Astbury's Adventures in Photography

I've been shooting away with my dad's old Nikon FE , loaded with some very old and long since expired film but progress was cut short by a problem with the camera. I was getting a situation where I would press the shutter release and the camera would lock up, the viewfinder would go black suggesting the mirror was locked in the up position, the shutter may or may not have been stuck open. The camera is a mechanical/electrical hybrid, what I found was that if I set the shutter speed to M90, the mechanical option, this then allowed the mirror to return to position, the film could then be advanced to try again. This gave me a temporary workaround however the problem quickly became more frequent, then happened every shot. So I decided to stop and develop the film with whatever was on it to that point. The colour negative film needed the C41 process, a time and temperature sensitive process which is usually best done by a lab, and I needed a lab that would process expired film, so...

I need to start by confessing that I'm not a fan of sunset photographs or more specifically not a fan of what I think of as a conventional sunset. That is to say that a splash of colour is not enough to save an otherwise dull photograph if it's just a strip of horizon with the sun dipping down. For example this is a photograph I do like: Sunset at Arisaig Here the sun is setting behind the hill to the right, kept out of shot, while I've focussed on the tree in the middle distance, silhouetting it's shape against the sky and waited for a gull to fly into an appropriate area of frame to add a further point of interest. In post processing the black point has been adjusted to enhance the contrast against the background (and an additional, distracting, gull has been cloned out).  But I'm less keen on this: Sunset at Camusdarach I think of this as a more conventional shot. I've arranged the composition so that the reflection falls between the rocks and...