That First Monday

This is it - the first “proper” Monday of 2026! The boys are all back at school and work is back up and running!

Today saw me head out to Croy for a shoot, which went really quite well. I had a bit of a set back when I got there as one of tomorrows jobs was cancelled - which left the week looking a bit too bare for comfort! Fortunately by the time I got home from today’s shoot that job had been replaced and another had come along with it too. 4 in a week is okay… survival mode really… but for this stage of the winter that is fine, and if I can maintain this level or better then it should be looking reasonable going into February.

On the way back I stopped of at Clava Cairns to shoot some film. My plan was to get a roll of Ilford Ortho Plus into the Da Yi and do some test shots. Except I had left the roll in my other camera bag… so a roll of FPP Wolfman 100 went in the camera instead. I wasn’t entirely impressed with the previous roll from FPP so I approach this one with a little trepidation, but we will see… maybe it will be a lot better! This does still leave me needing to run the Ortho through very soon though as I need to come to a final decision as to what filmstock to use for my big 2026 project - currently a 3 way shoot out between Ortho, Pan F and Delta 100.

Although I do REALLY like Formapan too… but that is perhaps a bit too rustic looking for the prints I want to produce this time! It is a hugely forgiving film though, and also very cheap! I can see that becoming my “stock” film for messing about… although I should probably have a bit more of a play with my old favourites HP5 and FP4, and perhaps some TriX or TMax which were favourites back in the day.

Anyway, Clava was lovely as usual so I took a quick shot with my Nikon Z6 II whilst I was there for my photo for today.

12th January 2026