My Flickr “pro” account expired today. I will mourn its departure for seven days now, Jewish style. I’m taking donations for a new one.
I’ve been doing a little exploration in terms of photography this past week. I dug up a red filter in my dad’s old camera bags the other day, so I decided to go out and make some ’scapes. Good day, too. I suppose it’ll be one of the last cumulus-cloud-filled skies I’ll see for a while, so I tried to make the most of it. I walked up to “the rock,” up in the hills behind the orange groves. From there, the better part of the valley is visible. The clouds’ shadows made patterns atop the sea of orange trees to the east, and illuminated and enshrouded the buildings (obscured, of course, by olive and palm trees) to the west. This day was an example of one of my favorite picture-taking situations. Unfortunately, I left the rolls of film I was meaning to bring on my desk, so I could only get twelve shots in before I had to turn back, and by the time I got there, the sun was setting, and I sadfaced. Pictures from that in a little bit.
Today I found an article about creating a simple developer from almost normal household materials. I jumped on that idea and shot a test roll. After spending three hours trying to find the right materials, I mixed the (rather stinky) solution and cooked the test roll. I even decided to hand-develop, mostly I had barely ever used my steel tank and reel. Their recommended 12 minutes is a little short for Tmax 100; next time I’m going to try 20, as folks in the Flickr group are recommending. I’m just now realizing that this is something I should’ve done before I developed it. I suppose I was too excited to think about it. All in all, it works. However, it does leave a really weird gray tint to it. I’m not sure if it was the process (I’ve had a couple rolls come out that way after I hand-processed them), or the developer, or something else. I’ll have to look into it. The real test with this developer will come when I finally decide to do some printing. I’ll post whatever is, you know, good, in the next few days.
I’m broke. I need a job.
