Photography day

10" Rodman


I had trouble getting to sleep last night, so as I lay in bed I thought about what I would do today. I decided to go to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center to do some photography, with the secondary objective of capturing an image that I can enter in the Saratoga: Inside-Out show at SCAC next month.

As I was laying there, I thought of two images that I wanted to make. One was of the seats in the amphitheater, done in close with a wide angle lens and with the seats moving off in curved lines converging in the corner of the frame. The title that came to me was "Sea of Seats" - a takeoff on the famous "Sea of Steps" image. The second image was in a mens room, also done with the 90mm lens, focusing on the urinals.

When I got there this morning, I found that there was a crew on top of the amphitheater removing the old asbestos roof, and another crew with a bucket loader painting the scrim over the stage. But I was able to frame the "Sea of Seats" image in a way that excluded the tarp that the painters had draped over the first ten rows of seats. Unfortunately, about a half hour later I realized that I had misread my meter (repeat after me - the orange number are whole seconds, while the white numbers are fractions), so I went back to make that image again, only this time working from the other side of the amphitheater. Actually, this was a better image because the sun was almost directly behind the seats from this angle. I used hyperfocal focusing, together with a slight amount of tilt on the lens, to get everything sharp. The negative appears to be everything that I had envisioned while lying in bed last night.

Unfortunately, the men's rooms were all locked, so the urinal image didn't happen. But I did get a neat backlit image of the entrance to the new restroom complex, and another great negative of the arcade behind the Hall of Springs. I also was able to get out on one of the catwalks that run toward the stage from the balcony (remembering the Verdi "Requeim" performance many years ago with the off-stage trumpets on this catwalk) - another great image of seats.

As I was shooting, I noticed that the light was very contrasty, so my annotations called for N-1 processing of all but one negative (the one from the catwalk). HC-110, dilution H, 11 minutes at 68 degrees is N, so N-1 is 8 minutes

Yes, I really enjoy the precision and control of LF photography!

Oh, I ordered some Efke film from J&C last week - had it shipped by USPS. The problem is that the letter carrier puts the mail in the black mail box to bake in the sun. Fortunately, I was walking up the driveway this afternoon when the letter carrier drove up, and she handed me the box of film. Perfect timing!

This is the 10" Rodman cannon at Fort Knox near Bucksport, ME. I saw a similar image of the 15" Rodman at Fort Knox done by Eric Boutillier-Brown - it's OK, but larger gun is outside, while the smaller model is in the arcade and out of the direct sun. Therefore, the lighting is much more friendly.