Hoar Frost

This is my first processed and posted film image of 2017.  Hailey and I were out on a day trip a couple of weeks ago and I stopped beside the road to take this shot.  It was a dull and overcast day, really damp with heavy fog.  That made photographing with a view camera rather painful.  You see, the small knobs and controls of a view camera are not easily operated with gloves on.  I find that I have to remove my gloves to be able to properly access the controls.  This usually results in my fingers becoming excruciatingly cold and sometimes nearly frostbitten.  On this day it was only about -8C, but the humidity levels were extreme, and there was a brisk breeze out of the north.  It was not very pleasant and I questioned why I was so stupid as to attempt large format photography.  The results have convinced me that as stupid as I may be, I need to continue to work at this.

This image was taken on a new film, Bergger Panchro 400.  I am familiar with Bergger and have used some of their paper and film in the past.  This particular emulsion is new, at least to the North American market.  When I first learned of it last year, I purchased a hundred sheets of film and began to experiment with it.  This is a rather unique film that consists of two emulsions coated onto the same base.  Much like multigrade paper, it is advertised to include one emulsion for contrast, that supports the high and low ends of the image scale, and a second softer emulsion that supports all the values in between.  I am quite impressed with the results so far.  

My initial experimentation has been based on exposing the film at the rated box speed of 400 iso.  I chose to process in Ilford Perceptol developer, diluted 1:1.  Development was for 20:00 minutes, at 24C.  The results are good, particularly when light conditions were crisp.  But, shadow values were a bit lacking, and in overcast light, the negatives were heavy and dense.  Moving forward I think I need to provide additional exposure, and will rate the film at 320iso.  For normal development I think that development can be reduced slightly, to about 18:00 minutes.  In flat overcast light I think that exposure can be reduced somewhat to about 500sio, and development increased, perhaps to 25:00 minutes or more.  Further refining is in order, and I will continue to share my results.  In the mean time I have purchased a couple hundred more sheets of this film...

Back to Saskatchewan

I just returned from another trip to Saskatoon.  I attended a reception for my Procession West photography exhibition at the Saskatchewan Craft Council Gallery.  More on the reception later....

I booked Friday off work and hit the road early in the morning.  It was a pretty uneventful drive and the roads were good, and the temperature mild.  The skies were mostly sunny and it was a pleasant winter day, except for the stiff breeze that made it feel a lot colder than it really was.

I stopped at the abandoned Borden Bridge.  This old bridge spans the North Saskatchewan River, west of Saskatoon and has been replaced by two steel bridges just slightly downstream.  This massive structure is pretty impressive so I spent a couple hours photographing it with my view camera.

After finishing up here at the bridge I continued on to Saskatoon and checked into my hotel room.  Later that evening I headed over to the gallery and spent a couple hours at the reception.

The next morning, after breakfast, I checked out of the hotel and hit the road for home.  The day started out sunny but by early afternoon it had clouded over and the light became pretty flat.  The temperature was a little milder than the day before and topped out at about +3C.  The wind was still there, but not as strong, and it had changed directions.  I stopped a few times to make some photographs with my view camera.  This included a solitary maple tree near North Battleford, an abandoned house, and an old church.  I turned off the four lane highway a couple times and drove a few back roads.  This was mostly to check out some old buildings, explore a few small towns, and a couple of junk yards.  Some of the stuff I found would be worth a return trip when the weather is milder, the days longer, and the land free of snow.

I didn't bother to take my Nikon digital SLR with me on the trip as I spent most of my time working with the film camera.  I did take a few snapshots with my iPhone, which I have attached below...

Sandpiper Beach

This scanned negative is from the Spring Break trip out to Vancouver Island in 2016.  The girls and I drove out and stayed in a rental house at Courtenay.  Most of our time was spent out on the Gulf Islands of Denman and Hornby.  This particular shot was taken out at Sandpiper Beach on Hornby Island in April of 2016.  I used my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Schneider Super Symmar XL 110mm lens.  The film was Kodak Tri-X Pan, given normal development in PMK.

