For the past few weeks it has been pretty dry here, unusually sunny and (most importantly for me), warm.
Walking through Lyme Park I thought I'd try to show how dry and sunny it is photographically. After the shitshow of the last two reels see previous post I needed at least some successful dev to restore my confidence in the development process.
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
T.S.Eliot 'The Wasteland'
Possibly some over-exposure has occurred. I was semi-guessing exposure with the meterless F2. Sunny f/16 is great for a bright unobstructed field at noon with the sun directly overhead but means jack-shit to me walking through woodlands striped with dark shadows and shafts of intense light and mediated by dappled sunshine flickering through leaves. I'll get better at it I'm sure. I found it challenging though.
I think the over-exposure slightly emphasises the parchedness (word?) of the landscape. Where there was water in a stream it was reluctant to flow.
I finally got back on the horse and developed the roll of film. Kentmere Pan 100 (I gave the FP4+ a miss this time) in Ilford Ilfotec HC 1+31 for 8 minutes. Hallelujah! It all worked as it should except for a slightly leaky tank. The reel I used was different to the one I used to develop the last roll and must have had a millimetre more bulk because the lid of the tank only just went on securely. Both Hewes reels but probably made years apart from different wire guages or moulds (or however they make them).
Camera & lens: Nikon F2 (meterless), 35mm f/2.8 Nikkor-S Auto (pre-AI)