Here Comes the Summer

Here Comes the Summer, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

...or day one of the DVD Forums Photo a Day for July challenge.

I'm determined to shoot this year's on film, as I might have mentioned before, so my shots will be a week behind the date they were taken - this one being 1st July.

As I'm sure those of you in Manchester know, it has poured down over the last week and half. This saps the motivation slightly, but I've still managed my 5 frames a day target (so far, I hope that's not tempting fate).

In any case, the first out of the blocks is this close up of one of my garden chairs - there will be a theme of dampness to this first week, I think.

Wet, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

For 2nd July, I had two strong possibles - I plumped for this eventually, because it's on different film to my first (Arista Pro 50) and isn't another close up.

The location here is the tunnel on Great Marlborough Street, which was spectacularly soggy, like most of Manchester, this day. Shooting at 50 ISO allows really wide apertures to be used, and so I waited for a figure to enter the frame, and kept my focus fairly near to my vantage point. The indistinct building you see towards the back is the Ritz.

Incidentally, for anyone interested in my ongoing progress with the challenge, my frame counters stand at 9 each on the F3 (T-Max 400) and FE (Fuji Neopan Acros). I have an EM that I've been shooting Superia in too, that's at 14. If I can finish and process that latter film before the end of the week, I may leaven the monochrome slightly with some colour.