Spring is finally here

After what seemed like a long winter, and now a difficult spring due to COVID-19, spring is finally here and flowers have been blooming.

The first flowers are always crocuses in our neighborhood. It is always nice to see that flowers bloom where nobody has planted them.

The tulips are always so beautiful to see and it is especially nice to see multi-colored flowers.

Always love the beautiful magnolia flowers, but sadly they never last too long.

Love those cherry blossoms. Fortunately there are many beautiful trees like that in our neighborhood.

This year, we had a little bit of snow after the magnolia tree started to bloom, but fortunately it didn’t affect the tree too much.

Similarly, the crocus blooms were covered in snow as well.

After this day, we have been moving towards spring and more and more flowers started to open up.

Today I will close with a photo of some more cherry blossoms. Thank you for visiting our website!

A wintery walk

This past weekend we had a wonderful time with our friends at Plum Island. Plum Island is located in northern Massachusetts, near Newburyport. It is a barrier island and famous for birds. The last couple of years, a large population of snowy owls has been at Plum Island, and we had hoped to see some. When we got to Plum Island, the weather conditions were not conducive to birding, it was windy and cold, and most birds seem to have been sheltered somewhere. The exception were some seagulls, which didn’t seem to mind the wind or cold.

After driving down the road towards the southern tip of the island, we decided to walk along a beautiful trail, which led to the water on the side away from the ocean. The only birds we saw there were seagulls dropping clams on the rocks in an attempt to crack them open.

Much to my surprise, I was able to get a different perspective on a seagull.

While it was still windy, the sun started to break through the clouds and created a shimmering sheen on the water.

While we did not see any snowy owls as we had hoped for, we enjoyed the beautiful landscape, which is one of my favorite places.

On the way to work

For the last couple of months I have enjoyed using public transportation in order to go to work. It feels so good not having to drive on our congested highways here in the Boston area. Now I can take commuter rail and subway to get to work.

Naturally my environment has changed, and I am seeing new things, which is always exciting as photographer. When I have more time, I sometimes like to walk across the Longfellow Bridge, which connects Boston and Cambridge. Over the last couple of years the bridge has been completely restored and now looks very beautiful. The photos I am sharing today are of Longfellow Bridge.

Thanks for visiting our site,

Lars

Fall is in full swing

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After we had a very dry summer, I was curious how fall foliage would turn out this year. It is nearly impossible to accurately predict how the fall colors turn out in a given year, which is nice, since it leaves a room for surprises.

This past weekend, Kim and I were able to meet a close friend of ours at Echo Lake in Franconia Notch, in Northern New Hampshire. The fall foliage was spectacular.

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This year seems to be a great year after all, despite the drought we have had most of the summer.

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While we like to travel and enjoy places not so close to home, I am always eager to explore conservation areas close to home, which provide me with access for photography year round without far travel. I am still amazed when I am able to find new locations, which I have not visited too often.

Recently I discovered one such location, the former Canton Airport (Canton, MA). The airport was used during WWII and then shutdown in the 1950s. Since then, the land had not been in use. Due to polluted soil, it took the State of Massachusetts a while until the land could finally be used as State Park. Now it is a beautiful piece of land with marshes and trees and home to many species.

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The next photos are some impressions from the land. Fall colors have finally arrived here as well.

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The setting sun helped the trees glow even more. When I was getting ready to leave, I saw a huge outline of the moon over the fall tress.

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I immediately liked the lineup of the moon over the trees. I haven’t come across situations too many times where everything lines up perfectly like it did here.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Lars

Dinner time for a hawk

Not too far away from our house is the Blue Hills Reservation. One of my favorite places there is Houghton’s Pond, a beautiful pond that is open for swimming in the summer, too. I do enjoy the pond throughout the year, even when everything is frozen and bare trees cover the area.

Having bare trees was what drew our attention to a hawk that was sitting on a dead tree. After getting the hawk in focus with my long lens I noticed that the hawk was actually banded.

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After a couple of minutes the hawk took off, which looks very impressive.

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Surprisingly, the hawk landed on another branch even closer to us. By now, a little crowd had gathered around us, curious to see what we were looking at.

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“Our” hawk was now looking left to right and then, after another couple of minutes, suddenly took off and landed on the shore of the small wetland area. We heard a faint squeak. After a couple of moments the hawk flew back on the perch with its prey tightly gripped.

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I spare the gory details here of how not much was left of the mouse. In a final move, the hawk flew onto another perch, and there it seemed like it posed for me.

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We are grateful to observe nature so close to where we live and it is wonderful to see those majestic birds right here in our backyard.

Boston Flower Show 2014

Last week I had the pleasure to enjoy the Boston Flower Show with Kim. We always enjoy seeing flowers at the show while we are otherwise still waiting for spring to come. This show always makes us look  forward to spring.

Attached to this post are my favorite photos from the day. Please enjoy…

Thanks for stopping by,

Lars

C-22 Film processing

Recently a friend asked me to develop (and scan and print, if successful) a roll of Kodacolor-X from her Brownie Reflex camera. This film uses the C-22 process, which is the precessor to the current C-41 process. Upon researching more about the process, I learned that films using C-22 were discontinued in 1977 in favor of the current C-41 process. The next challenge was to find a recipe for C-22. On the Internet I was not able to find a recipe. Then I remembered and old book of an English photography society from 1974. In it I found a recipe for C-22.

