MorseBlog

 Another day, another day in the darkroom. The morning dawned bright and clear; a flawed full moon shown in the west while Venus has risen quite high-up in the eastern sky, the gradient of light-yellow fading to cornflower blue in the east pricked by this one unfailing light. Mollie and I are out for our morning walk around the village, this time to some fields. She noses under the gate and is off like a shot sprinting along the hedgerows as fast as her little legs can carry her. She has that unbounded joy today and perhaps because a terrible storm blew through last night, she feels a sense of relief or release in this clear dawn. As we cross the fields, she zigs then zags in front of me from one hedgerow to the next, joy and happiness with each bounding exertion.  This morning after coffee, cereal and some light reading I decided to address some errors from yesterday and re-print some liths. I have some 8x10 sheets left from previous experiments, some of Seagull Exhibition pa...

After my initial conventional print success , I wanted to see how the image would translate with a lith print. I took the 8x10 image that was exposed at f32 down to f16 for the requisite overexposure. I know if I can hit an Ev (ISO 100) on the easel in some mid tones that is a good start at 32 second exposure for a higher contrast lith print. This came at f16 in this case. I made two exposed prints at this exposure then opened up one more stop to f11 at 32 seconds. I did not burn the top of the images, though I should have.  Normally these images end up taking a darker look but, in this case, they were warmer toned versions of the original prints.  I mixed Moersch EasyLith as follows 20ml Part A 20ml Part B 700ml old Brown 300ml water Heat in microwave for 3 minutes.  When I stuck the first print in the hot developer brought up an image in one minute and I had to snatch it at around 3 minutes. It went black fast! Subsequent images slowed down but none were outside a 5-mi...

Sometimes you see an image and you feel it will really work. (Update: I should clarify the trees here are not Alders as I suggest but are Hawthorne. They don't get this big often, but I felt something was wrong with my identification, so I went back to gather more data.) Image for blog post heading Last month I broke out my Fuji GSW 690 and started to take it around with me, when I was just out for a walk or when I had my large format with me.  It is a difficult camera to get my head around especially when in the forest. A wide angle on a wide negative, you need to get close to most subjects. But I have gotten some nice images. I wrote up my impressions of the camera here ... The day was partly cloudy at Holme Fen and not great conditions for photography but not poor either. I was in an area I have been drawn to in the past with these two alder trees. I could never make anything work in any season I was there. The old problem of visual complexity. It is difficult to photograph tree...

Apparently I haven't been in the darkroom since September last year! This is of course when I began to prepare for the fall season of photography. During the fall I probably took in excess of 100 photos most of which were on my large format camera. This has been an incredibly productive in terms of number and quality of my work. It has been helped by having a focus on a subject (woodland photography).  Unfortunately my darkroom work has taken a back seat to fall photographs that went through a long productive period over the summer. I took to making smaller prints with wide margins and even went so far as to fashion simple frames to display them.  Expired Developer and Concentrate This week I returned (slowly at first) to the darkroom and reacquainted myself with that aspect of my work. I had a modest backlog of black and white images from this past summer I had not printed yet. I had the inevitable problems of assessing equipment and chemicals. While I had just mixed a ...

The last few days have been poor photography-wise. A lot of wind and some rain have been blowing through England the last few days. It is disheartening to see the leaves stripped from many of the trees around my house. It seems the fall season of color will be short and strange this year.  I did get out this afternoon. I was feeling anxious (perhaps the upcoming American election) so thought a walk in the woods with a camera would help. I decided on Holme Fen as I had not been there for a week.  As I drove down the sky was bright and nearly cloudless near my home. However by the time I arrived clouds thickened over Holme Fen. This was a shame as the justification of bringing a camera on a windy day was the hope of some bright sunlight to keep shutter speeds up. I brought the Mamiya 645 Pro and had 2 frames of the Ilford 3200 Pro film I was shooting at ISO 1600 as an experiment in faster black and white. I plan to write up this experience when I finish the roll and get it devel...

Woodwalton has been on my mind lately. Like some neglected responsibility it creeps into my subconscious. I had not visited there for many months. So yesterday I went for about an hour around sunset. I brought my Mamiya 645 mostly to see what was happening with fall color.  I ended up taking a few photos but it was quite windy and with the dying light my Ektar 100 was pretty useless except for some mediocre sunset photos. The roll of Ilford 3200 I am shooting at 1600 as an experiment faired a little better but hunting for color with black and white film is well, crazy.  Pond: Woodwalton Fen (Mamiya 645 Pro 150mm f3.5 handheld Ilford Delta 3200) Still I had the reserve to myself and enjoyed the walk around the place. I discovered there is a grove of quaking aspen trees ( Populus tremula ) there. Where I grew up in Flagstaff the San Francisco Peaks had large groves of a related aspen also called quaking aspen but a different species ( Populus tremuloides ) which means 'tremble...

I have been using Ilford HP5+ a lot lately and have been really pleased with the results I get when I expose it at ISO 800 and push develop it . This got me to thinking about how I could decent results at ISO 1600. A little troll around the internet indicated pushing HP5+ further might not give very good results. However Ilford makes an ISO 3200 film that some like exposed at 1600.  The consensus on the web is that the film is nominally ISO 1000-1200 and can be pushed to 3200. The consensus is also that the recommended development times from Ilford result in weak shadows for each suggested film speed. There seems to be a consensus you can get better results using the development times for the next higher speed. So if you expose at ISO 1600 use the development times for ISO 3200.  I tried this on a roll of Delta 3200 Pro film. Exposed at ISO 1600 and developed according to Massive Dev Chart at 3200. I used HC-110 dilution B (1+31) mixed fresh. My developer was 17.5C so my devel...

This describes a few days of visits to Monk's Wood over a week.   Post Title Image Day 1 I have been neglecting Monk's Wood this last month or so. I have become enthralled with Holme Fen and the silver birches and deep fern undergrowth. This past morning I broke that fast drove out before sunrise.  I loaded up my pack and setup my tripod and changed shoes before heading into the mud tracks. Monk's Wood has a very heavy clay soil and is well trodden by walkers of all varieties even in the winter. The consequence is that by mid-winter some tracks can be almost paralyzingly slippery with mud. The mud one gets used to, but the inability to make progress in some places or the sense one will end on your arse in an unexpected moment can add a level of frustration to an otherwise wonderful outing.  Fortunately while it is muddy, it isn't at 'peak mud' yet. In the pre-dawn gray darkness I walk the farm track to the entrance gate and head up...