Bits and Bobs, but mostly Bobs
Golden turd on the Edinburgh skyline from the National Museum. It perhaps doesn’t look quite so awful in black and white.
Took some photos of several day’s accumulation of frost just half an hour before the thaw set in and it all melted.
Spent the last few days mostly on my own being ill. At least the view outside the kitchen window is pretty.
Figure from the remarkable collection of architectural fragments at Elgin Cathedral. I took this photo in February, but only just got round to developing the film.
Met this anxiety filled couple at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow this morning. Apparently they have come over from Spain.
Experimental image made with homemade RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) setup. The aim is to make indistinct details on objects clearer, here on a white 19th century clay tobacco pipe.
A photo of a photo (negative) of me taking a photo of myself. The camera viewfinder shows a mirror image, so looking into the mirror I saw myself the right way round.
Part of a late Victorian/Edwardian electrical switch excavated along with some of the wiring in a local graveyard in 2015.
Another old film developed
I have had another go at film development. This time a colour film taken some time ago on an old Yashicamat I inherited from my father-in-law. There are only 12 exposures to a film, but 6cm square, so much larger than 35mm.
My expectations for the experiment were set low, but I was pleased with the results. This image was taken from Calton Hill looking across the city of Edinburgh to the old town and castle. Edinburgh is blessed with a number of hilly vantage points. This one is steep, but well worth the effort.
I am not sure how long ago the photo was taken, but the cranes on the right have been gone for some months now.
Another photo, no longer out of time
I have looked at the rest of the film I developed the other day. This image comes before the beach scene I already posted and I actually recall taking this one. It was in Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow, spring last year. The lockdown had been relaxed and people were able to meet outside, in public, with a few friends or family from another household. It was a warm, spring day; my partner and I met up with our son and his partner for a picnic, carefully distanced from other folk doing the same thing. I remember it was quite exhilerating, scary even.
A beach out of time
I finally got round to developing a couple of the films I took sometime between 2019 and 2021. I know this is the beach at Burntisland in Scotland, but that is all. There aren’t leaves on the nearest bushes - so not summer!
Rather cool find in an old graveyard
Just spent a couple of days finishing off an excavation in the old burgh graveyard in Dunfermline, searching for buried gravestones. We found this one, lying flat, rather feeble inscription facing upward. Earlier stones often just carry initials, so here we probably have a husband: W.B., his wife: I.B. And their offspring R.B. Scottish married women were always recorded with their maiden name on anything official, so the second B needn’t represent the same surname as the husband’s. The first line of the inscription has clearly been executed by a competent stone mason, while the second line almost looks like a graffito.
The stone is light enough to flip, so we did, just in case there was more information on the reverse face. There wasn’t, but the top of the stone included the date 1670 and has been surprisingly well finished, presumably by the same mason who engraved the first line of initials. This is one of the oldest stones to be recovered.
A quick look at the parish records show that 1670 falls within a long gap in burial records, though it may be possible to find the family using birth records.
