Rides, Reserves and Rodinal

  What better activity to do on a sunny Sunday afternoon than go on a lovely bike ride?  It was our first wedding anniversary earlier in May and one of the gifts i got my wife was an old Raleigh bike.  I stripped it down, sprayed it up, stuck a wicker basket on the front and re-assembled it.  I wasn’t sure how well it would go down with her as she had a nasty accident on a bike when she was younger and has feared riding ever since.  All credit to her she got out and now she loves it!  

  As part of the ongoing Guild celebrations in Preston the council have decided to create the Guild Wheel which connects new and old cycle paths around Preston to create a 21 mile ring of green and pleasant roadway.  Fortunately this wheel passes right outside our house so we decided to check some of it out.  

  We were having such a pleasant time that we went 4 miles and ended up at Brockholes Nature Reserve.  If you’re ever in the area it’s well worth a visit as there are lots of hides to watch wildlife and a lovely floating visitor centre and restaurant.  We parked the bikes up and had a little wander around – fortunately jess had brought one of her other anniversary presents, a Holga 120 CFN.  We had great fun pottering about and shooting a roll of Tri-X 400.  We had a drink and some Chorley cakes and then set off on the ride home.  After riding 8 miles we were pretty wrecked (due to general unfitness) and spent the rest of the evening working our way through the Lost dvd boxset (what the heck is going on on that island?!?!).

  Monday night after work i developed the film in Rodinal (i had to give a little push in development as i thought the film may be a little underexposed) for about 13 minutes and left it hanging to dry.  A couple of hours later we were in the darkroom getting ready to print.  We decided to work on 2 shots from the roll which make a nice little mini-set together.  After making some test strips we had figured out what exposure we wanted to work on and what dodging and burning was required.  An hour or so later and we had 2 prints that we were very happy with.  Jess loves to print and i must confess that there is something rather exciting about placing some paper in a tray and watching an image slowly develop.

  Were planning on going out again this weekend (weather permitting) so hopefully we will take some more shots and have a pleasant ride.

(The scans dont really do the prints justice i'm afraid)