Return to Port Allen

Readers who stop by both this blog and that of my pal, Phil Rogers, must be wondering why Phil has written about a few photo days out we've enjoyed together over the last couple of months but nothing has yet appeared on these hallowed pages.

The reason is fairly straightforward - I've not had anything to write about until recently. My choice of weapons on our first outings was Nikon 35mm gear and Ilford's excellent XP2 Super. I have five exposed rolls of XP2 sitting in a bag awaiting dispatch to AG Photographic's lab but there's one roll in a Nikon F90X that I want to finish so I can send them all away together. Once I have the negs back in the darkroom I'll have some material to work with.

However, our last outing was about a fortnight ago and, since I'd no 35mm film to hand, I loaded up an ancient roll of Tmax 400 in my Rollei 2.8f and travelled light all the way to Port Allen on the River Tay. Phil was packing his Hasselblad and 60mm and 150mm lenses which I'd suggested, from previous experience, might be a good pairing for the old harbour.

Mind you, I failed to take into account Phil's propensity to photograph wee bits of a scene rather than the sweeping landscape so he might have been cursing me as he was standing in amongst trees with the 60mm Distagon wishing that he'd taken his usual Hasselblad SWC with its ultra-wide Biogon lens. I had imagined he might have been drawn to the harbour, the hills beyond and a lovely sky but forgot that, as he himself admits, he doesn't do skies and horizons.

I realised straight away that I'd given him a bum steer when, standing on the tiny bridge that overlooks the harbour, I gestured in the direction of the lovely scene and asked if there was anything that caught his attention. He mumbled a non-committal response and then sidled over to check out the nearby information board, presumably to see if there were any especially interesting groups of trees in the area.

He must have found some as he disappeared from view while I was taking the pic at the top of the post and we then managed to avoid seeing each other for another hour or so. As it turns out, we'd headed off in opposite directions - I went east and Phil went west along the bank of the Tay. It wasn't until later that it turned out we'd taken our photographs in completely different areas - it was as if we'd been on two separate outings, so different were our photographs. You can read Phil's side of our day out on his blog. 

My goal when visiting a location is to try to capture the essence of the place. For me, it's about the setting and the history at Port Allen. The harbour was a commercial venture by a local landowner who imagined that he might be able to attract some of the ships and boats that sailed as far up the Tay as the bustling village of Newburgh on the opposite bank. It was a bold attempt which failed for a variety of reasons, leaving little behind other than some harbour wall and a certain atmosphere.

It's also notable for the Pow of Errol burn that feeds the harbour and the reed beds that line the shore and also the edges of a little "lagoon" running parallel. I've photographed this Pow of Errol scene in the past so I went looking for it again to see how it would look at a different time of year. On this day, the sun was shining through the tree canopy and casting the resultant bright green tones onto the surface of the still river. In truth, it was a colour shot but with only Tmax 400 on the go I was out of options. That's the burn below and some assorted pics from the area.

I took another few pics, all hand-held on the Rollei, before we re-grouped back at the car and headed off to Fingask Castle a mile or two away. It was a showery day and the heavens duly opened when we reached Fingask. We spent ten minutes sitting on a bench beneath a protective tree to keep out of the rain before getting a couple of pics and heading back to the car. Before departing, Phil couldn't resist shooting a candid of me wielding the Rollei. And, yes. I was a bit over-dressed for a photo trip.

Here's the seat that afforded some relief from the weather and an example of the topiary you can see in the garden of what is a lovely wedding venue. If you look closely, you can see the rain drops against the dark foliage of the clipped shrubs.

Unusually for me, I developed the Tmax in Rodinal 1:25. The tones in the photographs are nice and the sharpness is good but they are a little on the grainy side. I decided to get some Rodinal simply because I got fed up of throwing out other developers that had gone off before I had a chance to use them.

I've also got some Fomapan 100 for my 35mm photography and I'm hoping the Rodinal will give that film a nice, gritty look. Chances are I'll be using the Foma in a Nikon for my next photography outing with Phil so we'll see how the combination works then - and, unlike the XP2, I won't have to wait ages to see what I've got.