All by itself

A long day at work, but there was still just enough light tonight for a photo on my way home from work. As I was driving through the downtown area, I spotted a lone tree in an empty lot. I pulled over and grabbed my camera, set the ISO for 200, shutter at f4.5 and snapped a couple pics. I got back into truck and headed for home…

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HP5

I had the day off so I made good use of the time and developed a roll of HP5 plus. It’s been sitting around since I ran it through the Electro35 I found on ebay. So far everything looks good, though I had a little trouble loading the film on the tank reel and consequently wrinkled the film somewhere along the way. This evening I scanned the roll, now just I need to do a look-over and some cleanup…

PAD

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted.

It’s been a long hot summer and, between that and the funk I’ve been in, it’s taken everything I have to get through the day and to post my photo-a-day. The heat beats me down, the pace at work saps my energy and with what little I have left I have to poke my head out and catch a photo…

The funk is just that. I fight the mild-grade depression from time to time. This spell has lasted longer than usual, but the cooling temperatures this week raised my spirits and brought some bounce back in my step. We’re still busy at work, but with my brightened mood it’s easier to push through the to-do list.

A few highlights from recent Photo-A-Day’s:

Darkroom Process

June 4th - Grumpy
Self portrait.

Most of the things I ordered for processing my own black and white film arrived today, a week later than I’d hoped. I was looking forward to a quiet week off from work and the time I needed to tinker in the kitchen “darkroom”. Alas, it’s ok. I realized I hadn’t ordered everything I needed and the new scanner hasn’t arrived so I would have been frustrated with not being able to upload pictures. I tallied everything tonight and placed another order, this time from Calumet. We’ll see how they are on turnaround after my unpleasant experience with Adorama. It would be good to have a regular supplier to deal with…

Nile Skies

Aside from an obligatory wedding tomorrow afternoon, I’m looking forward to a long and quiet weekend. I’ve taken this Monday off, extending my weekend to four days. Too bad I won’t be at the beach. Ah, well, at least there’s iced tea and the air conditioning.

We’ll probably hunker down and try to keep the excitement to a minimum. The dogs will be reacting to all the fireworks and the neighborhood’s requisite piccolo petes. Sophie will need to be reassured, Jack usually does fine, not sure how Teddy will react.

Last night we had an odd situation. One of the neighbor kids tossed a baby doll over the fence and apparently caught Teddy off guard. He was quite perturbed by the sudden arrival of something strange that looks like a human landing in his yard. He would just hunker down and very cautiously approach, slinky style, not wanting to get too close, with a deep rumble in his chest. It was just past dusk and that made it all the weirder, Cathi called me to look at the spectacle… pretty funny…

I stopped on H street on my way in to work this morning, wandering with my camera between the Padre hotel and the Nile theater, taking pictures. The sky was dusted with clouds and looked like a painting. I shot a few pictures and posted this in my PAD (Photo-A-Day) gallery.

I was pretty happy with this:

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