Virginia

The Potting Shed


Linda and I drove down to Virginia on Sunday to visit family. The trip down was hard - we encountered a lot of traffic, especially at toll booths and on the Beltway and I-95 south of Washington. Mapquest predicted that it would be an 8 hour drive - it was more like 10 hours.

We devoted Sunday evening and Monday to visits with Linda's relatives. It was nice to see Dot again, and visiting with Joseph is always pleasant. Then, on Tuesday we drove across the state to Roanoke to see Laney and Debbie. Scott came in Tuesday night, and then Mark and Amy (and their boys) came over for the day on Wednesday. That was a very nice visit, one that was long overdue.

We also stopped in Charlottesville to tour Monticello en route to Roanoke. I had been to Mt. Vernon many years ago, and my recollection is that it was much larger than Monticello. Even so, it was well worth the stop and the cost of the tour.

The return trip was very long - 600 miles. Mapquest said 10 hours, and it was more like 11. I enjoy driving, but that's a bit much. We didn't encounter an abnormal amount of travel, although in retrospect, I wonder if it might have been faster to take I-81 up to Binghamton and then I-88 to Schenectady, rather than get snarled in the rush hour traffic on I-287.

I took the large camera but I didn't get many opportunities to use it. I did one landscape exposure at the Alvin Witbeck farm, but the negative was fogged - it looks like the darkslide may not have engaged in the hinge properly. I also did three negatives of a really neat scene in the hotel swimming area on Tuesday morning. I could tell that the contrast was high, so I planned on doing two of them at N-1 and N-2, and the third was intended for a water bath process. The two N- negatives turned out well, but the water bath negative is very thin, even with selenium toning. I guess I need to understand better how that process works. But I'm excited about the scene and am looking forward to printing one of the N- negatives.

The image this time was captured in the old nursery shop at Peters Valley. It was about 7am, and the only light was coming through a window from the left. This is one of my favorite images.

One of the APUG commenters noted that the shadow appears to be moving. I think he was referring to the fact that the edges of one of the shadows isn't sharp. I hadn't noticed that before, but I believe that it is a matter of reflected light partially filling in the a portion of the shadow.