Light the Way (189/365)

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Well, what a day. I had planned to get up early, take two cameras to the Wildlife Park, and wander around before the heat really ramped up. But I woke up to text messages and emails saying I had used airline miles to buy tickets on Qatar Airways, along with two credit card charges for additional mileage purchases. I logged in to my account and found 185k miles missing. The one damn account I did not have 2FA on. WTF OVER!

So it took all morning to clean that up. By the time I was done, it was quickly climbing toward today’s high of 113°F/45°C, so my photo walk plans went by the wayside.

So you get this mediocre iPhone shot instead. I do like the moody feel, though…

I’m aiming for the Wildlife Park photo walk tomorrow. Planning a digital-and-film camera walk. I was able to get out a short while today with the Nikon F3, trying to get through a 36-exposure roll of Ilford Ilfocolor 400 Vintage Tone. I wanted to start tomorrow with a fresh roll.

Hope your day went better than mine.

Click for Stray Pixels and a Film Journey Update

Well, I’m convinced that developing at home will save money and might just be fun. Might be fun, heck, I know it will be fun! I have such fond memories of working in the dark room, and this will be a tiny step toward that feeling.

I’m waiting on some C-41 chemicals, and I have my black-and-white chemicals to start with. I’ve watched numerous videos to refresh myself and have practiced rolling film onto the spools in the dark bag a number of times, both 35mm and 120. I’m sticking with the AP plastic spools for now. You can see what I’m using, what videos I watched, and other resources here.

I’m going to start with a few rolls of black-and-white film. Get comfortable with that, then dive into the temperature-sensitive C-41 developing.

I’m starting with rolls that don’t have anything precious on them to make sure I know what I’m doing. Any great shots will be brought to the local lab until I get my process down. Too many ways to screw it up.

I hope to get a blog post up soon about my process, what I used, and how it went. I’m guessing within a week or so, I’ll have time to start.

Equipment for this first round of B&W developing

ILFORD:

  • Developer: DD-X
  • Ilfostop
  • Rapid Fixer
  • Washaid
  • Wetting Agent

Paterson Tanks, AP and Paterson spools/reels, dark bag, scissors, film retriever, hanging clips, Pec Pads, and distilled water.

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A shot from my last trip to RNO

iPhone 2026 Stray-Pixels analog-film