Silver Archive #4 - By One Bolt

The Old Sugar Mill, where this photo was taken, is located in Clarksburg approximately 10 minutes south of Sacramento.  In the 1920s the New Holland Land Company began subdividing the tracts in the area and formally established Clarksburg. The Old Sugar Mill was originally owned by the Amalgamated Sugar Company which was founded in 1897 in Logan Utah. Due to blight and drought, only four of Amalgamated sugar factories operated in 1931. One of those factories, “The Smithfield” Utah factory, closed permanently in 1933 and moved to Clarksburg California. The factory was brought to Clarksburg piece by piece via railroad. The factory in Clarksburg began its operation on July 31, 1935. Amalgamated sold the Clarksburg factory to American Crystal Sugar Company in 1936.  The American Crystal Sugar Company sold the Clarksburg plant in 1982 to the Delta Sugar Company.  The Delta Sugar plant closed in 1993. Today the facility is mostly renovated and houses approximately 10 wineries, and is a popular destination on the Sacramento Delta

In 2003, the owner of The Darkroom, a rental darkroom facility in Sacramento, was able to provide access to the Old Sugar Mill building in Clarksburg, for a Photo Workshop. I was invited to be an assistant in putting on this workshop.  At that time, much of the old equipment, tanks, gauges etc... were still present, and only the warehouse had been renovated.  This scene, of a cover plate hanging on it flange, was found at the top floor of the building. I clambered up rickety metal steps and scaffolding until I reached this spot. The sun was beginning to set in the west and blasted its light on to the tank. The white cover just glowed against the rusty tank,  I had packed my 8x10 Kodak Master View up the steps, I was hell bent to get this photograph. I used my 10 3/4" Golden Dagor and all the elements of the image where perfectly in frame.

At that time I was still able to get Kodak Azo printing paper. Azo is a very slow, Silver Chloride paper that is used for contact printing - the negative is in contact with the paper, and then exposed using a very bright light. It has some very unique properties and is a very popular paper for those that wish to make prints the same size as their negatives. If I recall correctly, this image was made on Grade 3 paper - which is more contrasty than Grade 2 (the only other grade available at that time).

I am pretty happy with this image, and even 13 years later it is still one of my favorites...

Silver Archive #3 - Long Entry - Fort Point - San Francisco California

During one of my foray's into the local Border's Bookstore (remember them?), I came across this wonderful photography book by Jay Dusard, titled "Open Country". For me it was a revelation...

All of the images were of course spectacular, rarely of the usual landscape photographic hot spots, and many were in a panoramic format.  I was intrigued and moved by the images.

One of the techniques that Jay used was a simple box camera that shoots 4x10 inch sheet film, and a very wide angle lens, a 90mm. He called it his "adobe brick" and many of the images in the book were shot with this camera.

At that time Keith Canham, the well known camera builder from Arizona, had a catalog item for a 4x10 Point and Shoot Camera - which had been influenced by Jay's Adobe Brick.  I contacted Keith about ordering one, but he stated that he no longer was making that camera. He did however have enough of the various parts so that one could be built, and he would sell it to me. I contacted Alan Brubaker - the well known film holder maker - and asked if he could build this camera for me. He did and in short order I became the proud owner of my own 4x10 Point and Shoot.

Thanksgiving 2001, I went to the bay area to visit with my parents and spend some time with them. I planned to drive back home by going through San Francisco. On that day it was raining pretty solid, and I opted to go to Fort Point. Fort Point is a Civil War era Fort, in San Francsisco and is located south east of the Golden Gate Bridge. In the photo you can see parts of the girders for the South Tower of the bridge.

Shooting with this camera is a challenge. Having such a wide lens even forces you to make sure you have an interest that is in the near third of the image. The wrought iron rail in this image is actually pretty close to me, the right side wall is right next to the camera, and the left side wall with the beautiful light was no more than 10 or 15 feet away. One can get a sense of scale, as the doorways are 6 to 7 feet tall.

I had a great several hours shooting at the Fort. It was very slow as the sky was dark with rain clouds, the inside of the fort itself is very dark. Using this camera, you need to shoot at the smallest of f-Stops (f45) so that the lens will cover the entire film format without vignetting. To top it all off I was shooting with 125ASA film. Exposures that day were often in the multiple minute range (due to reciprocity failure).

I originally (contact) printed this image using Kodak Azo paper, and than later made 23 inch long print using Bergger Graded warm tone paper. In 2015 I printed this image at a 17 inch long print on Adox MCC110.

Technical Stuff:
4x10 Point and Shoot
90mm Schneider Super Angulon XL

Silver Archive #2 - Water and Sand Trails - Bandon Oregon

During the Summer of 2015 we (Joy, Sabrina, Hunter and I) travelled to Oregon for a family visit. For the return leg, we decided to drive down the Oregon coast. Joy and I were excited to go back to Bandon to take some photographs, something  we enjoyed the last time we were on the Oregon coast back in 2004.

