So I know I said I’d put up some more pictures of the lake district but instead I went to Cornwall so suck this picture into your eyes and hopefully enjoy it and if not then leave a comment saying why you hate me and I’ll definitely care.

Laters dudes.

Travel Tip: If you are ever in, around or near the Lake District, then you must visit The Church House Inn because the food is amazing, the beer is fabulous, and the pub is bloody amazing. If you go to the pub quiz on a Sunday night expect to get your arse handed to you by the locals. We didn’t come last though, third out of five teams isn’t too bad….

A trip to the lakes is an opportunity to play with all my cameras, which usually results in any walk or trip out taking about 15 times longer than it should!

First up the pinhole pictures. I’m increasingly of the opinion that it’s not worth bothering with this thing any more. It takes ages to set up, it’s impossible to get the horizon straight, the negatives are a nightmare to work with, and the results just aren’t interesting enough to warrant all the effort.

Add to that the fact that the camera is falling apart (who could have guessed a cardboard camera would not be durable?) and the writing is on the wall…

I did use some other cameras too so I guess I’ll share some of those pics at some point…

The manliest thing it is possible to do of all manly things (of which there are many) is to chop up wood with a chainsaw.

Right?

WRONG!!!

The actual manliest thing it is possible to do is to chop up wood with a chainsaw, whilst sporting a super manly amazing moustache. All men with moustaches are automatically superior and more handsome and manlier than all men who do not have moustaches. These facts are indisputable. So I find that I must partcipate….

 
I will document my progress as I and my intrepid chums from work go forth into the world of lip hair awesomeness. If you wish to support my moustache growing efforts financially, you should do so by giving money over here and by doing so you will be supporting not only some very worthy men’s health charities to do with things like cancer and that, but also you’ll be showing that you support moustaches.. And that matters.

If you don’t donate, think about what you are saying to the world? You’re saying that you like cancer – you’re actually supporting cancer, rather than supporting research into the fight against cancer. But oh so much worse than that – you’re saying that moustaches don’t look good. Is that the message you want to send to the world? Is it?

I didn’t think so.

LOOK AT THIS, it’s Wilf the Dog!!!

OMG!11!1 He iz so small! HIS SKIN DOESN’T EVEN FIT HIM!!!11!1

That was several years ago – he doesn’t look like that any more….

This weekend I went to “Jamie’s Italian” in Bristol. I’ve never been a big fan of Jamie Oliver, and after visiting his restaurant I’m not really swayed either way. The attention to detail in the place is quite impressive I will say. The food was good and the price of the food reasonable.

But £8 for a pint of beer? Do me a favour Jamie! Are you saving up your pennies for a tongue reduction operation?

And you might want to train your bar staff better – when asked what beers are available the answer shouldn’t be a sullen “Light or dark”.

Moving on – I made some more photos with my Pin Hole Camera this time with Ilford XP2 400 film. These came out OK although I managed to overexpose the day shots and massively underexpose the night ones. Also I double exposed one because I forgot to wind it on. Doh!

anyway here you go….

First roll of film through my new pin hole camera was a roll of Fuji Superia 400. This seems fine except all the guidance on the camera relates to 100ISO film so I had to try to calculate exposure times in my head. My tiny brain probably isn’t too good so any success is more luck than judgement.

Got the roll of film back this morning, and a quick glance suggests it’s just possible that I might have been advancing the film a tiny bit too much in between frames….

Anyway, moving on. Took the scanner in to work and connected it up to an old compatible system then got scanning…. The roll of film developed by Asda for £2 came back more tightly curled than a curly thing. This resulted in some effort required to get the film to lie flat on the canner. Welcome to the hi-tech world of pinhole photography.

The results are in – and are mixed. Now remember these were done at 07:30 on a Sunday morning. First up – Possibly I was still drunk from last night…. Or perhaps just possibly the tripod wasn’t straight.

Lens flare on a camera with no lens.

There is a pier there somewhere – honest.

A field. Least exciting photograph ever.

Some lessons – don’t shoot into the sun. Guessing exposure is fine but don’t over-expose, under is easier to rescue. Put the camera together better – otherwise you get this weird looking scraggly thing in all your photos:

More to follow since I’ve got 12 rolls of film to churn through!