Over the last few weekends, I’ve been for a few walks with family, to the woods. It’s a great time of the year for it. At this time of year he low golden sun comes through the trees in the late afternoon and creates a fleeting magic.

The days when we used to rely on phone boxes seems a world away now. It’s almost as if we always had a phone in our pocket or bag. Rely on them we did though. When I was at University, every public phone seemed to have it’s own permanent queue of homesick students on an evening, waiting to call home.

I don’t think that there is anywhere in the world that I feel more comfortable than in Paris. I sometimes feel as though it’s my spiritual home. From my first visit, on a school trip at the age of 14 or 15 I’ve felt an affinity with the city. More than anywhere else I’ve ever visited, I feel at home just walking the streets and taking photographs.

You can’t beat a family escape for a long weekend. It’s been a while since we’d been to London so we jumped on a train at York and a couple of hours and a small fortune later, we were at Kings Cross. We had no plan, other than the Natural History Museum, which is a given in our household. Other than that, we roamed the streets.

Once upon I time, I used to live just outside Middlesbrough, in Great Ayton.  Growing up in the countryside, Middlesbrough was my first real experience of a decent sized town.  It’s where our first ‘nights out’ were. 

Through the eyes of a load of country-grown teenagers, Middlesbrough seemed impressive. And then I spread my wings & saw the world.  

After realising that we’d never been to Cleethorpes, we decided one weekend to give it a try. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a seaside town. All the boxes were ticked: Pier, fish & chip shops, sugary junk food shops, donkeys on the beach & even a Hook a Duck stall.

A while back, on a particularly lazy day, I finally resorted to clearing out my camera cupboard.  There was a drawer in there that has all sorts of rubbish in it.  UV filters, strap attachments, a few cable releases, all that kind of stuff.  Every photographer has at least one drawer like that.  If you ever need an obscure battery, ask a photographer.  They'll have 2 or 3 in that drawer! The sort of stuff that we keep because 'It might come in useful some day'.

We've all got a little extra time at the moment so I thought I'd share a few images that I've shot recently with a Widelux 6B.  I originally bought the camera off a famous auction website.  The one that rhymes with Fleabay. Big mistake…

Most of the people who read my blog posts will not have heard of Bellini. Or even know what a C41 process is.  Let's start by saying that whilst, from the title, this looks like it's going to be a pretty niche blog post, appealing to photographers who home process, there are some photographs to look at too.  So, if you're not massively into your home processing, scroll on and enjoy the images.