Fankastic !

Apologies for the title but I've gone a bit tearful over these lovely portraits. I mean, who can not love fanks like these - nestling by the roadside, near the sea [ although everything is by the sea really] and made of recycled lives.

Don't tell me you don't want to be here looking over that fank with a loch and the sea behind it, the hills to the side while the sun warms your back.

Fanks again

Brace yourself, I might be showing one or two of these portraits I tooked of fanks. I like them. They little the landscape of the island and serve as a reminder of the way of the peoples till recently. Some are still used but most I think have seen better and busier days.

I did start a series called Fanks for the memory some time back and it needs finishing.

I show you.....

I show you this portrait of a Fank just to remind you, if you needed reminding - and I do - that the new Bergger Pancro 400 35mm film looks great at box speed in ID11. Whatever that means.

It may actually be a fankette to be pedantic but round here on this ere road in that sunlight with those clouds that day it looked lovely. So lovely that I took it's portrait.

And now the croisant

Artist Geof Stear  artfully brings the fresh croissant into his range at the very lovely Linda Norgrove brunch at Ravenspoint over the weekend. Congrats to Rhoda and others who got the thing together.

I have a beret like that you know - Stubbsy the artist gave it to me so I could get into the looking like an artist thing. Only, it just makes me look like Ms Wolfie

Of course, I didn't do landscapes

But it seems I have been working on that of late.

Sorry and all that.

It's ok. He's not here.

I shot him with the Holga. I can show it to you as he's not here but swanning around Ireland snapping everything that doesn't move.

Bergger Pancro 400

Yes, yes it's The Crofter. You've seen him before.

Here I caught him in a moment of dog-less happiness at home enjoying the warm weather on what was his birthday. Oh joy. His world is likely to be upset soon with the arrival of a baby into the household. Makes a change from lambs anyway.

I shot the man with my trusty OM1n using the new Bergger Pancro 400 doused afterwards in Rodinal 1:25. Nice don't you think?

Oooof

Here I was, stood by the sea contemplating - life and all that - when this pinhole camera looked at me. Briefly.

The coows

Yes, it's the same coows as I snapped up before. I was so taken with them I shot them again. They really didn't seemed to mind  at all.

You're wrong!

No, not another snap from The Birthday Stroll. Not a bit of it. Twas the day before. And the other direction from home. Totally the other direction as it happens. And in rain. Yes, did I tell you it can rain here?

It wasn't raining when I left home you understand. When I strolled past The Crofter's croft and everything. Hardly a cloud in the sky - apart from the ones that were there you understand. I was going out toward The Crofter's peat banks out beyond over there, where the sun was shining.

Lovely stroll in the force 7 breeze but then I noticed a blackening of the clouds a tad - out over the moor. Too bad I thought. Then the hail came, all of a sudden and everything. I hardly had a chance to scurry  under the branches of the tiny wood there. It eased as soon as it started so I started off again - until the rain came down moments later.

Bother I thought, shot a fence with a peat track in the distance and went home. Then the sun came out again !

Water

Heard enough about the peat track yet? Oh well, you might be dissappointed today.

We are not short of water here - usually. We did have a very dry start to the year a while back and the lochens did run low and the water was less than fully available.

It's not like that this year though.

This is part of a peat track out to our peat bank. Seems to have joined the lochen it runs alongside at this point. We skirted the dampness by taking the route close to the Hebridean fence on the left. Hebridean in that many of the wooden posts hang delicately on the wire and flap in the breeze.

Birthday

On Eve's birthday we strolled to the old peat bank. Lovely day with sunshine and love. I recorded the occasion with a folding Baldax camera and tmax400. Just because I can.

Oh look, the lovely birthday girl.

Birthday snap

Twas Eve's birthday yesterday and along with a stroll, lunch at the Arts Centre, a lovely visitation by Mrs Toots and then dinner with Deanne and Mr Windy, I took Eve's likeness. Just quicklyish with a camera you understand. Although when I say camera I mean a pinhole box with an 8x10 slide using Kentmere paper.

The box is on loan from a Mr Boyd who is taking himself and his partner Jesse off to Ireland for a week or two.

Yes, the darkslide has a leak. I noticed that too.

Holga-ed

The Crofter was going out to play with his coows at the big shed, so I jumped in the passenger seat of his present Pimpmobile and took the short ride in the warm and out of the cold wind blowing round at the moment.

