Hello and welcome to the sunny south coast of the UK where that strange orange orb in the sky has been slowly roasting me all week.
I’ve mostly been at home – but things have been pretty quiet, although there are a couple of high spots to share and things to talk about. How’s your week been?
I received my developed film back from the processors, both this photo and the one above are from that roll. I opted for negatives and a transfer to USB stick (that I supplied) as this seemed like the cheapest option, and I didn’t want to waste a lot of paper on potentially poorly taken photos when I could print the best ones at home anyway. This was probably a good choice, as it would seem I have (or the camera has) a slight tendency to underexpose frames – I’m going with operator error until I have any other evidence to the contrary – and in most cases I can tweak these things afterwards if I need to.
A little bit like I have with this image.
I’m already part way through my second roll and for the most part I’ve enjoyed this little return to “analogue” photography and will probably keep going.
I think in some ways I prefer the immediacy of a digital camera and the ability to take many frames of the same thing with little worry as to the cost, until you get the image you were looking for. That said the challenge of having a limited number of exposures and thinking much more about the image you want before you press the shutter release is also a bit of a thrill. There will be more film in my immediate future.
I finished reading Maigret’s Pickpocket and also read The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peter’s (a Brother Cadfael mystery). The Maigret was excellent, one of the better ones and although I enjoyed the Brother Cadfael it wasn’t one of the best. I’ve yet to settle into anything else.
Don’t Worry I Live With All These Books
I spent a bit of time doing the conversion from winter mode to summer mode in the potting shed this week. This essentially means moving out the remaining tender plants into the garden, taking down the bench they were on and setting up for tomatoes and other things. This year I have some tomatoes but also some lettuce and beetroot in tubs. These are doing exceedingly well and we have had our first harvest of beetroot leaves and lettuce alongside some broad bean and coriander pesto on pasta. We’ve been eating broad beans pretty much continuously for a couple of weeks now, and the main crop are coming to an end, but we have some “spare” plants that I put in tubs in the garden that will also give us a second crop in another couple of weeks.
The tale of Ollie and Dollie, a pair of pigeons that befriended a family on lockdown
The water leak on the car has also now been fixed. The garage got the part and fitted me in on Thursday morning and the bill was less than they thought it was going to be. I’ve hardly driven the car anywhere since but it seems to be okay – no suspicious puddles on the floor of the garage – but I haven’t given up carrying the big bottle of water in the boot quite yet.
Work has been very quiet this week. I’ve had a couple of things to do, but jobs that only really take a half-hour or so to do. I need to be mindful about where this leaves me. The government says that I am not eligible for the self-employed income support scheme, although I’ve asked them to explain exactly why because I’m not clear on their reasoning. So I’ll be needing to find some income of some kind if my existing work doesn’t pick back up. All of my talks for this year have now been cancelled – quite rightly – either by me or the organisers as clearly they can’t go ahead under current conditions. Some of the talk formats will also need to be reconsidered – those that involve produce tasting for example – as they are also no longer practical in their current method of delivery. At the moment I’m not sure it is worth spending a lot of effort on as things could change so much before the next talk that I have provisionally booked in January 2021, but it will be slowly burning away in the back of my mind in the meantime.
Well that’s about all from me for this week. It’s looking like it’s going to be another quiet one in ongoing sunshine. Stay safe wherever you are.
Electronic Scrapbook 
Those are some great photos to start off your adventures in film photography, Alan! I hope you take and share more of them with us, on your blog.
Been pretty quite out here, for us, on the homestead. Potatoes are finally coming up out of the ground. Our tomatoes are up, too, but the sun has taken its toll on them. We built them some shelter from the wind, using pallet wood. But I’m going to have do something about protecting them from the sun. Over the last couple of years, the sun’s rays are just too intense. I’m going to try running some screening across the top, between the pallet walls I built around them.
Apparently, we’re not the only ones battling this issue. Our 90 year old neighbor, who’s lived here most of her life, is having problems trying to keep her tomatoes from being baked from the sun. This year, she’s had to move down from her old house into her son’s house down the road. So, her tomato garden isn’t as sheltered as it was at the old house. At first, she thought it was the wind causing her problems, but she’s now got them well sheltered from the wind. However, like us, over one afternoon when we had a clear sky with full sun, leaves on several plants turned white and shriveled up. She’s never seen that happen before… not over just a few hours in an afternoon.
Anyway, hope you have a wonderful week!
David.
Hi David, Yes will certainly be sharing some more of the photos here as they are developed / processed. It’s slow photography as you’ll appreciate.
I use some netting which provides quite a bit of shade and wind protection predominately for brassicas. It’s a close weave and is commonly used on scaffolding to prevent things being knocked over the side and down on to the pavement (but is also sold for agricultural use as well). It also helps cut down on watering as it slows evaporation from the soil. There’s a photo of it in use in last weeks post https://tontowilliams.com/2020/05/25/twtw-78/
If you can find something similar it might work for your tomatoes.
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll see what I can find.
I covered various vegetables with fleece, not so much against the cold (just before the heatwave) but for protection from pigeons and my chickens – who tore some of it to get at the spinach. I’ve just removed it briefly for weeding and found that it is a great protection from sun and a drying wind too.
I hated photography with film. Waiting for the pictures to come back and finding that a nice composition was ruined by some small detail, or that the exposure was wrong or something was annoying enough for me never to own a camera until digital came along.