The 52 Project, Week 31: Swanson's on Sandusky Street

What started as a quick practice in large format camera setup has suddenly become my most successful 8x10 B&W to date. 0__0 Here's the low-down.

It was about two weeks after my trip to New York, I was bored, starting to feel the winter weather creeping in, and really starting to miss shooting that big 'ole 8x10. There were still many prints to be made, as I was in the early test stages of fine-tuning my Pyrocat HD developing regimen; aka, the initial contact prints looked horrid. For those of you that follow the blog regularly, you can take this post as the big excuse why my posts started to backup throughout December.

So anyway, I had these god-awful contact prints on the cheapest fiber paper known to man, made under darkroom conditions unbeknownst to cause horrendous post exposure fogging ("Doh!"). I was taking them to my good friend Leslie over at Findlay's only photo-related shop, Imagine That! for some peer review. What I love about Leslie is that she's too nice a person to tell a bad photo off, unless you ask her for her honest opinion. Of course, I did just that and got the earful that was needed; my consolation prize was getting to pet with the "shop cat" Schmoop, a monstrous rag doll cat with enough fur to take out an army of allergic soldiers.  With my now low-hanging self-esteem, I sulked back to the car, when I happened to notice Leslie's next door neighboring business for the first time. It was a quaint little '50's style barber shop with a simple everyday scene occurring. I was so struck, I went in to ask Mr. Swanson's permission for a picture while he finished up yet another haircut. There was very little time for the setup and capture to occur before this haircut was over, and daylight was fading fast. This was the perfect opportunity to capture something meaningful with the 8x10.

And here's what I got:

It's great slices of Americana like this that give me hope for the continuance of Mom & Pop shops in the future. ^__^The exposure was quite a long one, 5-6 seconds, with a LOT of faith placed on the busy barber and his patient patron. I needed as much light hitting the film as I could possibly get, so a lot of swing was used to manipulate my depth of field while keeping the lens close to wide open. Only after processing the film did I realize there was MORE than enough light captured, I had in fact created the most dense Pyrocat negative I'd ever seen. >__< Just to get the "crappy" print on RC paper needed a low f-stop and a lot of Grade 0 time on the enlarger. Translation: I ignored protocol and consistency of calibration in order to get a cool shot, much paper would be wasted in obtaining a good print.

All in all, the severely diluted Pyrocat HD came through for me in preserving the highlight detail in the fluorescent bulbs while pulling out plenty of shadow detail towards the back room of the barber shop. No complaints in the image department, except maybe the overall framing (or frame within a framing :p).

When I started printing bigger, 20x24 fiber prints to be exact, you can bet multiple, multiple copies of this print were made. They're all pretty close to one another, with some softer in contrast than others. Dodging and burning gets a little trickier when dealing with split-grade printing; more about that insane process another day. So far, the prints have been doing incredibly well. It's three for three thus far, getting into:

• Art Space Lima's Annual Photo Show
• The Findlay Art League Photo 29 - Winner of Best B&W
• FAVA Biennal Photo Show 

So what was learned from this image?

Something Good: It appears to have an impact favorable to a majority of viewing audiences. Perhaps its the simplicity of the image, or the familiarity of the subject matter. Either way, it's doing quite well in the aesthetics department.

Something Bad: This neg is dense, like 5+ minute print times dense. I'm terrified to use reducer as I've heard horror stories about what it can do to pyro stain. The flip side is this makes a fabulous negative for Platinum/Palladium printing should I ever have enough disposable income to start "printing money".

Something Learned: Judging from the very few images I've taken which include other people, I'm starting to tell that I like environmental portraiture, a lot. Not that head-on portraits without context are a bad thing, I just feel they're a waste of the detail capturing power of 8x10.

