Author: David A Lockwood

Amateur photographer with an interest in Prehistory (Rock Art).

As the sun goes down.

As the sun goes down on a cold Autumn evening..

It’s nice to see that all my scheduled posts have been published, I have never used the facility before.
I have been away from Driffield over the New Year so internet has been rather haphazard; there is only one reliable provider in the area and it’s not the one I’m with.

The Little Fete from · Vangelis China.

“I take a bottle of wine and I go to drink it among the flowers.
We are always three … counting my shadow and my friend the shimmering moon
Happily the moon knows nothing of drinking, and my shadow is never thirsty
When I sing, the moon listens to me in silence. When I dance, my shadow dances too.
After all festivities the guests must depart. This sadness I do not know.
When I go home, the moon goes with me and my shadow follows me”

 

The end of a walk.

From my files.

In the foothills of the Ḥajar Mountains there are many tracks that have probably been in use since the Bronze Age if not before, quite a number are still well-trodden to this day. They would follow a Falaj (water channel) system to its source or between two villages and could quite often be several kilometres long.
This is the sort of view that would usually tell me it’s time I turned back, although sometimes if determined enough, I would take my boots off and wade. When the route I was following had a definite final destination and the water was not very deep, then wet I would get !! Quite often I would have been walking for 3 or 4 hours and if I wanted to find an abandoned village or the possibility of rock art, I would only have to make a return journey. Not being able to mark ‘done’ on my list, other than because it was just not possible to overcome an obstacle, would not satisfy my curiosity.

Difficult negative.

Bent old tree.
Yashica Mat 124G on Ilford HP5.

This was a negative that I was never able to print in the darkroom, I messed up the processing by using a rather hot stopbath by mistake. It caused mild reticulation & a slight increase in the film grain. I had filed the roll away and thought nothing more about it until I came across it again the other day, but nothing ventured nothing gained. Could I scan it and make a digital print that came close to my original visualisation ?

I used Lightroom and Nik software then printed it on matte art paper that has a slight textured surface, so although this Jpeg doesn’t give a true representation it’s close enough and I am pleased with the print.

I digress.


Reading Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England: and in book 1 “The rights of persons” I came across a quote that I thought rather pertinent for what’s going on here in UK at the moment:-

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

It was said by the lord treasurer William Cecil, 1ˢᵗ Baron Burghley (1520 – 1598), the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572. (From The Encyclopædia Britannica).

For those wondering why I would read such a book, curiosity got the better of me after noticing it being refereed to rather a lot just recently.

Storm clouds.

Nikon F4 with  Tokina 35-70 f2.8 AIs AT-X lens on Ilford HP5 400 pushed to 800.
Storm clouds over derelict farm house.

Update: I kept looking at the grain in this image scan and thinking, it doesn’t look right for a T-Max 400 film; I was right.

It was in fact Ilford HP5 developed in Rodinal: the confusion arose because this image was at the end of a series I had made of storm clouds. I changed over to T-Max ( having run out of Ilford) and continued, but kept the negatives together as they were all of the same subject. That will teach me to pay more attention to the edge markings, getting lazy !! with using my Nikon Df/800 and always having the metadata confirm what my settings were.

 

Old way marker.

Nikon F4, Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AFD lens on Ilford FP4

Not sure if this is an old Drovers’ way marker or a ‘Standing Stone’ that has been bypassed by the track.

From Wikipedia:
A drovers’ road, drove [road] or droveway is a route for moving livestock on foot from one place to another, such as to market or between summer and winter pasture Many drovers’ roads were ancient routes of unknown age; others are known to date back to medieval times

Sun burst.

A flower from my daughter’s garden, probably gone now the cold weather has returned. Winter is on its way and the clocks go back this weekend in UK.

Changing the time twice a year was first established by the Summer Time Act of 1916, after a campaign by builder William Willett, so that  evenings have more daylight and mornings have fewer daylight hours. It’s been changed a couple of times since then, notably during WW II when ‘Double’ summer time was introduced, 1941 to 1945 when Britain was GMT+2. Between 1968 and 1971 the clocks stayed at GMT+1 but statistics showed an increase in traffic accidents during the morning hours but a substantial decrease in the evening so UK reverted back to GMT/BST changes each year. Beginning at one o’clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in March and ending at one o’clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in October.

I hate it, it’s not natural, messes with my body clock, I’ve only just begun to get it into my head that in UK I can’t go shopping late evening, as most shops close after 17:00 hrs.