I was about to go out and try to shoot a few snaps on the peats but in the end the weather - hail, rain and some sun- got the better of me. But at the time this snap was taken all was going well.

The coows have in the main moved into the big shed on account of the rain, cold wind and what have you - apart from two who don't agree with such a nanny-life and live outside pre-weathering their coats.

The lovely Crofter tempted the coows outside with some snacks for the day and took them round the big shed so they could look at the sea while eating. It was then I snapped them up with my Holga plastic camera. The camera works fine apart from a regular lightleak- not apparent here - that finds its way onto the film at irritating intervals despite my attempt at camera bondage.

Oh, and I'd run out of the requisite developer too so did the deed in PQ universal which didn't do the Shanghai GP3 film any harm at all.

Already out

Oooooh.
Drool etc

Coming out

All you need is a Zorki camera and Polypan-f

Two coows

Out to the peat

Since you ask, I don't cut peat these days. My health is not what it could be and Eve my lovely partner works full-time so doesn't have the time or energy. But I do like to wander the peat tracks of the area - scars on the heavily human modified landscape.

The weather yesterday was far from ideal - a cool wind blowing and overcast as well - almost a half hoolie if I'm honest. And trust me, I am. The idea had come to my wavering mind in the night that I must go out and shoot some film to finish a roll in the Hassie - so I did just that. The track I chose I've only walked once before. No doubt I've not been there often as it is inevitably very wet. Peat banks are usually wet and the tracks to them and through them reflect that. I picked my way carefully and found this old bit of heather which caught my eye. I shot it.

It isn't very interesting is it?

Just round there

Another BerggerPancro400 snap

Colour - again

Yes, this time depicting the great Stubbsy - taken on Agfa Vista 200 in a Zenit. Lovely lens wide open eh?

Berggerd

Another snap from my first roll of Bergger Pancro 400 film. This time a portrait of Admiral Hales wearing his ceremonial hat on board Ammonite.

First little Bergger

This is it, the first Bergger 400 Pancro snap I have. Taken using some AF Minolta and underdeveloped - unfortunately - in RO9 1:25.

Looks nice enough depite my developing incompetance - although, I'm not really sure I know what I'm looking for to be honest. The film seems to like trees well enogh anyway.

another

Same place, different snap.

Natural geological forms mixed with Humanoid interventions - lazy beds.

Keeping local

The sun was shining again this morning which rather scuppered my darkroom plans. I hate being inside when the sun shines. A stroll down the road was in order instead - down towards another beach, the closest one to here - and the loveliest. I had an old Baldo 6x6 camera with me and decided to collect a few sunrays down there.
The landscape down that placed really does it for me and I cannot go there without taking its portrait. I mean, look at it!

back there

It smiled at me

It's the stuff of nightmare - or my nightmares anyway. A car that smiled at me !

Makes an interesting lith print on some Fotospeed Lith paper I found at home. Well worth the darkroom time

Sheeps

That's what one looks like.

So you know

Springs have springed - or whatever they do at this time of year

The sun came out to play yesterday. I was sat on my pal Gerald's wee boatee Ammonite in Stormoway Marina [sounds grand but isn't] the warm rays of the bright light on my back, cup of tea in my hands as we put the world to right. You did notice it was better today didn't you?

The warm spring-like weather brought everyone out of hibernation so my planned walk turned into a short stroll - in stages interspersed with chats with friends met on the way. The thing about living in a place like this is that there's always someone you know around. I think I had a conversation with at least 12 personages over the two hours of so I was there. And I got our boatee Freyjas' engine back from the mechanical paddling machine whisperer. Apparently, there wasn't meant to be just water in the gearbox! Who knew that eh???

The colour film snap above I took in Lisbon

*

Oh er missus!

Some new film has come into my possession I've been wanting to try. It's the new BerggerPancro400 offering all sorts of lovely tones and things. Doesn't select the snaps though. Pity that. This is not that film. Obviously.

When I do have a snap from this film, i'll let you know. Possibly. If the snap is nice and everything

Darkroom

Mr Toots considered his bacon butty the other lunchtime, then ate it. Quickly.
He was going in the darkroom yesterday and I thought might just join him for a few moments. Only trouble was the sun was shining.

Tree

Pinch and a punch for the first of the month.

Ere, I'll have you know I posted over on The Crofter's blog too today