Justfolk's photos

I don't remember taking this picture but I do remember having trouble getting the camera to take pictures when I wanted it to. So perhaps this was one of the unwanted pictures. Or . . . maybe I did take it deliberately. It was in the thick crowd at the annual Regatta at Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John's a few days ago. It is Kodak Colorplus 200 film, an often-quite-nice colour film, but the picture cried out to me for desaturation. So I asked PSP to apply its blue filter and I got this. The camera was the little P&S Rollei Prego 125, probably with the zoom extended somewhat.

I do not know where the water that disappears into this drain will end up. I suppose it will empty into the same river that the water originally flowing down this area found its way into. The spring from which the water comes to this ditch & drain is about 300 metres behind me here. Seventy or eighty years ago my grandfather dug it out as a back-up well for his house which was about 300 metres ahead of me here. The water flowed down through a thick forest where my family got wood, berries and mushrooms for years. The well however was lost for several decades after my grandfather died in the late 1950s. After searching for it for a couple of years, I found it again about twenty years ago and dug it out again. It has produced beautifully clear water ever since. But we haven't owned the land for about a decade now and, over the past year, the forest my grandfather lived in was bulldozed and turned into roads and lots for new houses to be built in the next year. Today I went looking for the the old spring well and found it surprisingly easily. And I followed the running water down to here. I'm tempted to put a sign by the spring naming it for my grandfather. Kodak ColorPlus 200 film in the Rollei Prego 125 which seems to overexpose somewhat, along with vignetting quite substantially. I think I used the wide angle (38 mm) end of the zoom here, so that vignetting is a bit of a surprise. A good surprise.

If I had turned about ten degrees to the right my camera would have shown two huge icebergs on the horizon. It was 32 degrees here, on the Cape itself. For the Celsius-impaired, that's about 90 Fahrenheit. It is a rare temperature on Cape Bonavista. The fellow on the height was looking at a selection of inukshuks and other "marking-men" (or "American men," to some) that had been placed there by previous visitors. He might have been waiting for whales in the water, too, since they were around. This was shot in the Olympus E-P2 with the very nice M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.7 lens. I converted it to b&w (and cropt it somewhat) in PSP. I gave it that tacky vignette and border at the same time. I'm sucker for vignettes and borders.

The tide was well out when I took this picture on a hot, quiet afternoon last week. I had been working in the garden when P, D and their friend floated into view. They were taking pictures on the water which was as still as it gets. We chatted for five minutes. I had my camera handy too so I took their picture. Then they carried on. I use the rope (on the left) to get down to and back up from the beach. There are good rocks down there that I carry up to use in the garden. It's a drop of about ten metres (30 feet). The old people talk about the fish factory that used to be in this little cove about sixty years ago. If you look closely here you can see some of the concrete and wooden piers that held it up. The picture was taken with the Olympus E-P2 and the pancake-like 9mm f/8 fisheye lens.

Alice, on the left, is a little older, and Jack, on the right, is a little younger than the friend whose birthday we were celebrating last night. She's not in the picture. I like the texture of pictures shot at the extreme high ISO ratings of this camera, the Olympus E-P2. It looks like old film. :)

But there are so many questions. Borrowed, maybe? Given away? Just that day? What about wine?

I keep promising myself that I won't post any more cat pictures, and especially not cat-in-window pictures. But I keep breaking the promise.

It is hard to know how to judge a character like Massimo Coppo. He dresses in rags and walks barefoot. He is certainly a heterodox thinker in the tidy Franciscan city of Assisi. He is also an accomplished seller of wares to tourists; here he is proffering his book on the "spirit of prophecy." 1990s-era Tri-X in Olympus Pen D3

One of the most pleasurable experiences of visiting Italy this spring was being in Florence on Liberation Day, April 25th, and being able to follow along the riverbank for a kilometre, onto the Ponte Vecchio, this band. Here they are singing the old Resistance song "Bella Ciao." The band is called Fiati Sprecati. Among this holiday crowd were a few tourists like me who didn't know the words, but many were locals who gladly joined in to sing, dance, and throw their fists in the air. That's Benvenuto Cellini whose bust hovers over the band approvingly. Given the horrors in Palestine right now, I thought it appropriate to post this as a small token of hope and support.

