Fuji Neopan Acros

On June 14th I processed at batch of Fuji Neopan Acros 4" x 5" sheet film.  This film has been sporadically available in Canada for about a decade or so.  In the past couple of years it seems to be more consistently available, but the price has increased significantly in the past little while.  It now retails for about $57 USD for a box of 20 sheets.  This works out to nearly $4 CAD per sheet, and is one of the most expensive black and white sheet films available.   But I quite like it and it has become one of my favorite films...

Years ago I initially started out processing this film in D-76 developer, and gave the film slightly less exposure than it's rated speed.  Although this yields wonderful mid tones in evenly lit subjects, like portraits, I have switched to Rodinal developer for my pictorial work.  Over the past year or so I have been exposing the film at 80 iso and processing in Rodinal 1:50 for 11:00 minutes at 24C.  I quite like the results, and that's what I did for this current batch.  I think this is slightly overdeveloped from what I would consider normal development, and is probably about equivalent to N + 1/2.

These images were all taken on various trips... the Fall Photo Weekend to Jasper last November, the Badlands Trip last October, and various day trips over the winter and spring.

Day Trip

I'm slowly catching up posting on events that have taken place in recent weeks.  Back on June 12th my friend Jon and I went out for a day trip.  We used to do this a lot back in the day.  Seemed every other weekend we were heading out somewhere with our cameras, often with a stop at some small town tavern somewhere.  Jon gave up his darkroom some years ago for health reasons and we just seemed to drift apart a little after that.  I'm not sure why as Jon still enjoys photography and shoots digital.

This time we headed out to the Russian Monastery up to the northeast of Edmonton.  Although I have been here about 5 times in the last year, it has been a number of years since Jon was there.  As the buildings will likely not remain standing too much longer, we thought it was worthy of another visit.

The last few times I visited were in the fall and during the winter.  It looks very different with everything lush and green and wildflowers all over the place.  Years ago there used to be two turkey vultures nesting nearby and we always saw them circling the treetops during our visits.  True to form, they were back again this year.  We spent an enjoyable afternoon photographing here.  The piano that was left in the forest clearing is still here, but it obviously did not enjoy the past winter very much and is in very rough shape.

Later in the afternoon we stopped at the old barn near Wasel.  This one is losing it's battle with gravity as well.  The roof is caving in and the walls are bulging out and I'm expecting it to be on the ground sometime in the not too distant future.  For now it was still safe enough to venture inside, but I suspect not for much longer.

June 23

On June 23rd Margarit and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.  Seems like just yesterday we had that big wedding party out at my parent's place.  But, three daughters later, and as I think back at all the wedding guests we had, some of whom we have lost touch with, and others that are no longer with us, it drives home that it really has been quite a while.  Sure wish I hadn't wasted all those years on my first marraige and we had found each other sooner....

To celebrate the milestone Margarit and I went out for dinner and the girls stayed with my Mom.  We have mostly been living at my Mom's place lately anyway, as our renovation is dragging on and on...

We went to La Ronde, the revolving restaurant at the top of the Chateau Lacombe Hotel in downtown Edmonton.  The 24 storey tower is perched on the edge of the river valley and offers great views of the skyline, the river valley, and the sprawl into the suburbs.  Over the course of the two hours that we spent there, we listened to some live jazz music, and the restaurant made it through one 360 degree revolution.  It was a great evening.....

Catching up with Hockey Scores

I have fallen behind in posting hockey scores for recent Renegades games.  We have had five games scheduled over a stretch of 11 days, so there has been a lot of hockey.  In fact, in a few minutes I will be packing my gear and getting ready for another game later tonight.  Add to this the turmoil of the renovations going on at home and it has been a busy couple of weeks.  We won three of our last four games, all of which I played in with my broken toe.  We hope to continue our winning ways later tonight...!

On Wednesday June 10th we played a game at 7:45PM at Castledowns Arena against the Xtreme.  These guys used to be regular opponents of ours a few years back, and this is the first time we have faced off against them in a couple of years.  We scored a late goal for a narrow 2-1 victory.

On Saturday June 13th we played a game at 5:00PM back at Castldowns Arena against a team called the Blue Streak.  We had a full roster, and a solid backup goaltender, and I thought we played one of our better games of the year.  Despite that we were soundly defeated by a 5-1 score.

On Tuesday June 16th we played a game at 8:00PM at KofC Arena against the Gators.  We have had some heated battles against these guys in the past and in fact the last time we won a championship, a couple years ago, the Gators were our opponents.  We spotted them to an early 3 goal lead, including one that we scored on our own net.  But then we dug down and really started to play, eventually winning by a 4-3 score.

