Bath Bombed

I just had a bath with one of those fizzy 'bath bombs'. Someone had given it to my mother, but she didn't want it. I've had these before and they usually smell quite nice, turn the water pink or lilac or something equally soothing, and might have a few dried rose petals in them.

This one turned the water a violent shade of yellow, so that it looked as though many, many horses had peed in it. And it didn't smell very nice (although not as bad as if many, many horses had peed in it). And it had wee bits of breakfast cereal, or possibly Monster Munch, embedded in it. These escaped during the dissolving process and then disintegrated into tiny, soggy fragments.

And now I'm all itchy. Lovely.

Photos a big hit in museums around the world!

Unfortunately, museums haven't really been beating a path to my door. It's all the work of museumr.

Picture of the Canonet

...for Adrian, who is trapped in the Deep South (of England) and wondered what it looked like.

Slow: butterflies crossing

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6491255.stm

Some not terribly exciting Renfrew photos...

Do not recklessly press the shutter button

Words of advice from the Canon Canonet manual. Actually, what it should have said was "Do not recklessly open the back of the camera before you have rewound the film thereby exposing it to the light and obliterating half of your photos, you eejit, you."

In the ongoing obsession with old cameras I bought a Canonet on ebay for £5.50 the other day. It's a rangefinder which is meant to be better for sneaking up on folk in the street. It certainly looks less fancy than an SLR and doesn't click as noisily (no mirror to flip up).

This one was billed as having a very faint rangefinder (it does) and a possibly erratic meter. Although the seller pointed out that Cartier-Bresson didn't use a rangefinder, he set the camera up and then "focused with his feet". I'm assuming he means he walked over to a position in which his subject was within the camera's depth of field. But he may well have actually twisted the lens with his feet, in which case he was even more talented than I'd realised.

Anyway, despite the various catastrophes, I managed to get several fairly decent photos, when I remembered to either use the rangefinder or focus with my feet. The meter seems to do quite a good job, particularly since it's working on nothing but a few selenium photosensitive cells.

Great Western Road.

Still on Great Western Road.

Retro clothes shop on Otago Street.

Woman looking at street sign.

The escalator into Kelvinbridge Underground station. I think the light might have got at this one a wee bit. Apparently they're thinking of extending the Underground out to the east of the city (Parkhead, not Edinburgh) and some bits may end up overground. And wombling free, I suppose.

A double exposure outside Sainsbury's when I hadn't quite got the film in properly. Loading the film went nearly as well as unloading it, in fact. But I quite like this picture.

Wee cottage-type house next to some tenements on Otago Street. A street of many photographic opportunities, as you can see...

River and cranes in the distance.

So the trial film wasn't a total loss, although I suspect the whole performance would have Cartier-Bresson and his focusing feet birling in their grave...

On the Vest Pocket Kodak front, I sent off for some film the other day, but it's not arrived yet. I hope it was a real company I ordered it from. And I'm still waiting to hear back from another company who specialise in developing ancient films, to see whether it's worth sending them the film that was in the camera when Alison found it.

Sepia

There are days when you can't quite focus:





And others where you fall asleep trying:

Seaside

Found an old photo of me on the beach at Mallaig Bheag .

Holgas of the Night

Got some more Holga photos developed. The first couple were taken with a very jury-rigged setup, balanced either on a wall or a bin and with the cable release taped to the shutter button. But it seems to have worked quite well, and since the Holga's always covered in tape anyway a wee bit more hardly matters...

Edit: They seem to have uploaded kind of large, so you should click on them for a life-sized Glasgow experience :-)

City of Blinding Lights

Had another shot at the view from Michael and Alison's window in Firhill.

Wildly overexposed.

Better exposure.

Black and white

The view over towards Park Circus at a slant.

Quotes

From a photography forum:

"I love street shooting of people. One must be quite fast."

Presumably in order to avoid the police.

On a blackboard outside Wellington Church:

"Come in! The Crypt welcomes everyone!"

Which is true, but rather a depressing thought...(The Crypt actually houses a sort of cafe run by some of the church ladies. Having been there a couple of times as a student I never saw any skeletons, but it always seemed a kind of off-putting place to eat your lunch).

More Negatives

I've been bidding on a few negative scanners on eBay. I haven't won one, but having looked at a few of them it seems that the idea is to backlight the negatives as you scan them. So I rigged up a version of this with a desk lamp and the scans are improving. Here are a few more:


Alison and Michael


Alison and teapot


Mural on the wall of the Western Baths


Man from Strathblane and his eagle owl.



One side of the Memorial Gate at the University (1451).


The other side of the gate (1951).