This is a tight crop of the three friends in an earlier picture who were photographing their stuffed toy in Florence.

When no one's looking, it's like the Lovin Spoonful song Orvieto cats, play clean as country water. Orvieto cats, play wild as mountain dew. Orvieto cats, been playin' since they's babies. Light-leaked Tri-X in Olympus Pen D3.

This is the bell tower of Santa Maria in Aracoeli Basilica, behind the Vittorio Emanuele II memorial in Rome. I was in line to go up the elevator you can barely see on the left. The bell was sounding out the hour, noon. I'm not sure what made the light leaks; I'm still of two minds whether it was the camera or the process of spooling the film for developing. Maybe both. But being the lemonade sort of guy that I am, I kind of like the effect. 1990s-era Tri-X shot (at ca. 200) in the Olympus Pen D3 three months ago. Developed this week (mid-July) and scanned using the Lomography Digitaliza holder on the Epson V700.

Religion amazes me. That companies can thrive making and selling statues of blessèd CEOs of another company is remarkable. Fifteen-year-old Tri-X in Olympus Pen D3.

I wish -- now that I see I have a good picture of them -- I had gotten the names and addresses of these jovial young travellers. I struck up a conversation with them at the Giardini Bardini in Florence on the Liberation Day holiday in late April. One was from Brazil (right), another from Germany (middle) and I think the third was from Holland (left). They'd been sharing a house in (I think!) Berlin and decided to strike south. When I first saw them, they were taking pictures of a stuffed toy with Florence in the background. The toy had clearly been the subject of pictures in several other places, too. Tri-X film (nearly fifteen years out of date and never stored in the fridge) shot at about 200 in the Olympus Pen D3 and finally developed (in T-Max developer that -- according to its bottle -- expired in 2012) just two days ago, in mid-July. Scanned on the Epson V700 as a strip (held in the wonderful Lomography Digitaliza holder).

Symes' Bridge is about 200 metres from the window I am getting a breeze from right now. This picture was taken back in March when the river was high from late winter rains. Fifteen-year-old T-Max 100 film in Rollei 35TE. Developed a couple of days ago in T-Max developer.

A picture from a fifteen-year-old roll of TMX, T-Max 100, shot in early 2014 in my Rollei 35TE, and developed a few days ago. Roughly. Developed roughly.

Again, this is from the roll of film that I abused somewhat in almost every way a photographer could. But this frame was near the end of the roll that got better circulation of chemicals, so it shows fewer signs of poor developing and fixing. Legacy Pro 100 in the Rollei XF35. T-Max developer. Most of the border added in Paint Shop Pro, although three sides of the grey area are the edge of the negative (the bottom was added to match). You can see two of the odd corners of the XF35's image frame here (at the top).

I'm just getting back into developing my own film and, as usual, I'm not being very careful. This was a several-years-expired roll of Legacy Pro 100 film which I shot nearly two and a half years ago, left lying around in the meantime and finally developed this week. I wasn't very careful about spooling the film and thus left some undeveloped patches. I wasn't careful about the developer, its temperature, its agitation, nor its time. I likewise wasn't careful about fixing, aggravated by the poor spooling, so I have some silvering areas on this roll. That's the greyed-up bits at the top here. But through all that, I get an image I like. This poor old house is not being looked after and is going to collapse, if it doesn't get torn down. This was shot in the Rollei XF35, a camera I do not like much. It is nowhere near as robust and solid as its sibling Rollei 35s (like the 35TE I have). But do not blame the camera for the faults of this picture. They are entirely faults of the photographer / darkroom guy.