When The Tourists Are Away...

In past entries I've noted how, as a local, Niagara Falls doesn't have the sort of magnetic draw on my camera lenses that seem to hold sway with visitors to the area. For the past several years however it's been my intent to visit during the much more photographically interesting and visitor sparse height of winter. Past years have not been kind to my plans. Last year I let the unusual cold take away my photographic mojo which only returned when things warmed up, and the several years prior to that were too warm for there to be a real dead of winter.

It didn't occur to me at a time but coated and weighed down by ice this tree reminds me of a Shetland Pony.

Though not quite so frigid as last year, this January has been accompanied by some solidly winter weather, and with my mojo fully intact I finally set out to ensure another year wouldn't pass without getting a crack at the area around the Falls. It wasn't so much the Falls itself I was after, though they too take on added interest in the presence of great quantities of ice. The real draw was the heavy glaze of ice that covers almost everything in the surrounding area. The mist rising from the torrent below that in warmer months drenches countless unprepared tourists begins to freeze on the surface of anything that doesn't move as the temperatures drop, turning trees and other fixed objects into virtual ice sculptures.

I brought what has become my standard kit - Mamiya RB67 Pro S with all four lenses for it I own, 50mm, 65mm, 127mm and 250mm, three backs loaded with Fuji Acros for black and white, Kodak Portra 160 for colour and a roll of 35mm Ilford Delta 100 with my home made 120 adapter for panoramas, Manfrotto 055 tripod, light meter, and the usual sundries like filters, cable release etc. I also brought along the Minolta Hi-Matic 9 loaded with some Fuji Superia 400 I've kept in the freezer for about ten years. As I write this I have yet to finish off any of the colour rolls I was shooting that day so images from those are yet to come. Also, as the 35mm roll in the RB67 back had been a partial roll, I was unaware that there was only one frame left and since it has to be unloaded in the darkroom when finished I was unable to reload in the field. 

These windows are part of an odd looking rail-car, the purpose of which I can't guess. It's enclosed in its own little fenced off enclosure suggesting it has some sort of historical value. It has plenty of character and I'd love to explore it with a camera more but the fence itself gets in the way. I was able to see a bit more this day though by standing on a show bank.

If rainbows in b&w are not your thing I did get a colour version of this which you may see once I finish the roll.

As anyone familiar with the RB67 will realize this is quite a load, but my middle aged, desk job soft self can still manage a haul of a few KM over reasonable terrain when I've got it all loaded into the big photo backpack. That's pretty much what I set myself up to do when as usual I chose the free parking at the Dufferin Islands park and walked the rest of the way. I might have saved myself some effort had I realized that not only was this normally heavily maintained area neglected in the off-season, and that likewise they don't bother maintaining the tourist premium parking rates closer to the Falls when there are next to no tourists arriving. Though I could have avoided the slog, it's over now and I burned off all those extra calories.

If I had it to do over again, and with at a good month or more of winter yet to come I guess I do, I think I would have been better served if I had left the Mamiya at home in this case in favour of a Nikon used hand-held. Shooting tripod mounted is almost habitual for me but in this case I felt it held me back from exploring all the compositional options I found myself confronted with. I was glad of the Hi-Matic I brought with me, allowing me to be a little more free-wheeling though with one of the Mamiya backs loaded with Portra I found myself wishing I had loaded it with black and white film.

The one panoramic image I was able to get on 35mm film adapted to the RB67. As I had no idea how many shots were on the partial roll to begin with there was no way to know that there was only one exposure remaining and as it had to be removed in the darkroom I couldn't put in a fresh roll in the field.

Matters of shooting style aside however, this was one day that using a waist level finder, currently my only option with the RB67, put me at a disadvantage. This isn't always the case, and in fact there are times when using a waist level finder has been a revelation. For example landscape shots featuring a prominent foreground object often require shooting from an angle low enough to have an eye-level finder user crawling on their belly to frame up the shot. Even when the shot doesn't require such low angles, shooting with a camera held at chest level rather than the same height we are used to seeing the world from can subtly add interest to images through the slightly unfamiliar point of view. Putting my armchair psychologist hat on the lower eye level implied may even be suggestive of a child's point of view, triggering whatever emotional responses that might involve for a particular viewer. This waist-level point of view has been noted as an important component in Vivian Maier's style. Perhaps the child's perspective would also make sense in the work of the word's most (belatedly) famous TLR toting nanny. 

