5 frames of the Jazz Street Band of my Father with Pentax P30

That was quite a long time I didn’t have the occasion to post a second article on 35mmc.

2 weeks ago, I’ve visited my father in the city he now lives in Montrichard. It’s a city in the center of France which is a bit famous because during WW2 half of the city was occupied by germans (the north part of the city) and the south part was free. The two areas were separated by the river Cher. There are lot of stories about resistants who helped to move people by crossing the river, without being noticed by the german army.

Anyway, my father is now part of a street band and he invited me for fun. He bought an old bar in the city centre and it’s like the HQ for music operation with its band (the main idea is to transform the bar to an appartment but I’m sure he’ll use it for parties quite often too!).

I brought my trusty Pentax P30 with my f/1.7 50mm lens. The film is an AGFA APX400.

I’ve made some mistakes during the development process because the water was too hot (about 25°C). I used 1:25 Rodinal to develop and as the time is usually 10 minutes @ 20°C. I wanted to reduce it to 8 min 30 seconds which has been tested some weeks before with success. Anyway, I was occupied by another thing during the development process and ended up developing it for 12 minutes.

So it’s lot grainy and the highlights are a bit burned. But with Darktable I was able to rescue the pictures even though the grain is pretty strong.

So, here are the pictures. I hope you’ll enjoy them!

About the washboard: before this day I didn’t know about this “instrument”. The musician explained to me that in New Orleans, back in the days, when the black community invented the roots of what became jazz music, they were quite poor and they used almost anything to play some music with things from everyday use. The washboard is a nice thing that is able to simulate drums, bells, etc etc. And yes that’s quite impressive, jazzy, and fun to see it in action!

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