Cliff Cheney's Blog

Cairo, Egypt

A photo I shot yesterday of the Grand Mufti of Egypt at a press conference for the C-1 Dialog Annual Report ran in the Egypt Daily News.

A woman in Cairo who goes by @1fleetingglimps has been following my Egyptian Escapades via Twitter feed and was moved to write a blog post about me. Cool.

Here are the photos from the session with Mohamed Habib of the Muslim Brotherhood she refers to.

I am way behind on posting from my travels in the Middle East this summer. I have already completed the first leg of my journey through the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as part of the '60 Years of Friendship' Press Trip. I will soon be posting items from there in order.

I am currently in Doha, Qatar participating in the AUC-QU Middle East Journalism Bootcamp. You can see read the blog for the Bootcamp here.

You can also follow my adventures on this blog or on my Twitter Feed

My Doha cell is: 974 323 04 96

Found in the Architecture School hallway. I think this is someone's project that uses movable sticks to simulate urban landscapes. I had to fight the urge to rearrange them.

I checked out a 4x5 Inch View Camera and shot in the peacock park near Mount Bonnell. It is apparently very difficult to chase peacocks with a view camera. :)

I did get this shot of a male harassing some people.

Here is a detail on what I think was a mesquite tree.

Some lily pads.

I also made Erin pose for a tilt-shift experiment.

Overall it was a rewarding experience. I now appreciate the mobility of SLRs a bit more. I will now be using some of the 4x5 negatives to make salt prints.

Addendum: Here is the camera I was using.

Here is a digital photo of the peacock.

The University of Texas at Austin student chapter of the NPPA will be having a photography show on May 15th from 7 to 10 pm at 2401 E 6th St suite 2028. There will be free drinks and food.

The 16x24 inch prints will be available as a silent auction. Proceeds will go to an NPPA Scholarship fund. There will also be a raffle for a print from Magnum Photographer Eli Reed, some photo bags donated by Eli Reed and several copies of some BlinkBid software donated by Lou Lesko.

I found this on Logan's Blog. He is right. This is an amazing commentary on the life of young photographers from Zack Arias.

Every photographer should watch this:

Sometimes the world doesn't make much sense.

Addendum: Yes. That is a fragment of chocolate Easter Bunny.

I have been vacationing in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada.

This is Erin having some snow fun during the blizzard that hit the Maritimes on News Years. My vacation pics can be seen on FaceBook here and here (You need to be at least a friend of a friend on FaceBook to see them. Sorry).

I fly back to Austin on Saturday.

My photos on the Dai Due Supper Club from Saturday were published in the Statesman Life section and on Austin360.com today. I'll post tear sheets after the publication embargo expires.

I finally got around to try developing B&W film with Instant Coffee as the primary developer.

I used The Frugal Photographer and Photo Utopia as my guides in the process.

The ingredients needed were Instant Coffee, Vitamin-C and Sodium Bicarbonate. The coffee was easy to find and I selected Maxwell House as suggested by my guides. The Vitamin-C Crystals were to be found at a local organic grocery store. The tablets will work if you filter the developer to get out all the stuff they add to make tablets. Sodium Carbonate can be found as Arm & Hammer Washing Soda (Not baking soda) or at a swimming pool supply store. I could only find it at a pool store. This may have been too pure as we will see later.

I shot a test roll of Tri-X 400 at 100ASA as instructed.

The developer was them mixed [PDF Instructions]:

1. 10 teaspoons of Sodium Carbonate in 1 Liter of room temperature tap water
2. Stir until completely dissolved
3. 4 teaspoons of Instant Coffee
4. Stir until completely dissolved
5. 1 teaspoon of Vitamin-C Crystals
6. The crystals take a bit of stirring to dissolve.
7. Let sit for a little while until any bubbles are gone.

The mixture looks and smells much like bad coffee.

I measured the temperature to be about 72°F. I developed for 15 minutes with constant agitation for the first 30 seconds and then 7 shakes every 30 seconds thereafter.

My stop rinse water was a bit too hot due to some plumbing weirdness in the room I was in. This may have resulted in extra grain.

I fixed using regular hardening fixer for 7 minutes.

The negatives seemed very fogged. I think the higher purity Sodium Carbonate may have made the mix too strong. I will need to do more research and then run a new batch.

Here is the full negative page:

I shot the roll of some trees with each framing bracketed 2 stops in the hopes of getting something good.

And here are some results:

The grain may be from the hot rinse or from the process itself.

I am happy something came out. I hope to perfect this process as a non-toxic film process for traveling.

Addendum: The more I search the more I see the alkaline component described as an accelerant for the developer. This bodes well for me improving quality by cutting down on its concentration.

I think I will keep the temp, coffee and Vitamin-C the same levels and reduce the Sodium Carbonate to based on my results and the Photo Utopia formula I cited. They didn't use the vitamin and they used less Sodium Carbonate.

I think I will stay at a 15 minute developing time. I may change the agitation to be constant for 30 seconds and 10 seconds of agitation every 60 seconds.

Any Suggestions?