When the world seems to be coming at you in waves, just wave back.

Vorige week maandag nam OPTA afscheid van haar vorige college. Een paar foto’s om een indruk te krijgen.

After more than ten years I’ve finally smelled the curious smell of developer, stopper and fixer chemicals. Although I don’t have a proper darkroom (yet), I figured I could start by getting a film development tank and some chemicals. The last time I developed a film was at highschool, when David Bowman taught us the ins and outs of photography.
Right now the film is drying, but a first glance tells me that I seem to have obtained useable results.
The film in question is a Kodak Acros 100. I used Agfa Rodinal Special B&W film developers at a ration 1:15, 21 Celsius for five and a half minutes (first 1.5 minutes continuous tumbling, then every thirty seconds). The owner of Foto Cinecentrum recommended this developer for the Acros, telling me that it would create very sharp results (with the drawback that the grain is therefore sharp as well). Seems fine for my first attempt.
After stopping and fixing, I used a lettuce spindryer (again recommended by the photoshop owner) to get the waterdrops off the film.
If there are any nice photo’s on the film I’ll try to scan it asap to accompany this post!
update: IT WORKED! The results look good! It’s somehow a good feeling to produce good looking negatives by swirling some chemicals around in a tank…

Last Saturday Mayke & I went to Antwerp to be tourists for a day. We first visited the FotoMuseum (Flash required), which had a great expo of new Russian Photography and a nostalgic look back at the (bankrupted since 2001) national airline, Sabena. Afterwards we walked around town to see some of the sights. Mayke has already uploaded the pictures taken with her digicam, see jonas.obliks.org.
Amazingly, we ran into one of the Belgians who helped Olaf, Sabine, Mayke and me get the car out of the mud on Mount Kenya last month! He also happened to be visiting Antwerp with his girlfriend (had even been to the same museum the same morning, surprising that we didn’t run into them there). See this photograph. He’s the one in the white shirt on the right side of the car. What a coincidence!
The next day I joined Ralph and Marije to visit Michiel in Brussels, which was also great fun. Again lots of walking around to see all the sights, finished off with a nice Thai dinner. Michiel certainly picked a nice town to live in!

Vrijdag avond 30 september is de prachtige 105 jaar oude Lemster Aak van mijn Opa op het IJsselmeer bij Stavoren aan lager wal door een stel fuiken gevaren, het roer verloren en door de wind (kracht 5/6) en golven op de dijk geslagen. Dankzij puur toeval was de reddingsboot uit Enkhuizen vlakbij en daardoor binnen 10 minuten ter plekke om de Aak van de dijk te slepen. Na een slapeloze nacht (hozen en pompen; helaas aan bakboord namelijk lek door een scheur, zie foto’s) kon de Aak de volgende ochtend door een lokale werf (Hijsman, bij de oude spoorhaven) uit het water getakeld worden. Zie hier foto’s van de schade.
Het roer is inmiddels weer boven water (gevonden door duikers die de fuiken repareerden) en op de werf worden de beschadigde delen van de romp er uit gezaagd en vervangen door nieuwe platen ijzer.
De waterschade vooronder is gelukkig beperkt. De vloer is vooral erg nat geworden. Omdat het water aan bakboord onder het fornuis door de romp binnenkwam hebben we het combuis opengemaakt, wat daardoor ook enige reparatie vraagt. Verder is bij de reddingsactie de grootschoot gebroken (hoe is onduidelijk).