This restored trestle bridge is the only remaining of several that were used in transporting logged and sawn timber from Noojee to Warragul along a narrow gauge railway. These days, it carries only pedestrians and cyclists on the rail trail, but in its day (1919 – 1954) it must have been an impressive sight to see a steam train chugging along at such great heights above the gully.

These photographs completed the roll of 10 after shooting the Mt Baw Baw Snowgums and a couple of scenes near Tanjil Bren. Near evening, the reading from the metered prism of the Pentax 67 at f/4, one second, was one stop under for the top image. Needing the extended depth of field for the entire bridge to be in focus, I set the aperture to f/22 and extrapolated the time for a one minute exposure to count out with the cable release. Fortunately there was no wind because the daisies in the second image would’ve been all over the shop for the similar exposure time that I used.

This study of Mt Baw Baw’s snowgums (Eucalyptus pauciflora) in the mountain mist came after a ride I had been working towards completing the entire year. Mt Baw Baw is reputedly the toughest hillclimb in Australia for cycling. I’m not an incredibly strong rider, nor do I have good equipment but I’ve been training in the Dandenong and Otway Ranges most weekends in preparation. The climb from the gatehouse to the village took me just under an hour and is only 6 kms, rising 680 m vertically to give an average gradient of 11.3%. Some of the times listed on Cycle2Max are half of my own! Maybe if I didn’t do so much zig-zagging…

Not only does cycling keep my beer belly manageable, it also forces me to slow down and study my surroundings. A number of times I’ve encountered scenes on the road that I’ve revisited with my camera. When I was cycling up Baw Baw I was thinking the entire time of what I could photograph after the ordeal to block out the pain. When I hit the altitude level for snowgums, I knew they were going to be the focus of my day. With their tightly drawn mottled skin they make for a great study in black and white.

I tried a new film, Ilford Delta 100, and tapped the tank during development a bit more for this roll. The results are silky smooth. I’ve noticed the R09 One Shot developer solution foams significantly during agitation and I’m wondering whether it was responsible for the streaky blotches that plagued my previous rolls.

To celebrate finishing her undergraduate studies, my partner, Rebecca, headed to Japan for a couple of weeks to indulge herself the Nippon way. This included being naked in Spa World Onsen, slurping Kobe beef, wandering through autumn foliaged Kyoto temples, braving fugu, thumbing through a manga museum, imprisoning herself in a capsule hotel and completing all the Christmas shopping I was supposed to do.

I really enjoyed the photographs Rebecca came home with, so I’ve picked a few to display.

Scanning negative film can be immensely tedious. If you wish to attempt it yourself and don’t have access to a means of applying accurate colour profiles, then presented in this post is a summary of my Photoshop workflow to achieve desirable (by my current standards) results.

Using your scanning software (I use Vuescan), scan the negative as you would a positive using completely neutral colour and contrast settings. Save as a 16 bit/channel TIFF image. I’ve often found Vuescan’s film profiles to be horrible – particularly for the recent batch of medium format Kodak Ektar I’ve been trying – so I stay away from them.

In Photoshop, invert the image. Note the blue mask from the orange base of the film – this is different for every film hence the need for profiles.

Set the black point by using a curves layer. In the pop-up box change the display to show clipping and using the black dropper, keep redefining the black point until there is only a very small amount of clipping.

Set middle grey using a levels layer. In tandem, adjust the input levels slider for white (while checking the histogram for clipping) and define middle grey with the dropper. I’ve used an arrow to point to my selection.

Adjust contrast to taste with another curves layer.

With a small rotation and removal of dust, this is the final result. Note that I’ve stayed away from colour balance layers – they ask for trouble.

Feedback is welcomed. If you scan your own film and use this, or a variant of this routine, I’d be interested to hear about it.

got a good reason
for eating from inside to out

she was a cliff…..
eater
a gluttonous swine at that (yeah!)
it took her so…..
long
to chow down
but she chowed down