2025-06-24: Night Watch

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Late posting this one from last night.

I don't recall having seen this old signal box lit up before, and I thought it made for an interesting photo.

Reply By Return

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Because I often struggle to reply at all!
A backup photo from my late walk last night.

Point Taken

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Unless...
5⁵ comes out at 3,125 by my calculations, was that what you meant?
No? I must be overthinking again.

Decisions, Decisions

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This one's my submission for this week's 52Frames "Luxury" challenge.
I struggled with this challenge a bit, and couldn't come up with an idea I liked. I eventually pulled this together this evening in the run up to the deadline, and I don't mind it, which I think is about as good as I'm going to manage to get on this one!
I'd initially gone for a shot of just the wine rack, with very shallow depth of field, and the focus on the bottle tops, but that really felt like something was missing.
I eventually put the glass in the foreground, and the shot immediately had a story to it and made more sense.

I think it would be interesting to recreate this shot in a real wine cellar with a bit more distance between the glass and the bottles.

Serpentine Shadows

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Yet again, I'm late and using a backup photo. On this occasion though, it's only because the things I shot today are still trapped in latent form inside the camera, and require the application of chemistry to free them.
I'm very much out of the mindset of needing to finish the roll before you can develop anything.
I think I used the EF 85mm f/1.2L II for this, but I can't be certain... there's no EXIF data on a roll of film!

Revisiting HP5+

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I've been threatening to do it, and I did it!
I bought the kit I needed to develop B&W film again, and shot a long-expired roll of @ilfordphoto HP5+.

This is the first film I've shot in well over 10 years. I suspect the HP5+ that I shot here, which expired in 2012, was probably one of the last rolls I bought, which puts the purchase date around 2010 at the latest. This would line up with the point that I was made redundant, and almost completely gave up shooting for fun.

Amazingly, my old EOS 1N still works perfectly after a bit of cleaning, and my ancient Konica Minolta film scanner still functions too, thanks to the excellent Vuescan software.

I took a rather indifferent video of loading the camera to mark the occasion.
The video and a couple more frames are after the jump.

Red Shift

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This is my submission for this week's 52Frames "Puddle" challenge.

Perch Your Posterior

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A backup photo today, taken a few days ago. I liked the mixture of curved and straight lines in this one.

Layers Of Patience

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I went to pick up a takeaway with my friend this evening, and while we were waiting, the layers in this scene struck me as interesting.

Residual Festivity

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A backup photo, taken last night.
I feel a bit worn out this evening for some reason, so I didn't shoot anything today. Slightly irritating, because I saw an interesting potential abstract shot in the form of my skylight catching the morning sun, but I was busy working, and didn't take the minute or two it would have taken to grab the camera and shoot it.

I should have channelled the spirit of Carpe Diem, instead of Carpe Null. Silly boy!

The Moon On A Stick

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First day working this year. Not a terrible start.

Photographer In Hiding

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This is my second crack at taking a photo for this week's 52Frames self-portrait challenge.
My initial shot had me leaning on a farm gate against the sunset, but I was unhappy with the framing once I got it home (I'd chopped part of my feet off, for a start!)
I played around with a few options, before eventually settling on this, in a nod to the countless cups of coffee I will drink, and the scenes that I hope these lenses will capture for me this year.
This was lit by daylight coming through my skylight, which put parts of my face into rather deep shadow, so I used a notebook as an impromptu reflector.
The 85mm f/1.2's extremely shallow depth of field was a bit too extreme wide open, and blurred the cup and lenses into oblivion, so I stopped down to f/2 to bring them back a bit.

Festive Finial

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Woohoo! A photo actually taken on the day for a change!

Blink... Blink... Blink...

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Another late backup today.
When I finally got out of bed, it ended up being quite a busy one!

Watch For Traffic

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A backup photo from last night

You Must Wait

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(For further information).

I went for a late evening wander; I needed to clear my head.
I think it helped a bit.

Locked on

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A backup photo. I've been quite busy today.

Maintained

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The lamps in most of my garden lights have slowly failed, and I finally got round to ordering and fitting new ones today.
Much better!

Afternoon Sun

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A backup image again today - this is becoming rather an excessive habit!
I am going to blame work for the current lack of creativity.

Wafer Thin

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Another backup from Saturday playing with my new toy.