While Joy shot with our Canon 6D, I had dragged my Hasselblad 500c/m down to the beach. We were fortunate to have a low tide in the morning, and very few people and dogs had walked on the beach (yet). I will share other shots later, but I focused on the Sea stacks, the puddles of water, etc... As I walked around I saw some interesting patterns left by the receding water and burned a frame or two.

After I had gotten home and developed my film, and made a contact sheet, what caught my eye was how these two images appeared on the contact sheet and I saw that if I flipped the order of the images, I might have an interesting diptych were ones imagination carries the trajectory of the patterns to a reflective pool of water meeting in the middle between the two images.

So I set about printing both images at the same time so that the tones etc... would be as consistent as possible.  I also opted to use some old stock of warm tone paper, namely J&C Polywarmtone - which is very similar to the old loved Forte Polywarmtone.  I printed the images 7x7" square, and mounted them in a 14x24 matt.

Technical Information:
Hasselblad 500c/m   80mm Zeiss Planar
Ilford FP4+ Film / PMK Pyro Developer
J&C Polywarmtone paper / Ansco 130 Developer
Selenium Toned

Silver Archive #1 - Working on the Railroad - Virginia City Nevada

Growing up with European Parents I always had a fascination with Railroads. As a native of the western U.S., railroads played a huge role in the movement of folks to our states. Besides watching any number of TV shows in the 60's and early 70's, there were the inevitable westerns with a depot and a steam locomotive. I will not even begin to talk about Petticoat Junction. :-)

Moving forward to 2014 - I was on a short vacation/photography trip to western Nevada and eastern California and one of my stops was to go to Virginia City and check out one of terminus' of the famous Virginia and Truckee Railroad. I found the small yard and approached one of the guys working that day, and asked if I could take some pictures. Since I was not doing 'commercial' work they agreed to allow me to walk around and take a few photographs. Kevin and Dan were working on the steam locomotive and on the tracks near the water tower, but were ready to call it a day. I asked if they would mind posing by the locomotive.

The idea to have them pose with the locomotive came to me as I recalled a book that I received a long time ago by Kinsey Photographer, titled The Locomotive Portraits. The book was filled stunning large format images made in the Pacific Northwest of different Logging work, and always had the crew standing next to a locomotive.


Unfortunately I was working in the harsh Nevada sun, in the summer, at mid-day, and not in the soft light of an overcast day in Washington or Oregon. Never the less I am quite happy with the result. I did send both Kevin and Dan a copy of the images, which I printed on 11x14 paper and mounted on 16x20 board.




Technical Stuff:
Camera:              Canham MQC5x7
Lens:                   180mm or 240mm Sironar ( I do NOT take notes)
Film/Dev:            Ilford FP4+ film developed in PMK Pyro
Paper/Dev:          Adox MC110 developed in Ansco 130 developer
                            Slightly toned with Selenium

Every Picture Tells A Story - Silver Archive - A Beginning

While Rod Stewart made an extremely popular album with the title "Every Picture Tells A Story" in 1971, this is not a blog about Rod or music, but rather to set the stage  of my return to blogging...

One of the purposes of my blog was to share my photographs and to share my thoughts about photography. At first this worked out pretty good, and I made a few posts, but it became kind of like being on the radio.... you can talk, but you feel you are not talking to anyone, and conversation, seems at best limited.

Over the past year I have been posting on Facebook, mostly iPhone images from my various excursions, and posted about daily adventures, photographic and non photographic. It has been fun... mostly with very little real writing - but some rudimentary conversations were enabled with my friends and within certain groups, which was one of my goals.

Facebook met a lot of needs and allowed me to share some of my results from the darkroom, as I could snap a quick photo with my iPhone as a final print was floating in the fixer tray etc...

While this was satisfying in some ways, I have images in my past, that are ensconced on my web page, that I would like to share. I also want to tell a story about that image - some what similar to Ansel Adams'  Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs. While I do not compare my self what so ever to this great American Master, however, I found  reading the story behind each image to be very interesting and provides a second story to these photographs, both the iconic images as well as newer or less well known images. I am sure that if Ansel were an educator in this day and age, he would be using the '40 Photographs' model and using all of the internet/social media tools to share his images, and to tell the story behind each one.

Silver Archive.  This is what I would like to start out with. I have been taking and printing Silver Gelatin images for just about 20 years now. I would like to start with these images first... I may begin to include some digital/iPhone images that I have accumulated over the 10 years of digital photography... I will need to come up with a good name for this - so stay tuned. My objective is to do a short piece and share an image a week for the year 2016. This will mean about 52 images. I may publish more than one in a week, and there may be a week where I miss, but by December 31 of 2016, I hope to have shared the story behind 52 images...

Wish me well!!!!