Published on SCC Blog...

The Procession West show is currently being exhibited at the Saskatchewan Craft Council Gallery in Saskatoon.  In conjunction with the show, an essay that I wrote has been published on their blog.  Here is a link...

https://www.saskcraftcouncil.org/why-make-photographs-robert-s-pohl/

Utah Trip - October of 2015

Over the winter months I spend quite a bit of time processing film, scanning negatives, working on submissions, and printing.  Over the past couple of months I've rediscovered a number of negatives that I took, mostly over the past year or two.  These two are both from the fall trip down to Utah, that I went on in October of 2015 with my friends Rob and Brad.  We were staying at a rental house in Kanab, and every day we set off in some direction, exploring and making photographs. Both of these images were taken on Kodak Tri-X Pan film with my Ebony view camera.  I refer to this as our Utah trip, because that was our home base but in fact both of these images were taken across the border in northern Arizona.

The shot of Roosevelt Point, at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon was taken on one of the first days of our trip.  I used a 210mm lens and gave the film plus development in PMK developer in an attempt to pump up the contrast a little.  The second one was taken on the last day of our trip, on a hike in the South Coyote Buttes.  By this time the weather had improved, the skies were clearer, and the light was a lot more contrasty.  Extra development was not necessary for this one and it only received normal development in the same PMK developer.

Diamond T

I've been digging back through a bunch of my scanned negatives in recent weeks.  Many are older shots from several years ago while others, such as this one, are from this past summer.  I'm selecting some of the stronger images and posting them to my Flickr account. 

This particular image was taken at the industrial yard down in Crowsnest Pass.  The owner collects old pickup trucks and has restored a number of them.  His favorites are REO Speedwagons, Diamond T's, and Fargo Powerwagons.  He graciously gave us permission to shoot on his property when we were down in the area exploring with Chris and Connie of "Off the Beaten Path".

This detail shot of the grill of a Diamond T, pre-restoration, was taken on Kodak High Speed Infrared film, long past its expiry date.  I used my Ebony view camera and a Fujinon 240mm lens.

Anyone interested in checking out my images on Flickr, here is the link to my account...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/130527519@N08/

Here is a link to "Off the Beaten Path", the website that my friends Chris and Connie put together...

http://www.bigdoer.com/

Photographically Disappointing

My oldest daughter Hailey and I set out for a day trip this afternoon.  It was a gloomy day with leaden skies.  Like the day before, the clouds were skimming the ground and the light was very dull and flat.  The temperature seemed mild enough, with a daytime high of about -8C, but the humidity was very high, and there was a slight breeze, making it very cold and damp.  Its always great to get out with my girls and this time was no exception.  Hailey and I listened to music on the radio, and talked, as we scouted around.  Photographically speaking it was a very uninspiring day and was quite the disappointment, particularly in comparison to the trip last weekend out to Nordegg.

We headed to the southwest of the city and my first destination was the hamlet of Ireton.  I had photographed here in the past, and there used to be an abandoned railway snowplow as well as several other old rail cars, sitting on a siding.  But, the hamlet itself is pretty much non existent now, with most of the old buildings gone, and a couple of new industrial buildings in their place.  The railway siding and the rail cars are also gone.  It seems that the tracks on this old line that parellels highway 39 have been replaced, and there is a new high voltage power line that follows the railway right of way.

We continued west and took a look around the town of Thorsby.  There is an old abandoned theatre and a couple churches that were mildly interesting, but nothing spectacular.  Further west of Thorsby an old school house still stands, but the farmer that owns the land has now installed a row of ugly granaries right beside the old schoolhouse, ruining any photographic value.  

