-day responsibilities, and just getting to see some amazing places and meet some amazing people. These places and people were a great inspiration for my photography work, and I managed to rack up a lot of frames on the journey

My biggest problem at the moment, is how to motivate myself to get out with the camera and keep taking good photos when I live in a sleepy commuter town with no volcanoes, penguins or stingrays to shoot. Of course, this leads to me wondering if I'm actually capable of taking good photos at all, or whether I was just pretty lucky with the subjects!

I guess what I'll just have to do is adapt and try and think where I can get the good shots from. I've been out on a couple of nights shooting around the Hillend Industrial Estate, a once bustling, but now declining industrial estate along the northern edge of the town. I was sad to miss the big drama when travelling people showed up en masse in caravans in the grounds of the OCLI factory where my mum used to work. Apparently they'd been forced out of their previous site at the old Lexmark factory in Rosyth by some violent locals, and chanced upon another site just along the road here in Dalgety Bay.

It's been interesting seeing various buildings and factories falling off one-by-one over time. The old Cemtron factory has just recently become vacant, OCLI is being earmarked for housebuilding, Marconi Simulations has been replaced by an ASDA supermarket, and various others have burnt out or fallen into ruin. In fact, one old industrial building (I can't remember what it used to be) is set to get Dalgety Bay's first full-time photography studio when Nikki Mcleod opens her business in there.

Tonight's plan was to take a stroll up to the Cemtron grounds and have a wee peek in, but a thunderstorm with accompanying rain has just rolled over, so I'll just need to see!

Happy Hasselblad

While I was away, I added a delightful new member to my family of cameras. I think his name is Bladley, or Blad for short. To be specific, he's a nice Hasselblad 500C/M, and I was lucky enough to be able to grab a Zeiss Distagon 60mm f/3.5 CF along with him.

So far, we've been having lots of fun together. I've had a few funny moments trying to figure out the various finer points of the many many mechanisms. I'm great at forgetting the dark slide, and especially good at forgetting to wind films off the end of the roll.

Despite the technical hitches though, I'm absolutely loving the camera. It makes a nice kind "CHUNK" sound when you hit the shutter, and the 60mm lens is absolutely fantastic. Just that perfect focal length, and sharp as hell too. I'll need to try and pick up a new, brighter focussing screen though, as I'm not quite so great at getting things bang on.

To have a look at the results of our relationship so far, check out This Set on Flickr

This Tastes Bloggin'!

Sorry all, I kinda ended up neglecting the blog during my latter days in New Zealand, mostly through lack of a feasible internet connection. I promise I'll pick things up again now - especially now that I'm back in Fife with a lack of much better to do. All this alone time with the scanner is starting to get to me.

Anyways, for now - a video!

From The Deep South

Been too long since my last blog update, huh? Again, I'm just gonna fire down one big mega-update and hopefully catch up on everything!

In Christchurch, I got a bit bored mostly. However, I managed to make myself happy with trips to the awesome camera shop, Photo & Video, who gave me a stupidly good trade-in price for my 24-120mm VR zoom lens. Since I've not really been using the lens much (slow max. apertures and soft soft images), I decided to bin it, initially favouring one of the now-obsolete (WHY NIKON, WHY?) 24-85mm AF-S zooms. In the end though, I opted for the brand-new Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G AF-S. It's been lovely, and the best thing is, you actually no longer really need light to take pictures!

One of the other good things about Christchurch was getting to meet up with Adam, a flickr contact of mine and fellow lover of Nikons and OMs! He was good enough to take me on a trip up the Clarence river, where I managed to catch my first ever fish, a nice big Trout. I ripped the arse out of my shorts and tore my lucky boxers after a failed attempt to negotiate a steep scree slope, but catching the fish made it more than worthwhile.

From Christchurch, I headed back over Arthur's Pass to the West Coast. The weather was beautiful the whole way over, right until about Arthur's Pass itself, at which point, the big clouds rolled in and opened up over everything. Otira Gorge was cool, but I suspect it would've been a lot cooler if I could've actually seen anything through the clouds and heavy heavy rain. Unfortunately the weather didn't really pick up much at all the whole time I was down on the West Coast.

I stayed a night in Hokitika, then headed on to Franz Josef, hoping to take a helicopter trip up to the glacier there. Unfortunately though, the weather was super-suckin' so they weren't flying. And of course, just my luck, the weather cleared up beautifully just on the day I'd decided I wasn't waiting any longer and had decided to hit the road.

I headed on through the Haast Pass, dodging the suicidal tourist snap photographers at the Gates of Haast rapids, and on to Wanaka. Deciding to dodge the armies of Leki-pole-armed Germans in the town of Wanaka, I opted instead to follow a back road around the lake to a nice wee unofficial campsite - sshh, don't tell the DoC!