There's a flip side to this of course, as obtaining a perspective higher than waist-level requires a step ladder or some reasonable substitute. For example, in image at the top of the post I was aware that the top of the tree intersected with the top of the falls and that I could remedy this by raising the height of the camera but as I need to look down on the camera from above to see what was in the shot, doing so would have left me shooting blind. Like most medium format SLRs the RB67 has interchangeable viewfinders and I have considered getting an eye-level finder for situations like this. Of course to really benefit I'd have to bring along both finders and switch as needed, adding yet another item to an already heavy pack. Not as heavy as carrying a step-ladder with me mind you, so I may yet do this.

There are more images to come. The images here are from the first roll of Fuji Acros that went through the Mamiya as well as the aforementioned single panoramic image on 35mm film. In addition to the colour images still in camera there's a second roll of Acros with images from that day that's also waiting to be finished. As always I'll keep you posted.  

Embracing the Elements

I expect things to slow down this time of year but somehow between the holidays and getting hit with that flu that's been going around it's been a month an a half now, which I didn't expect. With both of these things winding down now that just leaves the cold to contend with. The cold is an obstacle that last year all but brought my photographic activities to a halt, but it's also an opportunity so I've vowed that this year I won't let winter stand in my way, at least not to the same degree.

Winter changes everything. At least it does where I live and for most of you living at roughly similar or higher latitudes I presume it does for you as well. The land takes on a new character. Favorite subjects you/ve photographed too many times in the past can take on a new look. Scenes that might not have looked like much amid the cluttered overgrowth of warmer seasons are transformed by the barren cold and a fresh coat of snow. Even the snow and ice itself can become the subject for photographs that exist at no other time and may never appear quite that way again.

 If you're fortunate enough to live near one of the Great Lakes, winter offers another opportunity that exists in only a few other places in the world. The Great Lakes, any of them really, are a bit like little fresh water oceans. The the lakes are vast enough to be photographed as seascapes, but being fresh water, when winters are cold enough vast quantities of ice accumulate along the shore forming temporary desolate landscapes that differ from year to year.

It must of course change quite a bit over the course of a winter, but having always lived a few minutes drive from the shore I've never really gotten the sense of how it might change on a week to week, even day to day basis. This year then I resolved to visit the shoreline throughout the winter to see how things change, and of course take advantage of whatever photographic opportunities such changes might present. Only a few days into a cold snap following a green and rainy Christmas I made my first jaunt out to the beach yesterday expecting to see little more than the first hints of a line of ice clinging to the shore. Apparently I had the whole thing figured wrong. When I arrived at my usual haunt, the stretch of shore strewn with the ruins of the old Erie Beach Amusement Park, the ice had already created a new landscape of low wind blown hills extending perhaps a hundred metres out from shore. I had been hoping for less really. I had imagined getting images that included ice and water but the new shoreline was 100 meters further on across ice I knew better than to attempt to cross however thick it might appear.

After wandering around for quite some time and making a few exposures I didn't imagine would amount to much I finally found that it was possible to follow the old concrete pier that, back in the heyday of the amusement park had received visitors arriving by boat from Buffalo NY. Here I was able to get my seascape compositions complete with ice in the foreground I had in mind. The greater than expected volume of ice at last seemed like a bit of a bonus as it gave an Antarctic feel to the scene.

I don't put much stock in long term forecasts so I'll take the winter as it comes, which is my default plan for most things anyway. In any case there is more to watch than just what happens along the Lake Erie shore. There's also the Niagara River including the Falls and all the surrounding things mist might freeze to. Then there's all the streams, creeks, woods and so on. It just takes the time and, when the temperature starts to drop, the will.

The Road to Pyro

There's an impossible to define point at which a photographer's natural inclination to try new films and developers starts to transform into a phenomenon popularly known as magic bullet chasing, a quest to find that perfect combination that will give our images that balance of grain characteristics, tonality and apparent sharpness that will finally yield that long sought after look, spurred on by the implicit belief that such a combination exists. Over the years I have tried my fair share of combinations myself, but if there was ever a point that this crossed the line into magic bullet chasing it was the first time I tried Pyro developers back in my 20's.

Don't feel too bad if that's a new on you. Pyro developers started falling out of favour as long ago as the early 1900's, a decline that has everything to do with the introduction of developing agents whose stability and convenience characteristics trumped pyro's image characteristics, an area in which few would argue it has ever been surpassed after more than a century.

