Urban Texture

In my free time, I like to use the darkroom at Mills College. I've been experimenting with X-ray film just because it's so cheap and there's plenty available. Recently it occurred to me that some areas I have access to aren't in use. So for a long weekend, I co-opted a little gallery space " Slide Space 123 " to do some shooting.  The natural light in Slide Space is nice. There are white walls, and plenty of room to navigate. At one point I had a 4x5 (an old Toyo my high school teacher Mr Bernucci gave me,) My Linhof 5x7 and my red bellows 8x10 that my grandfather gave me all setup swapping cameras for similar scenes. So far I've only developed the 8x10 xray films. I had trays setup in a darkroom and would shoot a sheet and walk it over and develop it immediately afterwards.    See more here

For the last four years or so, I've been working in the Photo/Art department at Mills College in Oakland, California. Mills has been in the news due to financial problems and ultimately due to being purchased by Northeastern University. I have no idea how much longer I have a job there. So I thought it might be good to start documenting the beautiful campus while I am there.  So sometimes on breaks or my days off, I'll photograph around campus. Also, it's a good place to test certain gear. Prior to taking the job, I'd done a lot of stitched panoramas. I stopped, in part just because I ran out of bandwith. My job was supposed to be half time, but in reality it took more, which left little time for my other endeavors.  At some point in a discussion I ended up suggesting somebody try stitched panos to increase resolution. And I figured it was time to pull out my trusty old Gigapan. But not to make things too mundane, I thought why not try and combine stitched panos and my ...

  snapshot of 8x10 negative  At my school darkroom where I work I came in on my day off to play. I've had an idea of something I've wanted to try for a long time. The idea would take a few things I can't easily put together. Patience, time, room to photograph, and room to develop right next door. Yesterday the stars aligned. Here's the deal. Xray film is cheap. It has a unique look due to it's orthochromatic character. Ortho films aren't sensitive to red light. So two factors should be clear: you can develop under a red safelight, kinda like paper. And that any red in your motiv will be rendered dark. I recently bought a beautiful Componon-S factory mounted in a shutter from a friend. Normally lenses of this sort are used for enlarging. But such lenses are also well suited for closeups. This lens has a 49mm filter thread, and I have the adapter to my cheap Vivitar ring flash.  What I ended up doing was setting up two large format cameras: a 4x5 and...