Another Watercolor

Over two months ago, before I broke my leg, I started work on another watercolor painting.  I always work on these painting out at the cottage in Nordegg, and keep all my supplies out there.  I only got so far as selecting one of my photographs, and beginning to sketch it out.  

I have decided that I will do some paintings of old hotels, from my travels with the Beer Parlour Project.  The first was a painting of the Victoria Hotel in Bruderheim.  The second one, that I just started on, is of the Elk River Inn in Hosmer.  Sadly, the owner of this hotel passed away about a year ago, and it has been closed.  

I took some artistic license and excluded the concrete barricade and the vehicles out front.  When I recently returned to the cottage, I continued work on this piece.  I got most of the painting part down before I had to pack up and head back to the city.  The next time I go out to the cottage I will continue working on it.  There is a little paint remaining to be added and then I will turn to graphite and ink to finish detailing the piece.

When I returned to the cottage at the end of February, the first few days were very busy.  Margarit, Helena and Hank came out for a bit.  We were thrilled to have Helena finally agree to come out again, as it has been about a year since she last visited.  Shortly after the girls arrived, our friends Frank and Chris from Drumheller joined us.  We had a great visit and enjoyed some time together.  Frank has been out to Nordegg at least once before, but this was Chris' first visit to our cottage.

Margarit and Helena headed back to the city after a couple of days.  Frank and Chris stayed an extra day or two.  They headed back to Drumheller, the day after the big dump of snow.  I remained at the cottage for a few extra days, by myself.  I worked on some files on the computer, and generally took it easy.  I still have to be careful with my broken leg and rest it as it continues to heal.  Eventually I returned to my painting of the Elk River Inn.

I'm not sure if "painting" or "watercolor" is really the right description.  In somes ways it is really just a colored sketch.  The general colors are laid down first with watercolor paint, and then all the details are added afterwards with a combination of ink and graphite.  I won't finish this one for a little longer, as there is more work that remains to be done.  I managed to get most of the detailing done, but the remainder will have to be left for the next time I come back out to the cottage.  I'm already thinking about the next hotel that I will work on.

I had a change of heart and decided to finish this one up before I left the cottage to return to the city.  The next time I come out to Nordegg I'll be able to start on a fresh piece.  The watercolor paper had a slight curl to it when I took this phone snapshot, so there is a little bit of distortion in the image.  Of course if it is framed or scanned that problem will be eliminated.  I've shared these with my colleagues from the Beer Parlour Project and they think that I should include at least some of them on the website.  I think I'll be OK with doing that, but want to wait until I build up a little more of a portfolio. 

The Groundhog was Wrong

I'm virtually certain that Punxsutawney Phil and Wiarton Willie, the weather prognosticating Groundhogs in Pennsylvania and Ontario, did NOT see their shadows back on Groundhog Day in early February.  That's supposed to mean that winter will come to a quick end.  The alternative, had they seen their shadow, would have been six more weeks of winter.

Well, we had really mild weather through the last half of February, and the snow was going quickly.  Then, here we are, almost exactly a month after Groundhog Day, I woke up to this out at the cottage in Nordegg...!

Now we have to hope that the other spring weather prediction proves correct and saves us.  March comes in like a Lamb and goes out like a Lion... or vice versa.  We've had the lion part, so bring on the lamb....!

For the past week or so we have been seeing high temperatures up to as much as +12C.  On March 3rd I woke up to about 4 to 5 inches of fresh snow.  Fortunately it was not really cold... only about -2.  I suppose that on the plus side, this will be good for the forest fire situation.  Fire season officially gets underway in Alberta on March 1st, and crews are preparing for what might happen.  A few days ago, an old fire from last year, was whipped back to life by some strong winds.  It must have burned down into the ground and been relatively dormant through the winter.  This fire was located about 30km south of Nordegg.  I imagine that it has probably been doused now...!?

If you look really closely at this photograph of my back yard you can see a raven up in the trees.  There is also a deer, right near the center of the image, behind a small spruce.  Shortly after I took this snapshot we had nine White Tail Deer running around out in the snow.  Four were now antlerless bucks, two were Doe's and three were yearling fawns.  In another two or three months those fawns will be chased away and the Doe's will be dropping this year's fawns.

