The ghillie blokes 

the view on military and weapons brings a couple of bad feelings and fears to me - especialy for the time being....
but interesting: the description of your processing

I actually find incredible they let you take their photo.

Rodinal is one of the few, if not the only developer one can use for stand developing. Especially in 35mm. Try that with another developer and you get bromide streaks (I know this is 120 film, though). :-)

kommaasser: thanks for the heads-up regarding the How it's done group. I'm sorry if it has evoked negative connotations for you. As for me I was intrigued to see what new gadgets conscripts nowadays have as opposed to a couple of years ago when I did my national service (I'm a reserve NCO).

e-person: the incredible thing was not that I could take their shot, the challenge was that I managed to get the shot without someone getting in the way (compare the other shots in my album Independence Day 2008) as the entire display area was quite crowded ;)

In hindsight it was perhaps rather stupid to try out real stand development as opposed to semi-stand that I've used successfully in the past, and then to try it out first on a T-grain film.

maybe i´m a little bit hypersensitive.... never mind about, johan! that´s not about you :)

It's certainly OK to feel unease or otherwise be concerned about images, I for one was a bit mystified by parts of the Tunisian society (we visited Tunisia in May 2007 for our honeymoon).

Everywhere there were policemen & -women and quite alot of them were heavily armed. I suppose this was to protect tourists, one of their chief methods of income for the country (and on another note I find it was rather odd that the current president of Tunisia put the former "father of the state" Habib Bourguiba under what amounted to house arrest after he was removed (Bourguiba was 84 years old by then...)).

great shot... i like that i can feel sea in your shot... behind the soldiers we wil see the sails that will open on sky... and in the eyes of soldiers will shinning...and they will feel hope and peace...

I find your interpretation very positive and hopeful, it makes me glad. It's a fair chance that the two conscripts were also happy because they would have been nearing the end of their service (it's possible they would have been released from national service about a month after the image was taken).

For me, its rather surreal to have two soldiers dressed in full camuflage suit for the forrest terrain, standing in front of old ships. Mariners I would have expected more.

That's due to the siting of this materiél exhibition, the maritime museum Forum Marinum. The ship in the background is the Suomen Joutsen (Swan of Finland).

The masts (and the bolt action rifle of the feller to the right) do make for a seemingly anachronistic otherwise out-of-place image at first :)

Thats true, with these masts and rifles it could well be taken in WW1.