We took a drive out to Sunnybrook.  The old service station that I photographed in the past is still there, but it is now boarded up more than it was previously.  There also used to be an old building in town that had a big billboard for Robin Hood flour painted on the side of it.  That too is now gone.  We headed north from there and checked out Telfordville, and then slowly made our way back to the city.  I didn't even bother with the side trip out to St. Francis as I already know that the old church that had once stood there is also now gone.  We did stop a couple of times... once along the Strawberry Creek Ravine and a second time along Conjuring Creek Ravine to photograph some trees coated with hoarfrost.  The big view camera came out and a few sheets of film were exposed.  Both times it was excruciatingly cold and after returning to the truck to warm my frozen hands I once again questioned why I do what I do.

I guess if I learned one thing from this trip it is not to procrastinate.  When I find something that is even mildly worthy of a photograph, I need to stop and take the time and make the effort to explore it.  I am often guilty of thinking that I can return another time but this trip has taught me that the next time, it might be gone.

When we got back to the city Hailey and I went out for an early dinner together and continued the days conversation before eventually heading back home to meet up with the rest of the girls.

The rest of the weekend was also quite busy.  The Monochrome Guild met at my place on Friday evening and we had some discussion centered on an upcoming group exhibition.  On Saturday night my hockey team, the Renegades, had a game at Northlands Coliseum, the former home of the Edmonton Oilers.  Unfortunately we lost the game, by a score of 5-2, which doesn't really help our chances with only eight games remaining in the regular season.

Another Old One....

This image was taken way back in March of 1999.  I came across it when I was recently going through some of my archives.  This old brick Chimney is up in northeast Edmonton, and used to be part of the Canada Packers meat slaughter house and packing plant.  That plant was shut down many years ago, yet the chimney still stands.  Back in 1999 when this photograph was taken, there was nothing left on the site but this chimney and a few fragments of old foundations.  Now, nearly two decades later, the City of Edmonton is about to start construction of the North East Transit Garage, on this site.  This will be a facility for storage and service of transit buses.  I understand that this chimney has been assigned historical significance and will be incorporated into the new building.  

Back in 1999 when this photo was taken I was working with a Sinar F1 4" x 5" monorail view camera.  I have absolutely no complaints about this camera other than the fact that it does not collapse down to a very compact size, and is quite heavy.  But technically it is a very precise and accurate camera and a breeze to work with... as long as you don't have to carry it too far.  I packed this camera around from 1996 until the latter part of 2012, when I switched to an Ebony wood field camera.  This images was taken with a Nikkor SW 75mm wide angle lens.  The film was Agfapan APX-100.  Production of this film stopped when Agfa went out of business not long after this shot was taken.  It was a wonderful film, but with it no longer available, I was forced to move on to other options.  Development was normal, in Rodinal diluted 1:50.

Ice Bubbles at Abraham Lake

On Sunday, Hailey and I took a drive out to Abraham Lake.  Margarit and the other two girls decided to stay home.  Hailey and I hit the road about 9:00AM and after a quick stop for fuel and a coffee, we were on our way.  The temperature was mild, which was quite a relief after the cold snap we've just endured for the last couple of weeks.  The drive was fairly uneventful, but we did see a big bald eagle dining on a moose carcass beside the highway.  We arrived in Nordegg just around noon and decided to drive up to our lot and have a look around.  It was pretty snowy, with about a foot of snow on the ground.  The roads had been plowed and access was good, but without a cabin, there wasn't much to hang around for.  We continued further west up to Abraham Lake.

Abraham Lake, and the surrounding Kootenay Plains are known for remaining relatively snow free in winter.  This is mostly because of the incessant wind.  There is a reason that nearby Windy Point got its name.  I think that any snow that actually falls here ends up blown into Saskatchewan.  Its great wildlife habitat as the large animals can feed relatively easily on the snow free plains.  There is also a lot of naturally occurring methane gas in the like, which is evidenced by all the bubbles that form in the ice.  This phenomenon of ice bubbles probably occurs in a lot of other lakes, but because here the wind keeps the lake clear, the bubbles are highly visible.  In fact on this day, a person probably could have skated the length of the lake as there was virtually no snow on the ice.  Quite the sharp contrast to the foot of snow in Nordegg, a short 30km away.

