Sunny day in Durham

Sun shining on the river Wear at Durham with the clouds looking somewhat menacing

I’ve definitely become hooked on monochrome again.  Of course it’s a lot easier than when I first started producing black and white prints.  I often got shot off my mother as I did most of my printing at the weekend.  This usually meant putting up a make-shift blackout in my bedroom as it got dark and printing images I had taken over the previous week.  In late spring to early autumn, this meant that, at times, I didn’t get to bed until around 3 or 4 in the morning.  When my mother got up, usually before me, she would find prints lying all over the sitting room where I had left them to dry.  I wasn’t very popular !

Another draw back was the smelly chemicals and the occasional splashes that got onto the bathroom hand basin or bath, leaving a stain.  Didn’t improve my popularity there either.  But I still miss doing some of that as there was such a magic about it all; watching the image gradually appear on the paper as you gently sloshed the tray with the developer in it, trying not to get too excited and sending developer everywhere !

Sunny afternoon along the banks of the river at Durham

I quite like the colour version of this image, though I think the monochrome adds a bit more atmosphere.  Although it was a bright and, for the most part, sunny day there were still occasional cloud banks that appeared quite menacing.  However, we were fortunate in that it didn’t rain.

The river side had quite a few people milling around, though not as many as we had expected.  The pleasure boat was running up and down the river about half-full, so that’s probably not bad for this time of year.  There was even the occasional adventerous person taking to row boats with family or friends.  Too much like hard work on such an afternoon.

Let me know what you think about these 2 images, and which one would be your favourite and why.  Thanks.