Hello John,
Sorry for the late reply. I've been out of town since the 14th, and
am just catching up on the list.
On Tuesday, April 17, 2001, John Ptak wrote:
> Howdy. I was looking at the image upload page and saw
> the silo image by Ssellers. Is SSellers there? I'm
> very curious to know the type of camera (etc) used for
> this elegant image.
> Cheers!
This was taken with a camera made of foamcore, holding a 5"x8" paper
negative (cut down from one of the Kodak RC papers) at a 3" focal
length. This was on a motor trip through the South Western US. On the
trip, each night I'd load the camera (usually in a Motel 6 bathroom).
The next day, while driving wherever it was, I'd look for a good
subject. Spotting such, I'd get out the tripod, extrapolate sunny-16
beyond any reasonable tolerance, then expose the paper using a
wristwatch. Using this one-day/one-picture method, I came up with a
few failures, several passable shots, and this one, my favorite from
the trip. This particular image was captured in the Texas panhandle,
in the late afternoon, after driving through a wonderful summer storm,
with towering thunderheads, lightning in the distance, and the smell
of rain quenching dry sagebrush, gila monsters, and hot asphalt.
All the negatives were stored back in the plastic paper envelope
nightly, separated from the unexposed by a piece of cardboard. They
were processed upon returning home, using ilford liquid concentrate
paper chemicals. Contact prints were made with a lightbulb and a
piece of glass. Scans were made from the negatives, and adjusted to
look as much like the prints as possible on my monitor. I think the
qualities of this image, and the others I uploaded, are fairly
representative of large format, wide angle, paper negative pinhole
photography.
--
Scott Sellers
mailto:scottsell...@mindspring.com