So what is this stuff and why should it be worth the bother? First to the what: Pyro developer is a general term for black and white film developers that are based on either Pyrogallol (aka Pyrogallic Acid) or Pyrocatechin (aka Pyrocatechol or simply Catechol). These are normally used in combination with other developers such as Phenidone or Metol. When it comes to why, Pyro images have a few desirable characteristics. The most well known is something that at first blush sounds like the last thing you would want - these developers stain the negative. The important detail that turns what sounds like a disaster into a boon is that stain increases with the density of the image so that the final image consists of the regular silver grain image plus the stain image. Because the stain image is continuous it reduces the appearance of grain. Additionally, there is very little bleeding along edges where light borders dark in the image increasing the appearance of sharpness and detail. Normally there is something of a trade-off between fine grain and increased apparent sharpness (high acutance) in developer formulae but Pyro has a reputation for giving you both. 

On the light table a strip of negatives prcessed in Pyrocat HD (top) and a strip processed in a more conventional developer (bottom). The brownish cast in the top example is the Pyro stain. There are many different Pyro developer formulations which may give more or less stain with colour casts that can range from yellowish to brownish to greenish.  

This is the theory at least, and there are other claimed advantages as well. There are those who speak of Pyro developers as though they posses near magical qualities, but still others claim it isn't worth the bother. Next to Sodium Hydroxide (Lye) it is potentially the most hazardous substance you'll encounter in photo chemistry, a powerful skin irritant and toxic if you breathe in airborne powder. (Luckily it's not that powdery but precautions are still in order.) There are a few other considerations related to keeping it chemically stable, but so long as these are kept in mind and you are willing to mix separate solutions that are only combined just before use, something I do with more conventional developers anyway, using Pyro developers isn't really much more involved that what I was already doing.

Still, when it was becoming clear that my default mode of photography had returned to something involving developing film in the kitchen sink I told myself I wasn't going to do anything crazy like get back into Pyro developers. I had HC-110, a fine developer, economical to use and with one shot liquid convenience. By the time the bottle started to run dry though I had a hankering to try something that favoured sharpness over fine grain and decided to try Beutler's formula. Though not commercially available it was simple to mix from just a few ingredients, a sort of undertaking I was no stranger to, and I've been happy using it since. 

That was until there was x-ray film to think about, that marvelous stuff that lets me shoot 8x10 for a per-frame cost that rivals 35mm. Finicky stuff it is though with its double sided emulsion that's more prone to scratching that a wax cylinder phonograph. This shortcoming can be diminished by, as it turns out, Pyro developers that in addition to their staining characteristics also tan and harden the gelatin base of the emulsion making it tougher an more scratch resistant. And if I was going to be getting this stuff to use with x-ray film anyway, wouldn't it simplify things to start using it for my regular work as well? 

And so it was that with my last regular order of supplies was a box from Photographer's Formulary containing all the ingredients needed to make a small batch of Pyrocat HD whcih is probably the most popular Pyro developer formula out there at the moment. I still haven't found the 8x10 tanks I'm looking for to properly develop x-ray negatives but no reason not to start right in the next time I had roll film to develop. A recent optometrists appointment that brought me further down the South Coast (as the Canadian side of the Lake Erie shore is referred to by we locals, or at least our tourist boards) than my usual relaxed photographic sojourns usually go gave me just that chance when I was able to roll in a side trip to the lighthouse that stands at the mouth of the Grand River.

A straight scan from the first two rolls developed in Pyro and a crop from a very small section of the image unsharpened and straight from the scanner. In the crop grain seems all but invisible though I'm wondering whether reducing agitation might have boosted apparent sharpness, which doesn't seem as apparent as I'd hoped here.

For processing information I struck out at the Massive Dev Chart site. They had no information at all for Pyrocat HD with the Fuji Acros I had, but after digging through a few forums I came up with a time of 19 minutes at 20^oC with 1:1:100 dilution. As the comparison photo of the negatives on the light box shows this was too much. They're still workable though as the top photo (from the leftmost Pyro negative), possibly in part due to Acros's ability to hold highlight detail. Superficially the middle Pyro neg looks about right but this is because I used the 10 stop ND filter that I'm beginning to realize is denser than its nominal rating and consequently the shot is really underexposed and over developed. I shot at box speed which seems about right but I will have to give it less time and possibly less agitation next time. Pyro developers reputedly require less agitation to maintain even development and reducing agitation, for reasons I hope to discuss in a future episode, increases the apparent sharpness even more. This is my hope anyway as this is one area in which it doesn't seem that results met my expectations. More experimentation is sure to follow. As always I'll keep you posted.