MorseBlog

My commute by bicycle takes me through the RSPB refuge at Fen Drayton. Along an old railway line it passes through the old gravel pits converted to a number of lakes. I have written of this place before as it is close to home and so when I am looking for a few hours away photographing I head there. This past Spring has been unusual. It has been relatively dry though still cold, as a result the mornings have been foggy. My experience of the past several years is that Fall is the time of foggy mornings and I have kicked myself a number of times for not taking the time to use this change as a chance to take some different photos. My wake-up call came again one morning as I rode through the foggy morning and saw a number of subjects to photograph. I resolved the next time to take a camera. A week later my chance arrived. I loaded up some Ilford HP5+ 400 speed film and a fresh spare roll and packed my Fuji GSWiii 690 camera as something relatively compact. I stopped at several places on...

For the second time this month I find myself replacing light seals on my old cameras. Previously it was my Fuji G617 very wide format camera. That exercise was successful. I have thought I was having light leaks in mmy Fuji GSW 690 since last summer shortly after I got it from Japan. Some photos seemed to indicate a problem. Below is an example from a hike in Montana last summer. It was a bright sunny day and I had my camera out all day. The banding I suspect was due to a light seal problem at one end of the camera or the other. So I decided to replace the seals. The problem with camera light seals is they all seem to have used the same self adhesive foam material. This foam after decades deteriorates and turns into a black tarry substance. In my case pieces had dislodged and begun to smear on the backing plate in addition to the inability to keep light out. I start by first protecting the lens. I push a piece of cloth onto the back of the lens to keep any debris or dropped ...

The name of this post comes from a photo I described in my prior post on Fuji G617 panoramas . I was really pleased how it came out and the way it conveyed the mood of the day. In some ways it could be seen as bleak but it also evokes a kind of uplift in spirit. For me it is a complicated image. So much so I wanted to see how to print it. In the previous post I toyed with the idea of a triptych. Further thought and modeling of the print led me to a quadriptych (quad of course means 4 and typch is Greek for fold). The problem with 3 is the gaps between images correspond directly to the position of the sun and the farm which are the two most important visual elements. Dividing by 4 allows these to exist in whole on adjacent panels. Printing and Scale My next thoughts were on scale. I wanted something big to bring out the detail and I hope drama. Thinking through the dimensions of the image I came up with this. The image on the negative is about 165mm long by 55mm high. I h...