(952×1200)

i went out shooting with a small group of flickrites that boman knew. this was by far my best shot of the evening (considering most of my negatives were black or clear).. :) i shot this in the marin headlands area near dusk.

this is my usual treatment as of late — ilford hp5+ in 1:50 rodinal for 11 minutes.

got almost caught up in film development tonight. this is one of the sheets i got done tonight. i decided to do a full scanner resolution scan in 16bit greyscale. the resulting scan was 12036×15178. oops. i did manage to resize and produce a 952×1200 jpeg.. also a detail crop at full resolution so you can imagine what the full 182,682,408 pixel image is like. scanning 4×5 is silly :)

so i’ve been working on this chicken coop. most of the major construction is done. the floor, the walls, the outside, openings for the doors and windows, the nesting boxes. boman will take over and i will go into hiding for a few days. i am so pooped.. i guess i’d get used to life as a construction worker. but making the transition is so painful.

anyways, this is my current pride and joy. set aside for the moment that my friend boman even owns chickens and that they are roaming about (“free range” ?) in the quaint back yard of his noe valley house. it’s been a fun project to collaborate on. where else would i learn about framing, raising a roof, and the difference between ACX and CDX plywood?

i’m sore, badly sunburned, and mentally exhausted. but i’ve had an interesting and productive weekend.

so i’m helping build this hen house.. well, it’s more of a chicken condo.

saturday, boman and i poured over books (including ones specifically covering the care and raising of urban chickens), and collaborated on the design of a hen house. a full featured structure, it will include two nesting boxes with easy access, a roosting bar, plenty of room for storage, and multiple windows and doors. doors for humans and chickens.

on sunday, we purchased all our materials and rented the necessary equipment. interestingly, spent roughly 1/7 the price of a pre-made chicken coop. before it got dark, we mananged to build a level floor, a back wall, and framed in the other three walls. we also did some preliminary yard work to prepare a flat area for the house to sit on.

we got some great ideas and help from the folks at discount builders in the mission district – that’s where we ended up buying our build materials. we rented an air compressor and two nail guns from action rental. one of the guns jammed badly, but with some careful disassembly, we managed to unjam it. that burned a good few hours of daylight.. but hey. these things happen.

so there you have it. us two computer nerds managed to start from a book and some ideas, to a framed structure large enough to stand up and move around in.

i’ve posted pictures in the urban chickens set in my flickr account. there are also pictures of the chickens from saturday breakfast.