OLGA 4

At the top of the hill - it is called Roughtown - there are some Organ Builders - still on the slope !

The next street along the hill is just as steep as Roughtown; Luckily, my little 180 year old house is on the flat with uniterupted views over the hills.








Communications are a little more modern as you can see in image3.

Top Mossley [top the hill etc] is very upmarket. Even though the people seem to have a enhanced idea of their own importance if the funereal cars are anything to go by.


Meanwhile, when I get back to my office at the Velodrome, the two work-experience girls have trashed m office awarded themselves medals and are playing some AWFUL music on MY Pooter!!!!











Pologies for the terrible scans. I shall re-scan them when the pooter is betetr!

Olga3

So, I eventually get this roll of Xp2 that I have not used before to run through Olga since my pooter is up the creek at the moment and I don't want to scan. Processed on Frontier and posted by me, here.
I live in Mossley- which is some 10 miles from Manc. - far enough for me since we have hills all around. And we live on the side of a steep hill. Houses lurch down the hill - like this one just up t'road;
The garage is just down the hill:














The roofs round here are a jumbled mess.
..and some of our streets are orphans.

Olga2

Inside the Lowry there are some great exhibitions - photography too. This took my eye in the modern art area;

After the Theatre, I put some Kodak HD 200 colour I had acquired V cheaply and took another shot of the Big Wheel as we passed by. Never quite understood the facination of these things but someone must like them!





I might add here, I don't actually live in Manchester but in Mossley in Lancs. Nice little ex-mill village nestling on the edge of the Peak District.

Olga

Olga, in the form of a FED 2 rangefinder arrived the other day from CaNada. I'm part of a small project which uses Olga to shoot pictures, post them on www.nelsonfoto.com and then pass it on to the next in line.
Feds are not my fav camera but thought I'd give it a go. Couldn't figure out where the film speeds referred to and the rangefinder seemed foggy. eventually, I sorted the latter problem when Jem @ Real Cameras in Manc. pointed the diopter lever out and I was sorted.
Saturday after Olga arrived, it was my partners birthday so we took off to the Lowry theatre in Salford, Manc. for a mosey around and a nice cup-of-tea.
Using Delta 400, I seemd to see shapes all day rather than landscapes. Here are a few;

Lowry Roofs.[left]

Imperial War Museum roof [above]

Developed in FX-39, I had to tone the in Ps as I was not happy with origninal scan. We had a great day both here and later in Manc. at the theatre [play called Flags - since you ask] and easting out . Eve my partner has also started photographising and I'm looking forward to seeing those soon.

Scotland, the photos

So, I spend the week working hard and picking my snaps up from the developers I find I have one or two nice colour piccis for a change. Somehow, colour does not do it for me - I think it must have something to do with too many distractions and bringing someone - namely the developer - into My Process.
So, here are some piccis taken with my Retinette in Ayrshire - which I might add here, is lovely.

So, the beach at sunset with some Castle on the headland. Cheap no-supermarket brand 400 film out-of-date.

Vic, my pal on the beach. The dog is there too. Lovely place, great ole camera. Rubbish scan.

Vic is another cyclist and had just returned from the Pacific Games in NZ so he could organise his bike at the weekend. lives in the house inthe middle of nowhere - wonderful. And what's more he has no TV which is just brill!

To Scotland

My eartwhile partner Eve is still racing bikes and we took off to Ayrshire to stay with another bikie - Victor. He was organising the bike race Eve was taking part in. I took a bag of cameras and a handfull of film. Herein lies a mistake; taking serval speeds of film does rather tends to get you into trouble with manual cameras such as I use.
I tend to try and get over this by taping a tag from the film-box to the outside of the camera but usually this falls off or I just get forgetful.
Anyway, the weather was lovely. Eve did well in the race and got to take some piccis with a new-to-me rangefinder, the Minolta A5, the Retinette, a Franka Rolfix and the Kowa 6mm. I'm still sorting th films but here is a taster from the Minolta;

My fav

Since last weekend, my bod has rather fought back after the little bit of cycling I did. Still, I finished off a roll of Ilford Delta 400 in the Retinette during the week - the first time I have used this film - and sloshed it about in Aculux2.
I'm rather pleased with it actually. I rather like the camera too - with it's scale focusing and what have you.

Here's my chum Mondo just about to cycle home after an evening spent looking at my pictures - and he is still smiling!

And here is another from the trip last weekend......

A day out

Somedays it all feels good. and this was one of them. A day out at the coast - Scarborough, somehere I had never been before but found surprisingly nice I must say. Lovely scenery along the coast, nicely kept town and sunshine - at last.
After a great bike ride plus tea and cake we shot off to Flamborough head and then to Bridlington for sunset. Well, I think I struck lucky with this shot taken on the old Voigtlander Bessa 1 with Panf on a long exposure.

CFS and all that

it is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and I happen to suffer from it. No, I am not going to bore you with the list of symptoms, you can google that yourelf. It's just that from time to time it gets the better of me and I have not the energy to do much - let alone, take, proces and post pictures. There are some great blogs out there on this. Lets just say I meditate to help, and take photos when I have the energy after work.
Last week, someone gave me a Petri Slr. know nothing about these but it's light and works. So i ran some Foma 100 through last weekend and i have just stuck it in some Rodinal and have this nice image - Dovestones in Saddleworth.