Kids (ha) in the Kitchen

Hi All

Well no surprise…I’ve done it again…lost about six weeks since we last spoke. Honestly, my intentions are way better than that…I just keep getting sidetracked. This time I am blaming it on a kitchen. Well, in all honesty, it’s a bit more than just a kitchen.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

I have a friend, ‘JD’. Among other things, JD provides maintenance services for real estate property managers. As it turns out, JD somehow met Bill, who was in need of someone to install a new kitchen and ‘tidy up’ a house he had purchased in preparation for adding it to the rental market. Bill had hoped to have a go at it himself, but found he was never going to have the time. So JD put his hand up…told Bill he had a friend who was pretty handy in the renno department…after seeing my handiwork on Harry’s deck (Harry (my stepson) is JD’s son-in-law) and the two grandads took on the job. We had to work it around both of our normal commitments (who am I kidding? There is no ‘normal’ when you are a freelance photographer) which was a challenge in itself.

The other challenge was the property…an older house where nothing is straight, level or simple :)

I really enjoyed working with JD and doing something totally different from photography. Here are a few pics.

As I mentioned earlier, the house renovations took place around my normal photographic activities. I’ve been enjoying getting out with the Bronica and stretching my ‘film’ legs. There have been a few anomalies with the film I have been using (it’s use-by date was 2017) which in some cases has provided some extra interest. The mechanics of how it happened intrigued me, so I got in touch with the manufacturer (Kodak) who provided a partial answer.

I have been developing my own black and white films

“In 2016 we began hearing about random incidents of frame numbers appearing on some of our 120-format film negatives.   After a significant effort to understand the root cause, we modified our backing paper to permanently remedy the situation.    This backing paper modification also eliminates blocking, which is the mottling effect that occurs when backing paper begins to stick to the emulsion surface in high temp or high humidity conditions.   The T-Max 100 frame you sent suffers from both these issues.”

Here are a couple of examples.

To get the negs digitised I made a copy stand and lightbox.

Of course I have also been doing my ‘work’ photography. I don’t often go into what I have been up to as a lot of it can be quite repetitive and sometimes I can’t for confidentiality reasons. But I will share a couple of recent pics that I was commissioned to shoot for magazine covers.

This one was for CEO magazine of Devonport based Jason Binder who is CEO of Respect Aged Care.

And this one is obviously the front cover of Rex Airlines’ True Blue magazine…which will be in the seat pockets of every Rex plane :)

OK folks…I reckon that will pull me up for this little ramble. I hope you all get what you deserve for Christmas ;)

Stay safe. Be nice to each other. BFN