Our first stop was at Windy Point.  True to its name, it was very windy.  Access down the steep slopes to the lake looked challenging, and the wind was somewhat off-putting.  We had a look around and then continued on further west.  We stopped at Preachers Point, where we could drive right up to the edge of the lake.  At lot of other people had the same thought and there were numerous cars here and lots of people wandering around.  This spot is right at the upper end of the lake, but because this is a man-made reservoir, the water level had declined since back in September, when we passed through after the Assiniboine trip and saw the lake full to the brim.  The shoreline was now encased in sloped sheets of ice that had dropped into this position as the water level declined.  We picked our way onto the ice and carefully wandered around.  I brought out the big view camera and managed a couple of shots, but even here it was very windy.  Despite the mild temperature the winds made it quite bitter and I had to be careful that the camera was not blown over.  In short order my hands were nearly frozen and once I had taken a couple of shots I retreated to the truck to warm up. 

Most of the tourists that were out exploring the lake were Asian.  I know that the mountains and the national parks are popular with Asian tourists but it was rather unusual to see them at this time of year, and in such numbers.  Entire families of young and old were out wandering around on the ice.  Almost all of them had cameras, but I only noticed one or two other tripods so obviously most were not serious photographers.  Unfortunately they seemed oblivious to what I was doing and were very self absorbed.  They wandered in front of me on several occasions during the day as I was trying to photograph and I had to continually wait for them to get out of my shot.

After this stop Hailey and I returned back east up the lake and made a second stop on the lake shore, opposite Mount Michener.  This spot was also popular with tourists and photographers, again many of them Asian.  I shot here for a while too, before we eventually moved on.  By this time it was getting to be fairly late in the day.  We made a quick side trip up the Crescent Falls road and stopped at the Bighorn Canyon overview.  We got a look at a male ruffed grouse right beside the road.  I didn't have great tires on my truck so I decided against driving all the way in to the falls as the road here was still pretty snowy and hadn't been plowed for a while.

During the day we say one small herd of wild horses and evidence that they had been grazing all over the valley.  It was nice to see that they were even grazing in the subdivision near our property.  On the way back towards Rocky Mountain House we stopped a couple times to photographs groups of wild horses that we saw.  Just as the sun was going down we saw a great grey owl on a utility pole along the highway but that was our last wildlife encounter of the day.  We stopped for something to eat in Rocky Mountain House and then hit the road for home, arriving back in the city just a little after 9:00PM.  A whirlwind 12 hours but a great day all the same.

End of the Rows

Back in October my friend Rob and I spent a few days shooting down in the badlands of southern Alberta.  Our original plan had been to travel further south, near the Saskatchewan border, but the weather just didn't cooperate.  For the first part of our outing it was far too muddy to attempt hiking in the badlands.  We drove out onto the surrounding prairie, looking for some motivation in the very flat, overcast light.  We eventually came upon this cornfield and attempted some texture and tonal studies of the dried stalks and leaves.  This particular shot was taken with my Ebony 4" x 5" view camera and a Schneider G-Claron 210mm lens.  The film was Kodak Tri-X Pan, given plus development for added contrast, in PMK staining Pyro developer.

