9.18.2010

Revisiting the Portiest of Deposits.

A few years ago when I first got my 5x7 camera, I only had these really old wooden glass plate negative carriers. In fact when I first opened the negative carriers up, the plates still had some sort of emulsion painted on them. Before I started ordering 5x7 film, I was using photo paper, just for trial and error purposes really.

I had to go into the dark room and sandwich a piece of paper between the glass and the negative carrier back. This caused a great deal of dust, and ultimately was the reason I decided to find new carriers.

These 5 images were the first 5 I shot with my 5x7. I shot them on photo paper, without a tripod for exposures in the 5 to 10 minute ranges. It's hard to calculate exposure for photo paper without a light meter, since it generally has an ISO of around 3. For the uninitiated, 3 is insanely slow (average film speed is 200 or 400).

I shot these at the now defunct school for boys/Naval training academy atop the hill outside Port Deposit. A discerning eye can see that in the image of the gears, there is a manufacturer's label that reads, "E. Howard and Co.".  Wikipedia has a little to say about them. These gears belong to the clock tower bell mechanism in one of the buildings on the campus.

In the image below this text, what appears to be some black junk laying on the ground is actually a dead vulture.




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