127 Film lying in front of an adjustable Paterson plastic reel

127 Film lying in front of an adjustable Paterson plastic reel

Now I could finally start to analyze the recipe and plan its execution. C-22 uses CD-3 color developer, which is the same developer used for current slide film in the E-6 process. The color process C-41 used for current films uses CD-4. The main difference between C-22 and C-41 is that C-41 is performed at 37 °C (100 °F), whereas C-22 needs to be processed at 22 °C (75 °F). The composition of all solutions and process times can be found in the PDF file.

My friend’s roll of film came from a Brownie Reflex camera. While the film format at first appeared to be standard 120 medium format film, this was not true. The Brownie Reflex camera uses 127 film, which typically has a negative area of 4 x 4 cm.

127 Film is one size in from medium format film

127 Film is one size in from medium format film

Packaging of 127 film is very similar to current 120 medium format film in that the film is attached to paper backing. After removing the film from the paper backing I was able to load it onto a Paterson plastic reel, because the reel height is adjustable to different film formats.

Rest of the paper backing after the film has been transferred onto the reel

Rest of the paper backing after the film has been transferred onto the reel

After loading of the film was completed, I could start the development process.

The first step was 14 min of color developer, followed by a stop bath and hardener step. The rest of the process is very similar to current color processes, bleach and fixer to complete the process. Because the material is processed essentially at room temperature, these last two steps take longer than their current counterparts in C-41 and E6 processes, which are processed at 37 °C (100 °F).

All five solutions lined up for processing of C-22: Color Developer, Stop bath, Hardener, Bleach, and Fixer

All five solutions lined up for processing of C-22: Color Developer, Stop bath, Hardener, Bleach, and Fixer

After I could finally inspect my friend’s film, I noticed that the markings on the edge had developed and were visible. Unfortunately only very faint images were visible at the beginning of the film.

Stopwatch and thermometer set up for processing of C-22 film

Stopwatch and thermometer set up for processing of C-22 film

Kodacolor-X was introduced in 1963 and discontinued in 1974. This means that the unprocessed film had been sitting in the camera for 40-50 years. Kodacolor-X had a sensitivity of ISO 64-80. The shutter speed for the Brownie Reflex camera my friend used could have been one of three settings: B, 1/30, or I (“instantaneous”). Considering that films were only available with such low sensitivity at that time, I think that the reason for the faint images may not mainly be the age of the film, but that the images were underexposed. Further evidence for this hypothesis is that markings on the edge of the film developed well. If the developing process was to be at fault, markings on the edge would not be readable.

C-22 film processing during the bleach step

C-22 film processing during the bleach step

In one frame I could make out the top of trees. Films at this time did not have the latitude of films we have today. Our modern film emulsions have a more sensitive layer on top, followed by a layer of lower sensitivity. Film emulsions back in the day when the C-22 process was current did not have the wide latitude we are used to with our materials today.

While I was not able to get my friend’s photos from this roll due to underexposure, I enjoyed working with this roll of film that has been sitting in the camera for several decades. I was pleasantly surprised to see the markings on the edge of the film developed in the end, because I had no idea how and if 50 year old film would turn out.

A Storm

A couple of days ago my family went to a restaurant at Quincy Shore Drive for dinner. From this location one can see the skyline of Boston.

That evening a rainstorm was brewing over the ocean and we got to see it just before it started to rain.01

This experience taught me once again that there a beautiful places everywhere and one needs to be able to access them easily to enjoy special moments such as this.

Thanks for reading!

Lars

Rainbows…

A couple of weeks ago while we were waiting for hot summer temperatures to arrive, we had a lot of heavy rain which caused flooding in some areas.

One evening after the rain just stopped, we saw a beautiful rainbow at the end of our street just outside of our house. The sun was also about to set at the same time. We had perfect conditions for a beautiful rainbow.

The challenge was for me to find a spot for a nice photo, knowing that rainbows vanish very quickly. My first instinct was to get some photos right outside our house. After I got the first couple of shots I could be more deliberate about finding a better setting for the rainbow. I found it across from our house in a school yard, which provided a beautiful backdrop to the rainbow.

While I had quickly grabbed a wide-angle lens, an extreme wide-angle lens would be needed to cover a full rainbow. So I decided to stitch several photos together instead, which worked really well.

Here are a couple of examples:5 4 3 1 2

The Signs of Spring

 

Spring is finally here. Cherry and apple trees are in full blossom. I especially like to see wild trees in blossom in the forest that have not been planted by people. Last week I saw quite a few of these trees on a walk in the forest and enjoyed them very much. It is so beautiful to see a whole tree covered in pink or white blossoms. It reminds me that beauty can be found in unexpected places (middle of forests).

When photographing the trees, I wanted to highlight two things: their location and surrounding trees, as well as closeups of groups of blossoms.

Seeing these trees was an almost spiritual experience for me. I thought about how these trees blossom in the forest, attracting bees and other insects and how this beauty is there whether we humans see it or not.

Please enjoy what I found…