A Little Old Response to the Black & White Challenge

The Fox Valley Photographic Group's challenge this month is Black & White. These challenges are meant to encourage members to go out of their comfort zones and explore something new about photography. I'm pretty comfortable with monochrome. What can I do to make the challenge special?

Black and white 35mm came to mind after a recent experience with some 40-year-old Tri-X. I still have probably 60 feet of it left.

There are two modes that I typically work in - rather formally composed, optimally diffracted images using medium format cameras mostly in black & white, and spontaneous grab-it-if-you-can photography in color done with 35mm film while I'm traveling. What if I did sort of a freaky Friday and used the antique 35mm Tri-X to do the kind-of-formal work? This would also give me something my digital associates would have to fake - film grain. 

The counter on the bulk loader doesn't work very well so I wasn't sure how many frames I loaded. It turned out to be about my height for 36 exposures. I could just barely reach for a single stroke of the squeegee.

This idea came to me just before leaving to participate in hanging a show with the Fox Valley Photographic Group at the Kaukanna Public Library. This is the entire process of hanging the northwest wall portion of the exhibit from about 9:20 and throughout the artist reception until about 11:00.

I was so determined to abide by my special challenge, I took it along with The Crackon, a square medium format camera, determined to just let the proportions of the image decide which camera I used, except maybe not be so picky with the little camera full of a lot of free film.

A pine reflecting in the Menomonee Park puddles.

Two pines reflecting in the Menomonee Park puddles.

A wide establishing shot of Miller's Bay looking south.

Jonathon Livingston Seagull is supposed to be a symbol of peace and freedom but they're actually pretty fierce predators.

 

The wooden ramp next to the boat launch farther south in the bay.

Looking down the dock a few meters to the right of the previous frame.

Looking across all three docks at the boat launch.

 

At the far south end of the bay, the shore is defined by this somewhat worn wooden bulwark.

The floating slabs.

There is less ice floating in the Lagoon.

A distinct current is flowing through the inlet into the Lagoon.

The wind blowing over the ice was forming a stream of fog where it crossed the warmer shoreline but the film didn't capture that.

The last giant pile of an ice shove in the park.

A closeup of the forward edge.

My refusal to use refractionist terms like focal length and pinhole lens gives me the reputation of somewhat of a grammar nag. Is the pizza not food or the food not great?

A pile of cuboids behind the east side of the 500 block of Main Street.

Finished the film in the bigger camera so I was free to continue to explore without having to decide about the format.

Heirloom tomatoes and a lemon.

A half dozen eggs.

Out again in the other direction toward the Fox River. 

The faux Tudor back of the Paine Art Center Conservatory. No rising front on a 35mm Populist, by the way.

The modern Charter Center attached to the Neo-Romanesque Algoma Methodist Church.

Across the street is a praire-style house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for a lumber company executive for whom he had done an earlier house in Illinois. Wright would have hated those overhead wires.

The bell tower of the Read School looks down on me disapprovingly.

The fly loft over the University Theatre posing dramatically.

The HVAC plant no longer burns any coal.

The University has done a lot to move toward sustainable energy use.

Sage Hall was designed particularly to use window daylighting to reduce energy consumption. I was responsible for the design, installation and maintenance of the projection and audio systems of those brightly lit classrooms about the time I was given responsibility for the entire Information Technology Division. I attended quite a few meetings behind those second floor windows discussing all this with the College of Business Faculty. One thing about the graininess is it makes things look like something you saw in a nightmare dream.

Flower-like solar panels follow the sun across the sky in the parking lot.

The great blancmange of the winterized athletic fields.

If this is how you're entering the courthouse, it's probably not a good day.

A last random arrangement of light.

Neville has a .17mm hand-drilled pinhole 24mm from a 24x36mm frame. The old Tri-X was semistand developed in old Rodinal 1:100.

I think I can pick one from this group for the discussion. I might bring props to hand around at the meeting including the bulk loader and the last dregs in my ancient bottle of Rodinal. When we discussed approaches for the challenge last month, nobody wanted to talk about development.