Beauty Creek

I just posted this one to my Flickr account earlier tonight and thought I would also include it here on my blog.  This is yet another image from the Fall Photo Weekend out in Jasper with the gang from the Monochrome Guild.  That turned out to be an exceptionally successful trip and I have several negatives that I will eventually invest the time and materials into making exhibition prints.  On this day in late October, it was pretty miserable.  Heavily overcast, raining off and on, and turning to snow at higher elevations.  My friend Peter and I set out from Jasper in the morning, hoping we'd be able to get out and take some photographs.  It wasn't looking very promising as we headed south from town down the Icefields Parkway.  We decided to try exploring the somewhat contained landscape of Beauty Creek.  The sky would not be prominent in any of these images and we could focus our attention on the details of the flowing water and the ice that was beginning to form.  It turned out to be a good choice, given the conditions we were working in.  As we made our way down the highway we found that in some areas the snow was beginning to accumulate on the pavement and the driving conditions were deteriorating.  This was to be our first taste of winter driving this season.  Of course since then we have been faced with much more of the same sort of weather.  In fact today here in Edmonton conditions deteriorated from about -9C and partly sunny this afternoon to -28C tonight with brisk 50km/h winds out of the northwest this evening.  Taking into account the wind chill factor it feels like -40C out there.  The snow is blowing and drifting and we are really into winter now.  I've been idling my truck a lot to warm it up before I head out anywhere, plugging it in whenever I park, and driving around with the four wheel drive engaged.  Needless to say the fuel economy has been terrible the past little while.   But, I digress... this post is about photography in the mountains before Halloween.  This shot was taken with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Nikkor 150mm lens.  The film was Kodak T-Max 400, exposed at 640 iso and processed in X-Tol developer.  This is one of the film and developer combinations that I have been experimenting with.  The film is given slightly less exposure than recommended by the manufacturer, and then developed slightly longer than normal.  So far I am generally pleased with the result and will continue to refine my development time.  It is important to make sure that exposure provides adequate detail in the shadow areas and the development gives adequate contrast without blocking up the highlights.  So far so good....

Rocks and Leaves

Now that the road trip is behind me, I can get back to posting some recently processed negatives to my blog.  This one is a detail shot of some leaves on the rocks in the Astoria River.  This photo was taken during the Monochrome Guild Fall Photo Weekend in Jasper National Park, back in October.  This was shot with my Ebony SV45TE view camera and a Fujinon 240mm lens.  The film was Kodak 100 T-Max, given normal development in 510 Pyro.  

Saskatchewan Road Trip

I hit the road for Saskatoon early on the morning of January 6th.  The girls were still on their Christmas vacation, so Hailey and Anna came along with me.  Roads were slippery and snow covered and there was heavy fog in places as we made our way east of Edmonton.  It was about -17C when we started out, and that was the warmest temperature we would experience.

By the time we hit Lloydminster, road conditions had improved, and we were able to pick up speed.  But, we lost an hour when we crossed the Alberta-Saskatchewan border into the Central time zone.  Despite the sun coming out a little, the temperature had actually dropped and it was about -21C most of the way into Saskatoon.  We arrived in Saskatoon right on schedule, at about 1:30PM, but got a little side tracked driving in circles looking for the gallery.  Finally we found Broadway Avenue and the gallery.  We backed the truck up to the rear door and got the crates of prints off-loaded and put away in short order.  The gallery was still into the last couple of days of an exhibition of some jewellery so the crates were stored in a closet, and the prints will be installed by the gallery staff sometime next week.

At the recommendation of the gallery staff we walked around the corner to a Mexican Pub called Amigos.  It was sort of a funky place, right next to a tattoo parlor.  It was a bar, with a stage the featured live bands in the evenings, but they allowed minors until 8:00PM so the girls and I went in for a late lunch.  There were even a bunch of small skylights that my company once supplied.  The names of a bunch of bands that were scheduled to play over the coming days were listed on a large blackboard.  The three of us really got a kick out of one of the names...  "Johnny Twofingers and the Deformities".

After lunch we made our way over to the western edge of Saskatoon where I had reserved a hotel room.  It was a typical chain hotel with a pool and a waterslide.  The girls and I went down to the pool for a little while after checking in.  Later in the evening we walked across to a nearby Boston Pizza and had a light supper.  I was a little concerned about how cold it was getting so I bought an extension cord at a nearby hardware store and plugged the block heater of the truck in for the night.  We watched TV in our room for a little while but we were all tired after such an early start and all the driving so we turned in early.  There were a bunch of teenage kids running around the hallways of the hotel in the wee hours, knocking on doors and making a general nuisance of themselves.  The girls were awakened and didn't get a very good sleep but I slept right through it.  In the morning we got up fairly early and had some breakfast at the buffet that was included with our room.  For hotel breakfasts this one was reasonably good and better than most.  The girls hit the pool for a while in the morning, and then we packed up and checked out.

