Holden Richards' photostream  

On the walk to Holden's Mill. This image really marks a return to rectangular composition for me. It seems complete end to end compositionally. Again a bit of controlling for the highlights in the development, HC110 is very predictable in its response to agitation/lack of it. 12 plates made on this trip of which 8 were very nice and 4 were out (2 for camera mistakes, 1 for exposure, 1 for the film itself).

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1891 Rochester Optical Company Universal - Congo 135mm - f/45 - Arista EDU 100 - 4x5 Film - HC 110 1+200 - Unaltered Negative Scan

Warm weather has made it nice for walking on the Eno with the 4x5. This is from a Thursday hike up the Holden's Mill Trail. I have photographed this rock before but this might be pretty definitive. More note taking and zone system influenced developing at home to control the highlights. I am always usually moving shadows up a zone sometimes two in exposure. This is unfiltered. The Congo 135mm actually looks best unfiltered. Took me a while to learn that. Unusual because with medium format lenses that would never be the case you almost always want a filter for B&W.

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1891 Rochester Optical Company Universal - Congo 135mm - f/45 - Arista EDU 100 - 4x5 Film - HC 110 1+200 - Unaltered Negative Scan

The river project rolls on next week, I hope to refine my way of seeing it over the course of a couple weeks. Also it will help me further perfect my zone system development routines regarding amounts of agitation and dev times etc. These 4 shots were the best of 7 the other 3 not being dev mistakes but camera mistakes. With LF dust is a real issue. You have to be vigilant about cleaning the holders and darkslides after each use or you will find dust spots on your skies or a small twine of dust in the middle of some important feature. I really enjoyed this last walk and felt in control of the process enough to make compositions and not just hope for a photo. I am still mostly at the hoping to make a photo stage with the 8x10 but I am actively learning and thinking about ways to get that smoothed out also.

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1891 Rochester Optical Company Universal - Congo 135mm - f/45 - Arista EDU 100 - 4x5 Film - HC 110 1+200 - Unaltered Negative Scan

I will be experimenting more with the 8x10. It seems the longer exposures make the light in the image a little disorienting sometimes. Here the clouds were moving fast!

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1903 Eastman View No. 1 - Konica Hexanon GRII 210mm - f/45 - Arista EDU 100 - 8x10 Film - HC 100 1+200 - Unaltered Contact Print Scan

I know you've seen this before, but this morning light was too irresistable not to take this one more time. Maybe I'll make a series of this spot. This is my third time making a photograph of this after all. It may be my personal favourite.

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1891 Rochester Optical Company Universal - Congo 135mm - f/45 - Arista EDU 100 - 4x5 Film - HC 110 1+200 - Unaltered Negative Scan