From Wanaka, I followed the Clutha down through Central Otago, dodging a mini-tornado at Alexandra which flattened some poor person's jeep. Thankfully, the wagon and I made it through unscathed, settling for the night in Ranfurly. I had considered staying the night in St. Bathans, an interesting wee ghost town, and wished I had after finding what might well have been New Zealand's shittiest backpackers hostel in Ranfurly.

Despite Ranfurly not being up to much, my next day was far more successful. I made it down to the east coast at Palmerston, and headed out on a mission to spot some penguins. Although my initial penguin spot was terribly exciting to me, I was advised of a better location a couple of km up the coast at a place called Moeraki. I was able to get within a few feet of the penguins there, and I snapped away like a man possessed.

To be continued...

Antichristchurch

Well, after leaving Wellington, things have been a bit up and down, and are now firmly on a downer in Christchurch. I've been stuck here for about two weeks now, after really only intending to be here for a couple of days. It's flat, and the population seems to be mostly neo-nazi dickheads and foreign pensioners. Anyways, enough of that... time for a quick update on progress so far.

Started in Picton, headed into the Marlborough Sounds. Spent my first night in a place called Hopewell in possibly the best backpacker hostel ever. I rented a kayak for $10 and paddled around, and it was very much fun. I even took the F65 out with me and took some photos while I was out there. Next night involved some shady mountainous dirt roads on the way over to a place called Titirangi. The weather was crap when I arrived, and my passport fell out of the van on the way over (long and silly story), but the next morning, all was clear and sunny and I even managed a swim in the sea, something I really don't do often.

Next was Elaine Bay, a bit further over to the western side of the sounds. Cool spot with a wee pier and stingrays floating about in the water, and I got chatting to Simon, a Canadian fellow van traveller. All was great, except my legs got absolutely annihilated by sandflies. Carried on to the relative civilisation of Nelson, met up with Simon for a beer and only partially successful attempts to chat up some girls from the Kiwi Experience bus.

Headed up to Motueka, did Karaoke for only the third time in my life, waltzed with an old Maori alcoholic woman, and hung out in a very Phoenix-nights hotel/local pub. Headed on up through Takaka and its hippies on my way to Cape Farewell. Headed back down into Nelson, then back over to the West Coast. Was blown away by the delights of Westport, failed to find penguins on a beach in the middle of nowhere, and eventually ended up staying in Greymouth.

Drove over the Lewis Pass, which would've been pretty amazing if I could've seen any of it (the clouds were low, and it was raining). And then Christchurch. As I said earlier, flat, bland, and full of weirdoes.

Next move is a fishing trip up into the hills, back to Christchurch once more to sleep it off, then I'm gonna head over Arthur's Pass to the West Coast again, and hope the weather's not too crappy when I get there!

Wellington

So, this may be my last update from Wellington for a while. I'm planning to leave this weekend (Sunday 15th Feb) and head off on an adventure to the South Island.

Things have been going pretty cool here - the house I'm staying in is great, and the work's been pretty cool too. I even managed to find a colleague with a similar taste for horrible doom metal, which was nice!

Biggest problem so far has been the van over the last couple of days. First of all, some b*****ds tried breaking into it. Thankfully, the most valuable items inside were the road atlas and a cheapo rugby ball, so they didn't bother taking anything. They did attempt to hotwire it by the looks of things, but thankfully didn't go all the way through with it. They also seem to have tried to nick the radio, which beggars belief, as it's crap and doesn't actually do much due to having a cassette adaptor jammed in it! It does even less now that they tried to remove it, as it's now reverted to "security code" mode. Of course, I don't have the code, and I'm certainly not willing to shell out for ford to reset my code or buy a new hifi to listen to music through some crappy tinny speakers!

I'll be getting some new locks for the doors soon (the burglars damaged the locks in the break-in), and it's just got a whole new set of tyres on board, so hopefully I'll be all rockin' and ready to go come the weekend

In other news, I've just picked up a super cheap Nikon FM film camera body, so I reckon the Olympus Rangefinder will have to go to make room for it. I had been borrowing a Holga for a wee while, but I'm definitely not a big fan. It'd be a great camera for a few quid, but it's proper crap for the money the lomographic society like to charge for them. To put it into context - over here a Holga is $169 NZD, where my FM body was only $99, and it's renowned as one of the most solid camera bodies ever built.

I also went to check out an excellent photographic exhibition earlier on today, quite by accident. Or maybe it was fate? The exhibition was in the Bowen Gallery on Ghuznee Street and Featured photographs of Antarctica by Wellington photographers Mike Wilkinson and Grant Sheehan. I had been reading a lot about Antarctic exploration on the internet recently, and decided I really want to go there at some point if I possibly can. I had just decided to go for a wander and take some pictures around the city on my way home from work via a different route from usual, and found the Gallery, which I didn't even know was there before. So that was cool. The exhibition details are all here on NZLive.com. Just a nice wee sly plug for my work and all that!

The Van

I just bought this on DVD from a local supermarket for NZ$5. That's about £2 for any readers back in the UK. Check out the trailer:

Massively looking forward to watching it now. Full review (probably not) to come.