Fire Starters

Went on another hike up the local mountain yesterday evening, this time planning to get some more night shots of Cwm Lickey. Adam, Paul and myself set out at the later time of 4pm from the Lamb and basically went via the mast, the local reservoir, up to the top on the mountain, back to another mast and finally bounced off that back to Cwm Lickey.

I know I said it was cold in Cardiff on Friday night, but it wasn't nearly as cold as it was last night, there was a non stop wall of wind which we had to contend with, making it much harder to move around than usual, coupled with the fact that there was quite a lot of snow still up there which would blow up in your face at inappropriate moments. Other than that the walk itself was very successful (read: we didn't get lost this time!).

When we actually got the Cwm Lickey Paul and Adam started a little camp fire and I circled the lake to get some long exposure shots:

This week we actually managed to get a proper fire started which was quite nice to warm your hands on. As we left, like good little campers we put some water on the fire to put it out, the fire turned to embers. Just as we were starting to leave a gust of wind caught the embers and restarted the fire! This led to Adam and Paul running around the place like a couple of flamenco dancers trying to stamp out the fire/embers which spread quite rapidly (this was very funny at the time but doesn’t seem to translate as well in text).

Here is the link to my gallery of shots from this hike.

Curb Crawling

Spent four hours in Cardiff city centre yesterday freezing my ass off with the intention of getting some nice 'urban' shots (something I've never really done much of before). I met up with Hoodi Ansari (link to his webby), who is the brother of one of my friends from work. Neither of us had a plan of what we wanted to shoot so we wandered around rather aimlessly until things 'hit us in the face' photographically speaking.

We started off at a war memorial in Cathays park, see below, we were very lucky with the light here as the sun was playing hide and seek with the clouds at the time.



We then moved onto City hall and a statue nest to that, through town shooting various subjects, stopped for a tea break, we needed this pretty bad as we were close to freezing by this time, and finished up at the church in the Hayes, see below.



It was pretty cool having another photographer with me as 'normal' people tend to get annoyed if you spend ages setting up shots/waiting around for the right light etc...The results of the 'shoot' were pretty good in my opinion, here is the gallery of the best shots from the night.

Sunset Hunted

Well I got back in one piece from the night hike, although we did get a little lost (almost came down in the wrong valley!), had good fun and managed to get a few nice shots of the sun setting. We started out from the Lamb (local pub) and headed off in our usually direction, straight up to Cwm Lickey. We stopped here so I could get a few shots with my Mamiya and digital. Next we walked a little further before going straight up the side of the valley, this was quite hard going but we made it after a few stops. We then headed for the spot we were going to set up at to shot the sun setting which involved going right through a herd of sheep (the smell produce by such a gathering is almost indescribable), needless to say on the way back we walked around this lot.

It wasn’t the best sunset I have seen as the clouds obscured the sun just before it hit the horizon but we had some nice colours and the haze/pollution made the sun look huge as it was setting. The temperature dropped severely when the sun disappeared behind the hills, we didn’t stick around long so we could get our body temperatures back up.

Halfway back things got very dark and the head torches came in very handy. This is where we got lost as it is very hard to tell exactly where you are when you can’t see! Instead of walking around the line of the valley and coming down from the other side of Cwm Lickey we went across the top of the mountain by accident and ended up coming down round about where we went up; a slight mistake but it all worked out in the end.

When we got back to Cwm Lickey we ‘set up camp’, myself and Alex went to gather some wood and we started a small camp fire. While we were here I managed to get some really nice long exposure shots of the lake which all came out orange due to the pollution coming up from Pontypool.

I developed the roll of film that I took on the trip and they seem to have come out quite nicely, I’ll scan some an post one or two at a later date.

Here is a link to the full gallery of shots I took that evening.

Sunset Hunting

I am going on an evening/night hike tomorrow with a group of my friends. We are heading towards Twmbarlwm (an Iron Age hill fort) to see of we can get some nice photos of the sun setting behind it. Below is a shot I took a few months ago of the path leading towards the fort, Twmbarlwm is the bump on the horizon.



I'll be sure to post a pic or two if I manage to get any good shots and there is always a story to tell after us lot go on a hike!

Positive Comments

I haven't been able to take any more photos yet due to bad weather and time constraints :( But I have managed to get my first set of test negatives scanned in properly, the picture below is a photoshopped collage of four of my test shots in positive form. I'm pretty happy with the results and might get one or two enlarged properly.

Negative comments

Today I developed my first roll of 120 film (a few of the final negs pictured <--). It was a scary but fun experience, the main problem being that you can't see the finished product until right at the end of the process so I had no idea how well/badly things had gone until then.

