Escape #2
Illegal street sellers, moving in response to the arrival of some security guards. Rambla del Mar, Port Vell, Barcelona.
Escape #1
Beachside Dreaming #5
Fishing along the sea break near Port Olimpic, Barcelona.
Beachside Dreaming #4
A rather sparse sea-front, looking towards La Barceloneta.
Beachside Dreaming #3
At the beach in Barceloneta.
Beachside Dreaming #2
At the beach in Barceloneta.
Beachside Dreaming #1
The beachfront at Barceloneta.
EMMSA – Española de Montajes Metálicos, S.A.
One of many silent redundancy protests in Barcelona – this one against layoffs without pay by EMMSA. These kind of scenes seem to be getting worse in recent months, with numerous businesses closing (not least the Lauren cinema at Plaça de la Universitat, and probably we will soon see the closure of Fotoprix). Protest banners have become so common that for many people here they have become just another piece of urban visual noise to ignore, much like the advertisements and graffiti throughout the city.
Where did Everyone Go?
A surprisingly empty looking beach at Barceloneta last week.
Heat Haze
Another of the more abstract long-exposure motion images, this from La Rambla. This is Ilford HP5+, with an exposure of (probably) 1/4s at f16 with a stack of ND filters to cut down the light. This will be the last new film upload for a while, as it has now become too hot here to process sensibly. The last two films were processed at an ambient temperature of 28c, which is making the developing times too short even with very dilute chemicals – this at 8am with the AC running at full power…
Speed
Speed-skaters racing at the Fiesta Mayor en el Raval, Barcelona. Once a year the roads around the Rambla del Raval are closed to make a mini-racetrack for skating. The skaters are astonishingly quick, and faster than most cyclists along these roads. I really like the character of these deliberately unsharp images – something about the film grain seems to work very well with the blurred backgrounds and slightly abstract subjects.
Cementiri de Montjuïc
A few images of the cemetery on the Monjuïc, Barcelona, taken last weekend at the Barcelona photowalk. These were shot on HP5+ film. Unfortunately, the developing did not go well, as it appears that the developer has asphyxiated (or, more correctly, oxidised) from two weeks of storage in the 30c+ temperatures here. The result was a set of very very underdeveloped negatives, and it was surprising that there was anything salvageable from the scans. The underdevelopment caused two problems: (i) very low contrast negatives, and (ii) soft, almost grainless images. Surprisingly, you can pull […]
Ex Vaga
The recently resolved usher’s strike at the Liceu, Barcelona. It is not clear what they really won, but it quite surprising that the unions are still able to organise a two-month strike in this way given the increasingly right-wing politics of both Spain and the European “Union” at large (I use quotes deliberately, given the appalling situation with Greece). The second photograph was very poorly developed. Unfortunately, the next two rolls of film suffered serious underdevelopment due to using developer that had probably been stored too long (it does not help that […]
Madonna
From somewhere in the mountains of Italy. Ilford Delta 100 in Ilfosol 3 1+14 4:30, 26c.
Blur
Las Ramblas, Barcelona. Ilford Delta 100, processed in Ilfosol 3 1+14 for 4:30 at 26c. The exposure was about 1/5 second, panning rapidly with a 50mm lens. I would bet that Tsipras and Varoufakis feel like this today…
Film Scanning: Epson v850 Flatbed vs DSLR
A quick and dirty comparison of scanning a roll of Delta 100 film with a DSLR (a Canon 5D Mark III using the Canon 100mm macro lens) and en Epson v850 flatbed scanner. The Delta 100 was chosen as it is a very fine grained and sharp film. It was processed in Ilfosol 3 1+4 (unfortunately at a very warm 26 degrees, which meant only a 4:30 developing time). Three scans were made and normalised to 4800 DPI by upscaling in Photoshop using Bicubic Smoother: Canon: single image at f14, […]
Transient Eye 