On the Mend

My leg continues to improve.  I am still a week or so away from my next appointment with my surgeon.  At that time more X-rays will be taken and then the healing of my broken fibula will be assessed.  Although the incision is still a little raw and tender, it is a lot better than it was just a couple of weeks ago.  The bone seems to be healing well, at least based on my assessment.  If I put my foot down heavily, on an uneven surface, the flexing of my ankle causes some mild pain.  But most of the time it is fine, and only after walking on it for extended periods do I experience some fatigue and swelling.  I'm hopeful that the next assessment will give me the green light to consider some more significant rehab.  Perhaps some physiotherapy or at least a return to more strenuous activity.

David Thompson Country Calendar - March Image

This is the image that I selected for the March page of my David Thompson Country calendar.  This calendar is available to purchase in Nordegg at the Beehive Artisan Market.  

This grove of aspen trees is up on the Kootenay Plains, further up the North Saskatchewan Valley from Abraham Lake.

Printing for Apparitions.... Again...

On February 24th I returned to the darkroom and continued printing for the Apparitions project.  This time around I worked on a couple of different negatives.  The prints of the priest's collars and duffel bag are from the same negative.  These were taken in an abandoned train station at the abandoned Shandro Museum.  This building has since been relocated to another historic site in St. Paul.  

I couldn't decide if a tighter crop was better than the wider view.  The wider shot includes some empty spaces, that add to the feeling of desolation, but I'm not sure if they add anything to the image.  I will consider both of these prints for the Apparitions project.  However, I understand that my colleague Arturo has printed a similar image, so perhaps his ends up included, and mine end up being passed over.  So be it....

The other image was taken on the same date, less than an hour prior.  One can only imagine why a child's doll would be left lying on the floor, together with a hatchet, in the upstairs room of a train station.  Or perhaps we can not imagine why...?  In my mind that is why this image holds some intrigue.  It is destined to be included in Apparations, while the others, perhaps not.....?

Keep in mind that these snapshots were taken with the images in a tray of water, being held in advance of further processing.  The reflection of the safelight is visible in some of the snapshots.  At the point that these snapshots were take I had not yet toned the images, or done any localized bleaching.  The final prints, in my mind at least, are a little better than these snapshots suggest.

March Calendar Image

This is the image that I selected for the March page of my Fine Art Monochrome calendar.  This is the calendar that I give away every year, to friends and family.  This year I seem to recall that I printed 26 copies.  They cost me about 15 bucks each, plus a number of them have to be mailed, so the expense is not insignificant.  But everyone seems to really enjoy the calendar and I continue to get requests for them.  So I continue to produce one every year.

This is a disused Sundance Lodge out on the Kootenay Plains, not far from my cottage.  Some of the land in this area belongs to the Bighorn Reserve.  I stumbled upon this while I was wandering around one spring photographing the aspen groves.

Image 11 - First Utah Trip - Juniper Fence

This is another image I am working on for inclusion in the Photo Album I intend to have printed.  These will be images from my three trips to Utah.  This is Image Number 11, on a long list of close to 200 images that will be considered.  

My friends Rob and Brad traveled with me to Utah in 2013 and again in 2015.  We stayed in a rental house in Kanab, and each time spent a week exploring the area.  We used the same rental as a base for both trips.  In between, in the spring of 2014, I took Margarit and the girls to the area, and at that time we also used the same home as a base.

This photograph was taken on the second day trip of our first stay in Utah.  Rob and Brad and I set out to the east of Kanab and eventually turned off onto the House Rock Valley Road.  This road travels south and eventually crosses the border into Arizona.  The Coyote Buttes, the Wave and the White Pocket are all accessed off of this road.  This area is known as the Paria Plateau.  I believe that this particular location is within the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.

This corral was made with juniper trunks, as that is pretty much the only wood to be found in the area.  I'm not sure if it was used for cattle or horses.  I seem to recall that the Parks staff may have used this for their horses, but it was so long ago that I visited, that I can no longer be sure.

I shot this image on Kodak Tri-X Pan 320, rated at 320 iso.  Development was Normal, in PMK for 9:35 minutes.  I shot this with my Ebony SV45TE 4" x 5" view camera and a Fujinon 125mm lens.  A #25 Red filter creates some separation in the sky, and increased contrast.  The exposure was for 1/8 of a second at F22.0.  The photograph was taken on October 15th 2013, at about 10:30 in the morning. 

