Cloverly and First

Margarit and the girls are returning home from their visit to Austria, later this evening.  They have been away for most of the month of August.  While they were away, I stayed in the city and kept my middle daughter Ryan, and her boyfriend Braeden, company.  Initially, when the girls left, the other kids didn't have a drivers license so I had to drive Braeden to and from work every day.  But Ryan practiced driving, and went for her road test on the 18th.  She passed, and right after that I signed over our old SUV to her, and the two registered and insured it.  Since they have this new found freedom they are out and about all the time, and I don't see them as much.

I also got caught up on a bunch of chores around the house...  cleaned the eavestroughs, cut the grass, watered the plants, looked after the pets, got all of the vehicles serviced, the list goes on.  In between all of that I spent a bunch of time in my darkroom.  I developed over 125 sheets of 4" x 5" film, as well as several rolls.  I never did get around to any printing, as I had hoped, but I put a significant dent in my backlog of film processing.  That said, I still have 21 sheets left from 2022 to be processed, and 24 from 2023.  But this is an improvement of the previous situation.

One of the batches that I processed was 20 sheets of Fuji Neopan Acros 100.  Sadly this film is no longer made in sheet format, so when I current stock runs out, I will no longer be able to shoot it.  I really like the way that it renders mid tones, so I will likely ration my last few sheets for suitable special occasions.  Most of the images in this batch were from my trip last fall to southern Saskatchewan, with Margarit.

This old abandoned service garage was in a small town in the Rural Municipality of Arlington No. 79.  I shot this on September 16th 2024, at about 11:00 in the morning.  I used my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a slightly wide Fujinon 125mm lens.  The film was rated at 80 iso and exposed for 1/4 second at F16.0.  Development was in Rodinal 1:50 for 11:00 minutes at 24C.  This yielded a slight push in contrast, which was further enhanced by the use of a #25 Red Filter.  I may have posted another version of this image in the past...?  But I really like the way that this one turned out.