Ooze

This is another shot from one of my many visits to the Nordegg Historic Site last fall.  The site is accessible only by guided tour, and all of my visits were undertaken on this basis, with the permission of the County.  This puddle of tar is down by the base of the mine, near the briquette plant.  Rail cars full of this asphalt material were brought in to the site.  It was off loaded, heated with steam and mixed with pulverized coal.  This was a binding agent that held the coal together when it was pressed into briquettes.  

The rail cars are long gone, and no briquettes have been made for 70 years, but to this day, when the weather warms up, residual asphalt oozes out of the system.

The light was very low in this enclosed space.  As a result I elected to give the film increased development in an attempt to bring up the contrast.

I shot this on a sheet of Ilford FP4+ 125 which I rated at 160 iso.  I recently developed this in Kodak HC-110 Developer, dilution B for 14:25 minutes.  This extended development and slight underexposure generally yields a really contrasty negative, and it worked well this time.

I shot this back on September 30th of 2024 at about 1:30 in the afternoon.

I used my Ebony view camera and a longish 210mm lens.  I had to stop the lens right down to F64 in order to hold adequate depth of field.  This in combination with the very low light, resulted in an exposure time of 12 minutes.  For 2 minutes of this I used the flashlight on my phone to paint a little extra light the shadowed side of the concrete foundation and the asphalt.