Next Week: We're going back down to medium format, for some off-beat fun shots. Don't wanna get too serious for a personal blog. :p

The 52 Project, Week 30: All About Amherst

The large format adventures continue with more from my trip to Amherst, MA to visit my good and long-time friend Katie O'Neil. During the very brief visit, we had quite a few adventures, including but not limited to: (you can pm me for the entire scoop)

• Painting horses
• Bailing someone out of prison
• Visiting an insane asylum
• Meet Dr. Suess' nephew
• Losing cell phones and Polaroids deep in the woods

Fun times indeed. Now here are some scans:

Preceding the Halloween party on the Lone Birch Farm, this is my failed attempt at a group shot. Note the lack of people. >__<

This is Katie O'Neil. She loves horses, Ireland, good movies, and climbing trees. The first three are hard to photograph, so here she is.

Ah urban decay, you photograph on large format so nicely. Well, at least when there's a contrasty scene; here, not so much. >__<

 Just covering the bases again here, all of the above were VERY quick contact prints made onto Oriental RC VC paper, developed in generic Dektol replacement for 1:00 min. The prints were then scanned onto a trusty Epson V700 with some level tweaking in post.

Now a for this week's closing words.

Something Good: For my third overall batch of Pyrocat HD negatives, these guys all came out equally dense. Print times were all within 5 seconds of each other. When printing from a 20x24 equivalent height (for consistency's sake), that's actually pretty close.

Something Bad: These images as negatives were all equally over-processed. When over-processed negatives come out of a staining developer, the overall film base (usually clear) becomes stained/tanned itself. Not necessarily a bad thing, this side effect can be corrected by either reducing overall density in farmer's reducer or by printing longer...way longer. >__>

Something Learned: The more dense a Pyrocat stained negative becomes, the more filtration it will need to obtain proper contrast on VC papers. Remember, brownish-stain acts like a yellow SUPER-low contrast filter to VC paper, so this must be countered with yellow's compliment, purple light.

Next Week: Back to only one image, but a big one, with a great story and some great impact.

The 52 Project, Week 29: 8x10 around New York

During my brief time in New York before and after my guest spot on the early November 2010 episode of the Film Photography Podcast, I had some free time to roam around some other cool places in New York and play around with the 8x10. The same as last time, these are all scans of quick and dirty contact prints on Oriental RC VC paper with very little correction in post. Click the scans for a better view plus exposure data.

The deep downtown area of Newburg, NY, quite run down, but in a very photogenic way!

This image definitely took some "cojones" to take. I was in a VERY bad neighborhood for quite some time scoping out and setting up this image. Thankfully, I'm still around to share the urban decay of Newberg, NY with everyone. P.S. If it looks like a meth house, smells like a meth house, and has gunfire like a meth house, chances are its a meth house. >__<

Moving on.

A very unusual view from a scenic outlook of the Hudson River and Poughkeepsie, NY. Just ignore that little "squiggly" in the corner :p

So just when I thought things couldn't have gotten any hairer as they had earlier that day in downtown Newburg, I got hassled not once, but twice by Poughkeepsie police about shooting with my 8x10. Apparently, having anything on a tripod that looks more menacing than a point and shoot is "against city ordinance". After explaining that I wasn't Ansel Adams or planning to score big bucks of the above image, they were a little more relaxed with my shooting; they still followed me back to my car, however. >__>

This image helped to kick off my love affair with long exposures on the 8x10. For all you sports shooters out there, you just won't get it.

No real drama with this exposure, unless of course you considering a long exposure in a heavy downpour and 45 degree weather to be a problem. For large format? Not so much. ^__^

Keeping it short and sweet, onto this week's lessons...

Something Good: Each 8x10 sheet metered very differently, but with a little Zone System came out with even density in the negative with consistent print times for the contact prints. Yay!

Somehting Bad: Hair and dust are the bane of my scanning existence, nuff said.

Something Learned: Big cameras attract lots of attention (duh), both good and bad. Know your equipment, but know your photographic environment as well. If things get sketchy, ask yourself if getting the shot is really worth that extra risk.

Next Week: The big 'ole sheets of Tmax 400 keep on coming. And even though there's not going to be any new emulsions or processes, I guarantee the subject matter will keep things fresh!