Then last Thursday June 18th we played a game at 6:30PM at Clare Drake Arena at the University of Alberta, against the Chiefs.  These guys were also regular opponents of ours in the past.  We were a few skaters short, had a backup goalie, but played our best game of the season.  We won easily by a score of 7-1, and I walked away with 2 assists.

We find ourselves in 3rd place out of 10 teams, after that last game against the Chiefs.  Hopefully we can continue our winning ways as we make a push through the last five or six games of the regular season, into the playoffs.

Hummingbird

While we were out at my Mom's place last weekend, I played around with the long telephotos lenses I have for my Nikon digital camera and attempted to photograph this hummingbird that was visiting the feeder.  I believe this is either a female or juvenile Ruby Throated Hummingbird.  Now that I have these photos I can refer back to our bird books and confirm this.  These photos are a little lacking in sharpness and there is some ghosting of the reflections.  I was shooting hand held, through Mom's triple glazed dinette window.

Off the Beaten Path posts

My friend Chris Doering recently posted a couple of articles on his blog, about our spring day trip down to the badlands.  Here are links to those two stories...

http://www.bigdoer.com/22257/exploring-history/laing-house-friends-and-film/

http://www.bigdoer.com/22344/exploring-history/east-coulees-historic-wood-bridge/

I wrote a blog post of my own about this trip back on May 3rd, and included a bunch of snapshots...

Efke PL24M in Rodinal 1:50...

It has been a challenge in recent weeks to keep up writing my blog posts.  We have living in a home that is a construction zone, and as we don't have a kitchen right now, we have been eating our meals mostly at my Mom's place, and occasionally in restaurants.  In fact the girls are sleeping most nights out at my Mom's place as well.  I have been staying at home, as I have so many things that I am working on, it makes my morning commute to work a little faster and shorter, and I've had a lot of hockey games as well.

Way back at the beginning of June I processed a batch of Efke PL25M 4" x 5" sheet film.  This was processed in Rodinal developer, 1:50, for 7:00 minutes at 24C.  Most of the film in this batch was from our spring trip to the Oregon coast but there was one image from a spring day trip down to the badlands.  A couple of these are duplicates of previously posted images, just shot on a different type of film...

Broke My Toe....

In game five of the Summer Hockey season I took a heavy slap shot off the toe of my skate.  It hurt a lot at the time, but I shook it off and kept playing.  That was back on June 8th.  My toe has been very sore every since.  So far there is no sign of bruising.  But the knuckle of the toe has become extremely tender and somewhat swollen.  I'm certain that I've cracked the bone.  I didn't bother to go to the doctor.  They would X-ray it and tell me that my toe is broken... or not, and it is just badly bruised.  But, as there is no evidence of a bruise, only a burning sensation and a lot of pain, I'm virtually certain it's cracked.  The doctors can't cast a broken toe... so there is nothing to be done but wait for it to heal.  So... in the mean time, I've continued to play hockey.

My foot is very tender and sore, particularly if I wear shoes.  With bare feet, or just socks on, it's not too bad.  I pop a couple of Ibuprofen each morning to dull the pain a little and help keep the swelling down, and then go about my day.  Matters were made a little worse the other day when I stumbled getting off a ladder at a jobsite and tumbled over a roof parapet onto the roof below.  It was only a drop of about three feet, but of course I banged my injured toe.  Surprisingly it doesn't feel too bad with skates on.  I guess there is very little flex in the boot of a skate, and the toe is supported.  So, I've continued to play hockey and have actually played three more games since the incident.  As long as I don't take another slap shot on the foot, I think I'll be OK...

Kodak High Speed Infrared 4" x 5"

Back at the beginning of June I processed another batch of Kodak High Speed Infrared 4" x 5" film.  I have been struggling with this stuff a little lately.  There have been issues with uneven development and fogging.  I have come to the conclusion that there are light leaks in my darkroom that are the main contributors to this problem.  Except for times when I am traveling, my film is loaded into film holders in my darkroom, unloaded from the film holders in my darkroom, and then processed in stainless steel hangers and open tanks, in my darkroom.  These three doses of exposure to low level light have resulted in fogging of my film.  I became aware of the problem and took steps to prevent the low level exposure that has been occurring during processing.  Although this has not fully resolved the problem, it has made an improvement.  In the future, now that I am aware of the issue, I will take steps to eliminate these light leaks that are resulting in fogging of the film during loading and unloading.  Despite the fact that this film all passed it's best before date about 15 years ago I am optimistic that with a little care and I attention I can continue to shoot it.  Here are scans of a few of the better images from this most recent batch....