Lens-Artists Challenge #345: My Go-To Places

Lens-Artists Challenge #345: My Go-To Places

After last week’s excellent theme by Anne from Slow Shutter Speed of 'Abandoned' (https://annegeephoto.com/2025/04/12/lens-artists-challenge344-abandoned/), which resulted in some fabulous posts, it was John’s turn, from Journeys with Johnbo, to host the Challenge. It was certainly a hard act to follow, but John rose to the challenge with his theme this week, 'My Go-To Places' (https://photobyjohnbo.com/2025/04/19/lens-artists-challenge-345-my-go-to-places/).

'Recently, I heard one of my favorite songs [and the] lyrics got me thinking about where I go when the “world starts getting me down.”' John continued, 'My favorite places to visit locally are the nearby parks', and after showing some lovely images to illustrate the theme, he asked: 'I’ve shared my Go-To places; now it’s time for you to share where you go or what you do to help lift those spirits when this old world starts getting you down'.

I’ve posted some of my Go-To places in previous Challenges, like the woods behind our house, or Oliveira do Bairro and the scrubland behind our local Lidl (that is currently inaccessible after the almost constant rain), or the city of Aveiro with its famous canals and myriad examples of street art. But I also have a few other places that I love to visit, and some Go-To places that I haven't actually managed to visit yet.

One place that I always love visiting, and return to again and again, is the city of Aveiro. This city, near the coast in the middle of Portugal, is famous for its canals. Indeed, it is known as the Venice of Portugal (though I doubt that Venice is known as the Aveiro of Italy in return). If you've seen my blog, or some of my previous entries in the Challenge, odds are you've come across some of the places in Aveiro I visit regularly, like the bandstand, the Yacht Club, the wonderful 'Borg cube' of the Melia Ria hotel, and the many examples of ever-changing street art.

So today here's something a little different. A selection of my favourite views of Aveiro taken with an Agfa Silette Rapid F camera from the 1960s loaded with expired (c.2002) Konica VX-100 colour film. The film has been redscaled, meaning that it was loaded into the Rapid canister backwards so the image is taken through the backing layer of the film.

Since film, especially colour film, loses light sensitivity over time, it needs to be exposed differently to normal film. The 'rule of thumb' for shooting expired film is to give it one extra stop of exposure for each decade after the expiry date. But the rule for redscaling film is to give the exposure one more stop of exposure depending on the ISO of the film. So I have exposed this 100 ISO film at ISO 6. I was going to use 12 ISO, but my Camera Meter app doesn't have that option, so ISO 6 it is.

Redscaled film generally gives the subject a high contrast orangey/red hue, but in this case the colours were really mixed up. I'm not sure whether this was because the laboratory misunderstood that the film was redscaled, and tried to produce colours that are normal for colour film, or whether this was because of the expired colour shifting of expired film. Either way, for a 20+ year-old film I was really happy with the results. I've posted the whole roll in an album (https://www.flickr.com/gp/147583812@N06/dhfmwk2790) on my Flickr, light leaks and all, if you want to see the rest of the images. 

Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can po3st their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here (https://photobyjohnbo.com/about-lens-artists/), and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag 'Lens-Artists'.

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