Large format photography: North of Montreal and downtown Calgary

 

With the arrival of the warmer spring weather, time to take out my large format camera and get more familiar with the process. All of these photographs were taken with my Tachihara 4X5 camera, most with a 5.6/135 mm Schneider-Kreuznach Linhoff Symmar-S lens.  The film stock is Ilford FP4+ film, developed using Blazinal, a developer based on the original Rodinal recipe, originally patented in 1891,making it the oldest film developer still commercially available.

 

The original Musée Regional d’Argenteuil, which was in the old Carillon Barracks, closed since flooding in 2019, is being relocated to the deconsecrated Christ Church in Saint André-d’Argenteuil, QC, previously the town of Saint-André-Est, the birthplace of Canada’s third Prime Minister, Sir John Abbott.  For the exterior photo of the front of the church, I used a red filter for this shot to darken the sky and bring out the clouds: very happy with how it turned out.




 

It’s a graveyard, not a cemetery. The difference? A graveyard is on the grounds of a church, whereas a cemetery is not associated with a specific church and is its own property. This is the graveyard behind what was once Christ Church.





 

The clutter in the interior of the church is due to its conversion to a museum space, which was far from complete when this photo was taken in April.




 

The Moulin Légaré in Saint-Eustache, QC, is North America's oldest continually operating water-powered mill. I used an ND1000 filter for these shots to make long-exposure photos in daylight. The silky-smooth water surface was the aesthetic I was hoping to achieve, so I am pleased with the results.

 


This was the only photo of this lot not using the 135mm lens, but a 5.6/210 mm Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar-S lens.

 



Business took me to Calgary, AB, in early May, and I was able to bring the Tachihara along and shoot some sheets of film.

 

The tricky bit was getting the film to Calgary without damage by airport scanners.  I had read stories that while most airport security personnel, at least outside of CDG in Paris, will do a manual check and swab of 35mm and 120 film, there are sometimes problems when travelling with sheet film: insistence that they go through the scanners.  And despite claims that scanners will only damage high ISO film, I have seen tests suggesting that most film, even lower ISO, are impacted by airport security scanners. So I followed the advice I found online and mailed my loaded film holders ahead of my trip to my brother in Calgary. Thanks, Gerry!  After my Calgary visit, I mailed the film holders back home in the same box.

 

First, a photo of the Peace Bridge, a pedestrian and cyclist bridge over the Bow River, heading into downtown.




 

Second, plants recovering from winter on Prince’s Island, with downtown in the background, this picture really shows off the bokeh effect of the Kreuznach lens.




 

Finally, a shot I have visualized for a while, an effect I have wanted to try for a long time: using long exposure to make people and moving objects disappear.  In this shot, from Prince’s Island onto the Jaipur Bridge, the ND1000 filter, the same I used for the Moulin Légaré photos above, cuts the light reaching the lens by a thousand.  People and cyclists moving across the bridge in front of the camera move far too quickly to be captured by the film, so they do not appear in the final image. It’s an effect I have seen in many YouTube videos and one that always reminds me of the Star Trek episode “Wink of an Eye"  the eleventh episode of the third season of the original series, wherein aliens attempt to take over the Enterprise, the Scalosians live at a much higher rate of acceleration, rendering them invisible to the human eye, only an occasional buzzing sound.  




It’s a very interesting effect that I plan on experimenting with more.



 

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