 

Lawnmower

This is a scan of an older negative.  When I shot this image I thought it might be something to consider for my Apparitions project.  Obviously it is an old push lawn mower.  In this instance it is probably more like a snow mower.  I was returning from a weekend in Jasper with some colleagues from the Monochrome Guild.  This was our annual Fall Photo Weekend in 2022.  We stopped at a private family cemetery beside the Yellowhead Highway, and I found this.

This image was exposed on a 4" x 5" sheet of Kodak Tri-X Pan 320, rated at 400iso and given N+1 Development in PMK.  Development was on my Jobo Processor for 16:40 minutes at 20C.  I shot this on October 24th 2022 at about 1:00 in the afternoon.  It was taken with my Ebony view camera and a Fujinon 125mm lens, with no filter.  The exposure was for 1/8 second at F25.0.

Lundbreck Falls

This scan dates back to late 2023.  I shot this on September 18th 2023 at about 9:00 in the morning.  We had just finished up a successful visit to the Crowsnest Pass area for the Beer Parlour Project.  This was BP 2.1 at the Greenhill Hotel in Blairmore, and BP 7.0 at the Grand Union Hotel in Coleman.  On the long drive back home to Edmonton, Margarit and I made a quick stop at Lundbreck Falls.  I had stopped here before, and photographed the falls from the viewing areas up above.  But this was the first time I packed my camera down the trail to the base of the falls.

This recently processed sheet of Kodak T-Max 100 was rated at 80iso and developed normally in 510 Pyro.  I shot this with my Ebony view camera and a Schneider 135mm lens.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F32.0.  The small aperture was necessary to hold depth of field from the foreground rocks back to the waterfall.  The long shutter speed showed some nice motion blur in the waterfall.

Spirit Tree

Last October, myself and three other members of the Monochrome Guild headed out on our annual fall trip.  Normally we have referred to it as the Fall Photo Weekend, but now that most of the Guild, and in particular the ones taking part this year, are retired, the weekend part didn't matter.

Normally we have visited Jasper National Park but this past fall, with the wildfires still in the recent past, many of the hotels and businesses had not yet reopened to the public.  So we elected to head down to the badlands of southern Alberta instead.

This is a photograph of a once majestic Plains Cottonwood tree.  It is said to be over 300 years old and would have been a sapling when the first white explorers visited the area.  Some of the branches were still alive at this late point in the fall when I visited, but the tree is obviously not doing well.  I shot this on a sheet of Ilford HP5 film, rated at 320 iso.  I used my Ebony view camera and a wide Nikkor 75mm lens.  A #25 Red filter added some contrast and created a little separation between sky and clouds. Development was in 510 Pyro, for 7:25 minutes, at 24C.  The exposure was 1/8 second at F22.0.  I shot this on October 17th 2024, at about 4:00 in the afternoon.  

The image kind of reminds me of the famous painting, "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.  He created that work in 1893, and the tree would have been well advanced at that time.

This is another shot of the same tree, taken over 25 years earlier.  This image was included in the traveling gallery exhibition called "Procession West" that my friend Rob Michiel and I put together around 2013.  That show, with this print included, toured around various galleries throughout Western Canada.  I was much younger and somewhat fitter back in those days, and carried around a much heavier camera than I use now, in my old age.  Originally I worked with a heavy Sinar F1 monorail camera which I packed around in a protective plastic case mounted onto a metal back pack frame.  That outfit, together with tripod, weighed well over 60 Lbs.  These days, my camera outfit, using the lighter and more compact Ebony view cameras, weighs in at about half that weight.  I did use the same Nikkor SW 75mm lens for both shots.

This older image was taken on a sheet of the long discontinued Agfapan APX-100 sheet film rated at 50 iso.  I developed it in Rodinal 1:50, for 14:00 minutes at 20C.  This 4" x 5" sheet was exposed on August 27th 1997, at about 7:30 in the morning.  A #12 Yellow filter bumped contrast a little but to a lesser extent than the red filter I selected a quarter century later.  The exposure for this one was 1/2 second at F22.0.

Image 10 - First Utah Trip - Grosvenor Arch

This is another scan from the Utah photo album that I am slowly working on.  This shot was taken near the end of our first day of exploring, on the first trip down to southern Utah.  This is Grosvenor Arch, at the northern end of the Cottonwood Canyon Road, in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  After we finished up shooting here we still had a long drive... a couple hours as I recall... to circle back to our base.  We were staying in the small town of Kanab.

