Chemical Color

I tried my hand at developing my own color film for the first time today. I bought the Tetenal C-41 Press Kit and used Kodak Ektar 100 film that I shot with the Fuji GSW690III. The process of developing color film is very straightforward - there is a set of instructions and you follow them strictly - its not like black and white where there is a bunch of rough guidelines and you figure out what works for you or your style. The kit is basically 4 bags of powder: developer, blix a, blix b, and stabilizer. The blix A + B get mixed together in one bottle - it is a combination of the bleach and fixer. The developer is supposed to be used at exactly 102 degrees - and the blix needs to be as close as possible to that - so once I had them at temp I placed their bottles in larger containers of water also at 102(thanks youtube). This seemed to work well. One other thing worth noting for anyone who would attempt this is that when you are inverting the tank when at the blix stage gas builds up - it almost pushed my lid off - so the tank needs to be "burped" after each set of inversions.

'The Kit'
The chemicals in the kit mixed up pretty easy - they suggest mixing at 110 degrees so everything dissolves properly. This also benefits you in the way that by the time your ready to start on the film the temp has dropped to about where you need it.  I had bought three a 1000 ml bottles, which is the exact amount of water required - so measuring was a breeze.   For my first roll I decided to shoot at a familiar place on the Towpath - this way if something went wrong in my process I wouldn't be ruining photos of a once-in-a-lifetime event/place. Everything went very smooth and I am happy with the results - these photos only have very minor adjustments in Photoshop - mostly just cleaning up from the scanner's limits.
Developing C-41 color negative film at home in this way is also cost-effective. They say you will get a minimum of 8 rolls out of the kit - the price breaks down to about the same as what I would pay in the lab - and the online consensus is that you can more rolls than this if you mix and store the chemicals properly. ....plus there is always the added satisfaction of doing something yourself from beginning to end.

"Under the Bridge, Again"
Kodak Ektar is a beautiful film. I was hoping the fog would clear a little more on this morning, though, as I find Ektar's great colors come out better with a little more sun.
I've read a lot of opinions saying that color film is easier to develop then black and white - which I guess in a way it is. During the process I kept think how B&W is the Zen or Eastern thought of the film world - here are some ideas - but take the path that gets you where you  ultimately want to go. Color is the Christianity or Western religion - here are the rules, follow them, and you'll get where you are supposed to be.
Hows that for the king of overboard analogies?