Here's a short overview of the complete process:

I first had to load the film into the developing tank, I did this last night, in the cuboard under the stairs, as this needs to be done in complete darkness. There was a little fumbling around but it seemed to go pretty well for my first real attempt. Again this had the same kind of scare factor as the actual developing as I could not tell if all had gone well until I finished the process, there was a slight worry in the back of my head that I might have put the backing paper on the reel rather than the film! When I put the light back on it turned out that at least I had got this far without many problems, all seemed well.

This afternoon I mixed all the chemicals (developer, stop bath, fixer and wetting agent) with some tempered water (@ 20 degrees) and layed out all the equpiment that I would need on the kitchen draining board. I realised that I had no accurate way of measuring the time, which is crucial when it comes to devloping film but was saved by Maria (my girlfriend) when she pointed out that she had a timer on her phone...note to self, buy stopwatch!...

- First comes the developer, poured into the developing tank, agitated for 10 secs every minute - time in tank 8 mins total

- Next the stop bath, agitated a few times during a 30 sec period

- The fixer is poured in after the stopbath to make the film no longer sensitive to light, in tank for 3 mins agitate a few times every minute

- The final stage is the wash, just with plain tempered water. Followed by a brief dip in the wetting agent which helps the film dry without any marks.

- The film was then taken off the reel and left to dry in the shower for about 4-5 hours, cut up and placed into a special poly-pocket for film.

Considering I had only read about the process and have had no 'hands-on' teaching I was very pleased with the outcome as the film came out looking like negatives, the next test will be getting the printed in a small size just for proofing. Espcially when you take into account the inaccuracy of the timing and the measuring of the whole process; the way I did this today probably had some great photographers turning in their graves!

N.B. The pic top-left is a really quick 'proof' that I managed to make by loading up photoshop and opening a new document with a white background, sticking the poly-pocket full of negatives to the screen and then taking a photo of it with my digital camera! This accounts for the poor quality of that pic.

Developing on the horizon

My equipment for developing film turned up last night; I am now the proud owner of:

• A Paterson system 4 universal developing tank;
  

• Ilford developer, stopbath, fixer and wetting agent;
  

• A spirit thermometer;
  

• Various graduates and a mixing jug.

Add to this list a mixing stick (freed from the work coffee bar), scissors, a water supply, stop watch and a very dark place and you have all that you need to start developing your own film :)

The hardest part of the process, so I’ve read, is getting the roll of film onto the spiral (which sits in the light-tight developing tank and holds the film so that it isn’t in contact with itself anywhere along the roll). This is complicated by the fact that you have to do this part in complete darkness. Pre-empting potential problems with this process I spent a good hour yesterday using a sacrificed roll of film to make sure that I could get the film on the spiral, firstly with my eyes open in the light, then with my eyes closed and finally with the lights off. It wasn’t quite as hard as I anticipated but it could be a different story when it comes to doing this with a roll of film with precious shots on it!

I plan to develop my first roll of film properly this weekend; I’m sure that will be an experience I’ll never forget…

Lost in the ether

Well its day 2 of my blog and I have had some bad news, the first roll of film that I shot in my new camera up and around an old abandoned colliery has been lost in the post. I posted it on Tuesday, with the film in the envelope, somehow the roll of film managed to liberate itself between the post box and the Lab I sent it to; I was really looking forward to seeing how my first roll of Velvia had turned out as well.

On the plus side I have four more rolls to shoot so, taking the law of averages into account, at least one of these should make it to the lab. Also by the end of the week I should be able to start processing my own b&w negatives, which should be an experience, if nothing else.

Where to start?

Well as I am running out of things to look at on the internet these days I thought it might be a good idea to start up my own blog, therefore adding to the wealth of complete nonsense on the interweb and at the same time filling my free time. Since one of my hobbies is photography I thought it prudent to have a photoblog as this would serve to be a ‘log book’ of my experiences with photography and so some day I can look back on it to see how my techniques/outlooks on my hobby have changed.

Since this is my first post here on my new blog maybe a little introduction would be a good place to start. I am an amateur photographer, as I do it just for fun, but have managed to build up a small collection of equipment over the last year. I now have a Nikon D70s digital slr camera as well as my recently purchased Mamiya RB 67 Pro S (pictured here) , which is a medium format film camera. I have purchased the Mamiya with the intention of setting up my own darkroom and someday being able to both process negatives and print my own shots. At the moment I have only the camera, but the equipment for processing my negatives is now in the post. I’ll be sure to post again when I have processed my first set of negatives :)

Please feel free to browse my online photo gallery: Gringo Galleries

Thanks for reading.