A view of natural processes, therefore of nature, but not of a natural object. Shot on a 4X5 view camera (Plus-X, N+2) under the 4th street bridge in Los Angeles a number of years ago. Originally shot as a vertical abstract, when positioned horizontally this interpretation popped out at me influenced by a scene from the WWII Naval documentary series “Victory at Sea” I watched numerous times as a kid - my father spent 6 years on the Pacific and was involved in and wounded in one of the sea battles (the battle of Santa Cruz serving on the USS Enterprise) protecting the positions on Guadalcanal.
Specific Feedback Requested
In this instance the title will likely force the viewer to interpret the abstraction as I see it and not necessarily as they would unassisted by the suggestion.
What do you see? Do you have difficulties interpreting the realty of the shot? How do you feel about the presentation?
Any and all comments are welcomed.
Technical Details
4X5 Plus-X, N+2 push development, 210 MM Schneider lens, probably shot around 1 second @ f=22.
Ho. Lee. Cow!!! I think this is way beyond amazing!! I love to find abstract images in rust and decay that make me think of real scenes but this is beyond anything I could imagine! Surf and storm clouds! WOW!
My only suggestion might be to subdue the contrast and texture ont he clouds a little bit, as I find the incoming waves absolutely amazing!!
Wow. Just. Wow. Guy this is such a mesmerizing abstract and yes, I do see the see and the sky. I love the B&W processing too. You have an amazing eye for this type of imagery, Guy. I hope to see more.
I see a harsh and stormy landscape - the ocean certainly, but shoreline and an angry sky. The texture and shape remind me of a woodcut print - like you could really feel the ridges and bumps in the … metal, I assume it’s rusting metal.
No difficulties at all. The landscape comes through quite strong. The ‘sky’ especially reminds me of how Van Gogh put down paint - thickly, aggressively and without regard to pleasing the viewer.
Presentation works for me - I think if you’d left it in color, the other world inside the photo wouldn’t come through and we’d just see rust at first. Here the decay disappears and becomes shape, form and light.
Can you talk about the push development you did? It’s been several decades since I did any film processing or darkroom work, but it always was fun and a part of the continuum of getting to the final image.
Thanks so much for sharing this. Not just for what it is, but for your process and interpretation. And to lug a 4x5 film camera around for this kind of thing. That’s dedication to one’s art.
The N+2 development means I (sort of) under exposed the scene if an incident meter reading was used. The incident meter takes an average of the scene. But I was using a reflective meter and measured the darker areas and placed them at zone 2 on my meter. The whiter areas were falling on zone 5 because of the overcast day and the fact I was under a highway bridge. So the scene was quite flat. I wanted to increase the zone 5 values to around zone 7. Therefore I used N+2 development to increase the overall contrast of the negative. This had the further affect of increasing detail and local contrast of the darker areas and leaving them more as a zone 3. This left me with plenty of tonal range and detail in the negative to get a full tonal range on the print. Even then I had to use a high er grade contrast paper for best results.
The silver prints were quite acceptable but once I went digital I had more localized control of tonalities and was able to make what I felt was a better end product.
FYI, if you rotate the image CCW to vertical you will see the scene as it was shot. You are looking at the corner (2 facets) of a concrete highway column upright elevating the approach to the bridge. The white areas are efflorescence from age. The other textures (brush strokes) are either from workmen’s trowels or marks reflecting the textures in the forms used in construction in the 1930’s. The line about 4/5th of the way from the left to the right is a beveled area about 2 inches wide relieving what would otherwise be a sharp corner.
This was just basic use of of the zone system to get a good neg up front. I realized back in college that most people, including the instructors, were baffled by the zone system and Ansel Adams books, though brilliant, were way to technical for most people. My first book on the zone system was a small yellow book by Minor White. I read it during my first term and then followed it up by Adams books. During the first semester break I went back through Whites little yellow book and it all of a sudden fell into place. I understood why they insisted on all of the film testing but it wasn’t usually necessary, you could just use the film manufactures development time and make it work.
What Minor White brought to the mix was a simple illustration of how the different zones moved with differing development: N+n or N-n.
I ended up as a lab assistant in the B&W lab for a few semesters and had occasion to draw out the diagrams to a number of students. Most of them were at least half way through the 8 semester program and didn’t understand how they could control the affects of expose with development. The conversations with these students usually ended with, “Why didn’t they teach us that to begin with?” The answer to that I believe is that the instructors didn’t understand it, even though this was the same school that Ansel Adams and Fred Archer developed the Zone System at 30 years prior.
Thanks for this Guy. I was one of those baffled students way back. I had The Negative book and studied it, but every time I thought I had it down, I lost tin the field. Thanks for helping me here. I’ll have to check out Minor White’s book.
