A somewhat unique week. I did not travel anywhere, just the usual work and cycling, but there was the first “gota fría” of the season–the torrential rains we get here in the autumn, when the cold air from the north meets the warm water of the Mediterranean. And photographically speaking, almost half of the photos were made on film, in this case Ilford XP2 Super in my Olympus OM4T, an immensely enjoyable camera.
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My Sunday ride to start the week was under cloudy skies. This is a spot I often photograph, the large solar plant between Busot and Jijona, but I am rarely satisfied with the result. This one is not bad:
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At the end of the ride, I stopped at our beach. The clouds were quite threatening there too:
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Still, the life guard was raising the green flag, much to my surprise:
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Sure enough, it stayed dry, and in the afternoon I could go to the beach bar for a beer and look at the people and dogs enjoying the beach:
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Staying with the canine theme, this dog in the supermarket vestibule was quite anxious, waiting for his human:
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I was able to get a closer portrait, though:
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My Greek colleague Eri, in an attempt to show me that not all Greek beer was watery swill, had brought me two craft beers from her country, and one evening I submitted them to thorough analysis. They were very good indeed:
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On Saturday morning, back on the bike, in the village Verdegás where I took a break among the cats in front of the church (there are benches there). This one was checking me warily while going about his morning business:
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This cat was not overly concerned about privacy, although he did attempt to bury the poo afterwards:
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Finally, a very brave pigeon:
The remaining photos in this week’s blog are film pictures, taken with my Olympus OM4T camera on Ilford XP2 Super, a black and white film that is developed in the standard colour chemistry C41. Back in the days when all photography was made on film, the commercial appeal of such chromogenic films (Kodak also had one) was that they could be developed by any drug store lab, and such labs were everywhere until digital photography put most of them out of business. I recently found a photo store in my suburb of Alicante that has a Frontier machine and both sells and develops C41 film, so now I will be using this film more often. The shop gives me the negatives and a scan of all the frames, for 9 Euro. The images I post here are scanned by me on my own film scanner, though.
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After the bike ride on Saturday morning, I went to the Mercado Central to have a look. While I was there, the skies opened up with some serious rain. People rushed towards towards the entrance to the market to escape the rain:
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Looking out from inside the market:
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When I want to take pictures in the Mercado Central, I usually focus on the fish section, which tends to be more photogenic. This fishmonger couple seem to have been there forever:
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Many of the fishmongers are women:
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Fierce-looking fish:
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A chat:
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Back home, I took further advantage of the photogenic nature of bad weather:
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It continued to rain all day, with strong wind, stopping in the afternoon. I went to the beach to have a look at the aftermath:
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The wind was still blowing strongly (I had to clean my camera and lens when I returned home, since everything including my glasses was coated with a sticky residue), but some people were still walking around in the sand:
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