This shot was taken on a sheet of Fuji Neopan Acros 100, rated at 64iso.  Development was in Rodinal 1:50 for 8:00 minutes.  I shot this with my Ebony view camera and a long 400mm telephoto lens.  A Red filter increased contrast and deepened the value of the sky.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F18.0.  The photograph was taken on October 14th 2013, at about 6:00 in the evening.

Dirty Dektol

In terms of developing film, I have used many different developers.  The list is long and includes products such as Rodinal, Perceptol, Microphen, T-Max, 510-Pyro, PMK, X-Tol, D-76, and more.  But, when it comes to paper developers, I have mostly just used one... good old Kodak Dektol.  I dabbled a little with a few others, but always came back to Dektol.  I'm not sure why this is the case...?  The choice of developer makes a fairly obvious difference to the look of the negative, but with paper, not so much so.  There are some differences, but they are not as pronounced.

Some months ago it was announced that Kodak was going out of the chemistry business and would no longer make any of the darkroom supplies.  But then a short time later it was announced that their chemical division had been sold and taken over by another company.  Rumour has it that the new owner is a Chinese company, but I'm not certain about that.

Dektol is supplied as a dry powder that is mixed with water to make a stock solution.  That stock solution is further diluted for use.  I recently bought some of the new material and mixed up a batch in advance of my printing session.

Much to my dismay a saw that the dry powder was tan colored, when in the past it had always been white.  And, when I mixed up the stock solution, it was a dark reddish brown.  In all the years that I have used this material it was always been a clear solution with a bit of a sort of pinkish tinge to it.

I checked with my colleague Arturo and asked if he had experienced the same thing.  He confirmed that he had, but that the material seemed to still work OK.  He recommended that I test mine before doing any serious work.  So, I ran a few small 8x10 test prints on some cheap RC paper that I had in stock.  It did in fact seem to work just fine.  So I set about using the stuff on my current printing work for the Apparitions project.

I'm still not sure that I totally trust this stuff and will make a point of using it quickly.  I will also limit the number of prints that I run through a tray full in one printing session.  I'm fairly concerned about this and will see if the next batch that I mix up is the same.  It may be time to consider switching to a different paper developer.

Printing for Apparitions

For the first time in many weeks I was able to go down into my darkroom and work on making some prints.  In recent weeks, as my broken leg continued to recover, I was able to organize my darkroom and make some unsharp masks.  Since I've returned home from my recent trip to Nordegg I've now made time to get back downstairs and start on some printing.

Arturo and I are supposed to have our exhibition prints ready for the Apparitions project by May. Originally the deadline was in January, but we requested and were granted an extension due to a delay in the availability of our silver gelatin paper from Ilford, the manufacturer.  In hindsight, its good thing we are able to do that, as my broken leg resulted in further delays.  The reason that we even have a deadline is because we were awarded an Edmonton Arts Council grant to help finance putting our exhibition together.  We have the shipping crates essentially built, and just have to attach a little hardware and then they are ready to go.  We also have all of our framing materials... frames, glass, mounts, matts, hardware, etc. all cut and ready to go.  It is just the printing that remains, and then install the prints into the frames.

The exhibition will consist of 32 large prints, 16 by each of us.  I have actually printed about six or eight of mine, but I'm not 100% happy with all of them.  This is always a problem for me when it comes down to preparing prints for exhibition.  I can never decide what to include and I always begin to second guess myself.  Some of my more recent work often gets more seriously considered than images that are a couple years older, and that I have already grown tired of.

On February 20th I had a little time, so I tested a questionable batch of Dektol developer.  When it proved to be alright, I continued working and printed one negative.  Then the next day, I returned to the darkroom and spent about five hours down there.  By the end of it I my leg was pretty tired.  I think my good leg actually feels worse than the broken one, because I favor it so much.  In any event, there was no significant pain and it seemed to go alright.  I attempted to print four negatives.  One I was totally unhappy with an gave up after one work print.  But the other three turned out pretty well.  

I think that out of all the prints I have made so far I have about six that will make it into the exhibition.  That leaves me with ten more to print before the deadline.  One of the issues that I have is that I know I have some strong newer images, but I have not even developed the film yet.  But, I will focus my attention on getting this project wrapped up over the next several weeks.

