RUMBLING BRIDGE. (29/10/14)

I’m back in Moffat. Yesterday I braved the A701 in torrential rain and had half a day in Kinross. I got my photo prints from Peak Imaging and a wonderful job they have made of them. I thought some other bugger had snapped them. They are printed on Fuji gloss photo paper, bonded to 3mm foam board and have a clear acrylic film laminate bonded over the top.

I’m thrilled to bits with them and will now use them as my primary printer for ever and ever amen. Their prints are not laser or inkjet but a cunning system which converts a digital image to a negative then exposes it to archival photopaper. They are guaranteed not to rust, bust, pick up dust nor buckle and never bend for a very long time. I printed at 300mm x 240mm with a 200mm white border and they work out at £40.00p a go. Not cheap but excellent value.

I find it daunting getting film or prints back. I have to have a swift dose of campanology before I dare open the parcel. The printers at Peak Imaging are good and do use their eyes. I resized an image once and forgot to adjust levels. He phoned up to ask if it should really be darkish. He even adjusted it for me when I said it just wants the white slider pulling in until it just clips a smidgen. Saved me e-mailing another monster file. Great I’m like a dog with two tails. They aren’t perfect but then I hate looking at my own work. I showed them to a half dozen folk in the evening. My sister said could do better, my brother-in-law said crap. I did sell one. I’ll have to get another printed now as the one I sold was a Christmas present.

We took the dogs, all four. Alf, Moll, Zoe and Rosa down to Rumbling Bridge Gorge in the afternoon. The rain had stopped and it was a grand little wander.

      The river Devon just upstream of the gorge. It is in spate but not too seriously.

                  It gradually narrows from a hundred or so feet wide to about six feet wide.

    Narrower and narrower and faster and faster it goes.

           Until it all spews through a gap about six feet wide and lord knows how deep. It then arrives at the triple bridge.

            They have built some wonderful observation platforms here but they were fenced off. Below the old bridge there is a slab of stone, it’s a hundred feet below and that was the third bridge. Downstream there is a cracking set of falls but they are difficult to get at.

I took these as snaps as I was walking in company. I’d like to get down into the thick of this place with a tripod and the works but it will be a three or four person climbing expedition. I’ll look which way the light falls in winter and try and set up for some video, sound and stills over a two or three day snapping session.

If you fancy using Peak imaging then give them a ring first as if you use their Pro service they don’t sharpen or colour correct.  You have to do that which means you must have a posh monitor and a Spyder to calibrate it. I like them as I can just write on a roll of film 1 STOP UNDER. I don’t know what they do but they come back middling perfect. I only developed film as a teenager in my parents bathroom. I thought it was my bathroom. Constant banging on the door with cries of I’m getting desperate from my younger siblings. Little wonder I had mixed results, bloody horrors are children.

Have fun.