Kentmere 400

Albuquerque's zoo and botanical garden are open to visitors by appointment and the art museum will follow in a couple weeks.  So, nice to have access again to some of my favorite places and subjects.

I shot this roll of Kentmere 400 at box speed and developed in Legacypro L110b.  Controlling contrast was a little more challenging than when shooting at 200 for processing in PMK Pyro, but I was pleased with these results.

TMAX

This is the first roll of Kodak TMAX 100 that I have shot in some time.  It is hard to beat for its rich tonal range and fine grain, but  I have been irritated by the price increases for Kodak films.  I probably need to get over that if I am going to keep trying to be a film photographer.

Interesting Times

I was pleased to come across some Fuji 200 on line, so I bought three 3-packs.  I loaded some in my Retina Reflex and took a short walk around the block to shoot some local color with the early morning light.  Then I got on my bike and rode over to Albuquerque's Botanical Garden which was recently reopened to visitors.

Half the pictures lived up to my expectations for the Retina Reflex and its fine Xenon lens.

The rest of the roll showed a variety of bizarre colors and surface imperfections.  Here is the first scan from the roll:

Some tinkering with colors in Photoshop yielded something closer to reality, but not really much better.

Click on the next one to see the dense array of horizontal striations across the whole surface of the image.

I don't have an explanation of what happened with this roll of film.  Nor do I have any idea of how I should proceed now.  The C-41 kit was some re-packaged Unicolor from the Film Photography Project, and this was just the fourth roll through the batch.  The Fuji film came from Freestyle.

Get out of town!

I've been feeling the need for a change of scenery since access to my usual nearby sites has become limited.  So, I got in my pickup and drove over to the east side of the Sandia Mountains.  I turned up the road that leads to the summit of the Sandias and drove a few miles to one of the first stops in the Cibola National Forest, the Doc Long Picnic Site.

The site was originally built by the Civilian Conservation Core in 1935, and the facilities retain the rustic look that characterizes many such National Forest locations in the West.  From the parking lot it is just a short hike uphill to the first ridge, which I followed for about half a mile.

I was struck by the fact that every stable surface including tree trunks and rocks are covered thickly with lichens.

I'm always pleased to find an example of the Alligator Juniper.  They can sometimes be found in small groves, but often there are isolated examples like this one among the pines and oaks.  The thick-trunked ones can be centuries old.

The undergrowth in New Mexico evergreen forests often include many plants from the dry lower elevations such as cactus, rabbitbrush and desert wildflowers.

Low growing shrubs with oak-shaped leaves always make me a little apprehensive because of my experience with poison oak in California, but I think these are probably Gambel Oaks.

It was very pleasant to get away from the summer heat in the Rio Grande Valley, and I intend to get back to the Sandias again soon.