We have already begun sending out gallery submissions to find venues that are willing to exhibit our show.  We have four submissions already sent out, and two more in the works.  These are typically sent out well in advance and should we be accepted, it would likely be for 2026 or 2027.  Over the course of the next year or so we plan on sending out at least two dozen more submissions.

Rails

This is another scan of a recently processed large format negative.  This sheet of 4" x 5" film is Kodak T-Max 100, processed in 510 Pyro, 1:100, for 7:45 minutes, at 24C.

This is a detail shot taken up at the Nordegg Historic Site during one of my tours last fall.  These are small gauge rail lines that are used to move coal cars around.  This intersection is by the rotary dumper and the scale.  I shot this with my Ebony view camera and a 125mm lens.  It was taken on September 9th at about 12:30 in the afternoon.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F25.0.

Oh Canada !

This is the time of year that all hockey fans dread... the All Star Break...!  The regular season is interrupted for several days while select star players travel to some select city, to play a meaningless game.  The game has no intensity, as no one wants to get hurt.  Most fans hate it, with the exception of young kids that like to see all the stars together.

This year the National Hockey League finally smartened up and organized something different, the 4 Nations Cup.  NHL players from all the teams were selected to play for their country in a four team tournament.  This included Canada, USA, Sweden and Finland.  Sadly some of the countries were not represented, as they did not have enough players in the NHL to put together a competitive team.  And, of course the Russians were excluded, and rightfully so.

Over the course of about ten days each team played the other three teams once.  Then the two teams that finished at the top, played off in the championship game.  Canada beat Sweden in overtime in their first game.  Then they lost to the Americans in the second one.  The score was close at 2-1 late in the game when the Americans iced it with an empty net goal.  Then Canada beat Finland 5-3 in a game that got a closer than it started.  So the show down for the championship would be between Canada and the cocky Americans.  All tournament long the Americans were shooting off their big mouths and totally annoying everyone north of the 49th.

It was about as far away from an All-Star game as one could imagine.  All the players were honored to put on the jersey's of their country.  The games were fast, hard hitting and intense.  There were numerous injuries over the course of the event... fortunately none extremely serious.  It was very entertaining and kept Canadians glued to the TV for the duration of the event.

The championship game was played in Boston on February 20th.  Canada scored first.  The Americans later tied the game and then went ahead.  Canada evened it up and the game ended up tied and going into overtime.  Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers scored the game winner for Canada...!

Margarit and I went to the neighborhood pub, Mimi's and watched the game there with a bunch of friends and neighbors.  The place was packed and the crowd erupted every time Canada scored, and particularly with the overtime winner.  It was only fitting given the current political situation in the world that Canada managed to beat the Americans.  The Orange-Moron-In-Charge down south was spouting his usual verbal diarrhoea going into the game.  Hopefully the loss shut him up for a little while.  My friend Brian texted me right after we won...   "Canada!!!!!  F*ck the f*cking Americans All to Hell.  Beat them in their own house"  Later this image was circulating extensively on social media.  Not sure of the source so I can't give an image credit, but I will include it here.

Afternoon Delight

Much of western Canada has been in the grips of an extreme cold spell for the past week or so.  Record temperatures were set in parts of southern Alberta in recent days.  It has been very cold everywhere, and the wind has made it worse.  The central prairies of Saskatchewan and Manitoba were even colder than Alberta.  The front ranges out around Nordegg have experienced milder temperatures and less snow than the rest of the province, and the rest of the prairies for that matter.

When I arrived at the cottage on Valentine's day the daytime high temperatures were getting up around -20, with night time lows dropping to near -30.  I understand that it was somewhat colder than that back in Edmonton.  Since then it has been gradually warming up, and the days have been mostly sunny.

Most of the people in the subdivision, with the exception of the permanent residents, went home after the Family Day Long weekend, just as the weather improved.  By Monday and Tuesday the afternoon high temperatures were peaking at about -7C.

On Tuesday February 18th I took a drive west out to Abraham Lake.  I'm still not overly mobile with my busted leg in an air boot, so it was essentially just a drive.  I stepped out of the truck to take a couple of snapshots, but did not venture off the road.  As usual, the level of the reservoir has dropped steadily over the winter.  The east end of the lake, near the dam, is quite snow covered.  At the elbow of the lake, near Mount Michener, there is only patchy snow.  Windy Point lived up to it's name and the wind was sweeping the snow across the frozen lake surface.  There is not a lot of snow there, and any south facing slopes are pretty much bare.  There is more snow at Nordegg, but still less than we have experienced in Edmonton.  For whatever reason there was not really any wildlife out and about and the only deer that I saw were in the subdivision, mostly around my yard.

