New project: The Eden

I've been feeling for a while now that I needed something to give me some extra motivation and get me heading out the door with a camera. For the last several months - probably most of the year to be honest - the only photography I've done is when I'm out with Phil on one of our monthly-ish photo trips to a place of interest in Tayside or Fife.

When you've photographed most of the landscapes, buildings and oddities that you're aware of within a 30 minute drive it can be difficult feeling enthused enough to go back and do it again or embark on a road trip designed to unearth something that I'd managed to miss.

Projects give photographers a reason to photograph even if the pictures, most of the time, aren't anything to set the heather on fire. This project isn't an obvious one as I was born in Dundee on Scotland's east coast and had no real connection to the Eden for most of my life. However, my maternal grandfather came from the market town of Cupar - which the river bisects - in the adjacent county of Fife and I'm now living just a 20 minute drive away in St Andrews. My grandfather also used to fish in the river when he was a boy.

This weir was related to the old, ruined 19th century mill that's hidden away in the trees in the middle distance.

Another thing that connects me to the Eden is that fact that my late mum was "in service" as a 14-year-old girl during the war years at Edenwood, a country estate and farm just west of Cupar. It tickles me that she had that job, even if it was only for a relatively short period as homesickness put an end to it. Although she died last year, I still feel a connection through her to a way of life that has long since vanished.

She was assistant to Chrissie the Cook at the big house and lived in the servants' quarters. Sometimes she would jump on her All Steel Raleigh, cycle the few miles to Cupar Station where she would leave her bike without locking it up and catch the train home to Dundee. The bike was always there when she returned. The Eden flows through the Edenwood estate and was a part of my mum's life, too.

It was when we first moved here four years ago that I thought of doing a project about the River Eden since it flows through Cupar and discharges into St Andrews Bay at the Eden Estuary - now right on my doorstep. So, effectively, this is my deeds finally catching up with my thoughts. It's a do-able project as the river's length is just short of 30 miles.

One of the nicest things about projects is the preparation, researching the object of my attention and figuring out what format to shoot it on and what film/developer combination would work. I've not yet decided what equipment to use but it's a choice of 35mm, 6x6 or 6x9. I was originally going to use 6x6 on the Rollei SL66E since the pictures will be all about texture and MF does that well but I really liked the Pan F/Rodinal combination on 35mm that I wrote about in the last post so it's up in the air at the moment. 

Whilst pouring over OS maps, I discovered a relatively obscure loop in the river fairly quickly and thought it might be a good place to start given that it has a ruined mill nearby. This section is owned by the Eden Angling Association and is a lovely, quiet spot. I decided to visit it for a recce to see what the possibilities might be. For this first trip, however, I stuck with 35mm - a Contax RTS and three Zeiss primes - as it's a bit of a walk from the car park location to the river loop and it's uphill all the way back and I didn't want to be over-burdened with heavy gear.

I loaded a cassette with some Fomapan 100 from the bulk roll I bought a while back and headed off. It was such a nice spot and I was enjoying taking it all in so much that - and I don't think this has happened to me before with an SLR - I forgot to focus on the first shot. What a muppet. Things improved after that I'm glad to say. I shot two exposures of each scene, one at 100 ISO and one a stop over, all done the proper way on a tripod.

My wee collection of Zeiss filters (actually, it's a fair-sized collection of Zeiss filters - at least 15 - if I'm being honest. They came with a Contax RTS II and a 100mm Sonnar I bought on Gumtree years ago) got a work out as well, not for the beautiful blue skies (!) but to differentiate some of the early autumn yellow foliage from the late summer greens that are in no mood to give in quite yet.

The only thing against me that day was the weather - big surprise, eh? It was one of our loveable low pressure affairs, a dull grey pallor hanging over the countryside. I did my best to squeeze a bit of life out of the place and at least got an idea for some pics.

Fomapan 100 in the 35mm format and Rodinal were a first for me so I was interested to see how the combo would work. I developed the roll for 9 minutes at 1+50 and it looked good. The +1 stop exposures - effectively rating the film at 50 ISO - were better than the 100 ISO shots and I reckon 8 minutes would be about right for the development.

However, it's too early to say if Fomapan will play any role in the project. I'll need to see some prints first. Just looking at the negs and the scans, it doesn't appear as nice as Pan F in Rodinal and, with the Foma at 50 ISO, there's hardly any difference in film speed between it and the 32 ISO I use for the Ilford film. Although I made good use of the 28mm, 50mm and 100mm Zeiss lenses I had in the bag, it also occurred to me that I could have taken most of these pics with just the 75mm lens on the big Mamiya Press. That's an appealing prospect as well, the old Don McCullin landscape trick.

Mind you, at the end of the shoot the slog back to the car up a very steep hill came close to making me rethink the whole scenario. I might yet just travel light and revisit the Eden loop sporting no more than the wee Konica Hexar...