The Bucket

This is a scan of a recently processed negative.  This is a 4" x 5" sheet of Ilford HP5+, rated at 320 iso and given Normal Development in 510 Pyro.  Processing was for 7:25 minutes at 24C.

I shot this during one of several tours I took of the Nordegg Historic site, last year.  I worked with the management team at the site and had full permission to be there photographing with my large view camera.  Access to this site is limited to guided tours and there is no public access.

I shot this on September 9th of last year at about 12:00 noon.  I used my Ebony view camera and a long 210mm lens.  This detail shot of an old bucket was taken in the hoist house.  Back in the days when the mine operated, 75 years ago, this winch was used to draw mine cars loaded with coal, up from the underground workings.  It was also used, with its braking mechanism, to lower the empty cars back down into the mine.  The entrance was not vertical, rather is was an inclined slope.  Today the entrance is blocked and access underground is no longer possible.

Due to the low light conditions in this building the exposure was a lengthy 30 seconds at F20.0.  This despite the use of a relatively fast film.

Image 9 - First Utah Trip - Candyland

This is another shot, for the upcoming album, and from the first trip down to Utah.  This is still from the first day trip of exploring with my friends Brad and Rob, on the Cottonwood Canyon Road.  By this point it is getting later in the day, and we are near the northern end of the road, in an area called Candyland.  This is still part of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.

This photograph was taken on a sheet of Fuji Neopan Acros 100 rated at 64 iso and given normal development in Rodinal 1:50.  Development was for 8:00 minutes at 24C.  I shot this on October 14th 2013 at about 5:20 in the afternoon.  I used my Ebony view camera and a wide 80mm lens.  The late day low light was already quite contrasty and there was a significant difference in subject brightness between the upper highlights and the foreground shadows.  As a result a filter was not necessary.  The exposure was for 1/4 second at F25.0.

Return to Nordegg - Finally...

On Valentine's Day I traveled back to Nordegg, for the first time in over two months.  Margarit decided to stay in the city with the girls... so it was not very romantic.

I must say that our power bills this winter have been rather high.  Both the main cottage and the guest cottage are heated with forced air electric furnaces.  It is a very reliable heat source as we do not have to worry about propane freezing up or vents choking off due to condensation build up.  The solar panels on the guest cottage don't supplement anything in the winter as they are often covered with snow, and the days are very short.  When we are out at the cottage, we heat with wood and the electric furnaces don't really run.  But when we are not around, even with the themostats turned way down, the power consumption is not insignificant.

I attended a meeting of local residents in town on Saturday the 15th.  We are concerned about the ongoing Land Use Bylaw rewrite that is being undertaken by the County.  There are a lot of concerns about what is going to change and residents wanted to voice these to the County.   It was well attended, with nearly 50 people present.

Since that meeting I've just hung around at the cottage and enjoyed the peace and quiet.  Although it is the Family Day long weekend, there are not a lot of people around.  It's been pretty cold, with night time lows approaching -30C, plus a wind chill.

But I'll hang around for a bit... keep the chill out of the place, and enjoy the fresh mountain air.  Not really much on the agenda, as my mobility is still somewhat limited.  I'll play a little guitar, work on a watercolor painting, and catch up on some correspondence.  In a few days I'll return to the city and carry on with some darkroom work, but I plan to return to the mountains as soon as I can, and on a much more regular basis.

Beer Parlour Project - BP 16.0 - Billiards

Recently, as my broken leg began to recover, I was able to return to the darkroom and begin to get back to work.  I developed two batches of film.... some Kodak T-Max 100 and some Ilford HP5+... both in 510 Pyro.  I also made a bunch of unsharp masks, in advance of some printing that I intend to get started on.  

This one is from the batch of HP5 that I developed.  Most of that batch were sheets that were rated at 320 iso and given Normal development.  But there were a handful of sheets, including this one, that were rated at 1600 iso and given extended development for 30:00 minutes.  These were all from various Beer Parlour Project outings.

This one was taken during the BP 16.0 outing at the Grand Hotel in Rimbey.  This was on August 16th 2024.  The shot was taken at about 6:30 in the evening.  I used my Ebony view camera and a 125mm lens.  The exposure was for 1/2 second at F8.0.

On more recent outings I have begun to use a couple of floodlights.  This allows for shorter exposures and/or a smaller aperture, for greater depth of field.  A lot of past shots have been ruined by bar patrons that were unable to hold still long enough for the long shutter speeds, although this one worked out alright.

Surgeon's Report

On Monday February 10th I went in to a follow up appointment with my surgeon.  X-rays were taken and she reviewed the progress of my recovery.  She said that the break in my fibula was beginning to heal, but was not fully healed yet.  I was given permission to start putting weight on my right leg, and to begin carefully walking with my air boot.  I was told to continue to rely on my crutches, if conditions were slippery, or uneven.  Since then I have followed that advice, and everything has gone well. 

I will be returning for another follow up appointment in four weeks.  After that I will start rehab for the eventual return to regular, more strenuous, activity.... like skating...!!

This is the information that was included in my medical record...

The doctor couldn't remember exactly how many screws she put into my leg.  She said that usually it was six or seven for a fracture such as mine.  I was awake and alert during the procedure, and I counted six.... based on the sound.  I didn't realize that a plate was also put in, but this report confirms that.  I have the option of having the screws removed... about a year from now... if it turns out that they bother me.  I'm thinking, unless there is a significant issue, I don't want to go through surgery again....!

PROCEDURE(S): GR ANKLE RIGHT

HISTORY: Post op. Rt. ankle. sx date 2025-Jan-09. Assess healing.

COMPARISON: 20 January, 2025 right ankle radiograph.

INTERPRETATION:

Interval removal of an overlying cast.

Unchanged lateral plate and screw construct and an interfragmentary screw fixating the oblique distal fibular fracture.

Margins of the distal fibular fracture are indistinct, suggestive of early healing. No change in fracture fragment position.

Symmetric and congruent talocrural joint. Tiny joint effusion.

Mild soft tissue swelling overlying the distal fibula, as seen previously.

IMPRESSION

No adverse interval change. Early healing associated with the distal fibular fracture.

La Fille

Here are a couple of new old negatives.  These are from a recently processed batch of Kodak T-Max 100 that I developed in 510 Pyro.  Development was for 7:45 minutes at 24C.  

Both of these negatives were taken on October 22nd of 2023.  I was out on the west coast with my friends Arturo and Chris.  We were enjoying a week of exploring, and looking for subject matter that might work for the Apparitions project.  This boat was moored at the Ford Cove Marina on Hornby Island.  I took the two shots about ten minutes apart with my Ebony view camera.  The first one, of the bow of the boat, was taken with a wide 90mm lens.  The exposure was for 1/15 of a second at F20.0.

The second shot, of the mooring lines was taken with a 125mm lens.  The exposure for that one was 1/8 of a second at F20.0.

Images 7 and 8 - First Utah Trip - The Clansmen

Here are a couple more images from the first Utah trip.  I'm in the process of editing these, and putting together a photo album of the best images from the trips that I made over three years.

On the first day trip, of the first Utah visit, that I made with my friends Rob and Brad, we drove the Cottonwood Canyon Road in Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument.  It was an all day affair.  The southern end of the road was an hour's drive east of the town we were staying in.  And then it took all day to drive the road.  By the time we got back to our base in the evening, it was long after dark.

Along the road we came upon these formations.  I'm not sure if they have any official name, but my friend Rob thought they looked like Clansmen, so that's what we called them.

The first shot was taken on Kodak Tri-X Pan 320.  I rated the film at 400 iso and gave it increased development to boost contrast.  I took this shot on October 14th of 2013 at about 4:30 in the afternoon.  I used my Ebony view camera and a wide 80mm lens.  A #25 Red Filter further increased contrast.  Development was in PMK for 16:40 minutes at 20C.  My Jobo processor was used to provide constant agitation during development.

The second shot is a tighter detail shot of the same scene.  It was taken on Fuji Neopan Acros 100 rated at 64 iso.  It's surprising how much different the tones appear, even though the two images were taken in the same place, about 15 minutes apart.  This one was with my Ebony view camera and a longer 210mm lens.  The same #25 Red filter was used to increase contrast, though development was Normal, in Rodinal 1:50 for 8:00 minutes.