It was -26C with a breeze blowing out of the north when we got out to the truck.  That extension cord was a really good investment.  We fuelled the truck and hit the road.  I didn't bother to bring a map with me and ended up on the wrong highway heading out of town.  We were going in the right general direction, but were a little further south than we needed to be.  We cut across country on a secondary highway and eventually found our way over to the Yellowhead.  It was -31C out in the country and it took a couple of hours of highway driving before the engine got most of the way up to operating temperature.

I had brought my view camera along, hoping to be able to stop and take a few photographs.  But with the cold winter weather that was out of the question and the camera never even made it out of the case.  I did make a mental note a few places that might be worth coming back to at some point.  A couple of interesting old junk yards and old buildings, as well as a really cool concrete bridge over the North Saskatchewan River.  The bridge is now replaced by two new steel spans and sites unused, deteriorating, and accumulating graffiti.  Hailey managed to take a snap shot of it with my phone as we drove past.

Of course we gained an hour when we crossed back into the Mountain time zone at Lloydminster.  It did warm up a little as we headed further west.  Most of the drive home the temperature hovered around the -22 to -25C range.  Once we got back closer to Edmonton, the temperature edged up to about -18C.  The girls slept for a good part of the drive, and we listened to music and talked for a while as well.  It was nice to spend a couple of days together with my girls and I appreciated the company, and the help unloading the heavy crates.  We made it back home, no worse for wear, by about 3:30 in the afternoon.

Gettin' Loaded...!!

I'm getting my truck loaded up with crates full of framed photographs.  In the morning I have to make the long five hour drive to Saskatoon.  Conditions are less than ideal with roads snow covered and temperatures down around -25C.  Procession West is showing at the Saskatchewan Craft Council Gallery.  Here is the invitation... and some snapshots of the preparations...

Scan from June

Here's a scan of a negative taken back in June of 2016.  This one was on my second trip down to Crowsnest Pass.  I was back in the area to pick up the prints from the AG2 show that had just wrapped up at the Lebel Mansion Gallery in Pincher Creek.  My friend Court and I went out exploring for a couple of days while we were down there.  We also met up with Rob, my collaborator on the show, and friends Chris and Connie from Calgary.  This shot is of an abandoned tipple in the Crowsnest Pass.  The light was fleeting and popped out only briefly, just as I exposed this image.  By the time I got around to exposing a second sheet of film, the light had dropped off.  This was taken just before 8:00PM... relatively early considering that this was close to the longest day of the year.  It was clouds that created the fall off in light this time... not the end of the day.  I used my Ebony SV45TE view camera with Schneider 110mm lens.  The film was Kodak Tri-X Pan 320, given normal development in PMK.

Owl Prowl

On January 2nd, the last day of my Christmas break from work, middle daughter Annelise and I went out for an afternoon drive.  Anna's favorite animals are owls.  She loves them and has owl T-shirts, owl purses, owl figurines, and on and on... I learned on the weekend that she has never seen one in the wild... much to my surprise.  

So, on Monday afternoon we set out for a drive.  There was a little fresh snow, and it was very cold.  I think we hit an afternoon high of about -16C but for most of the day it was closer to -20C.  We passed through Elk Island National Park and continued on up into Lamont County.  For as cold as it was, there was surprisingly quite a bit of wildlife on the move.  We saw lots of ravens and magpies, as well as some snow buntings and a pileated woodpecker.  We saw a coyote, a deer, a cow moose with a yearling calf, and a herd of Wood Bison.  Of course the bison were in the National Park but all the others were not. 

I expected that we would likely see a snowy owl, perched on a telephone pole somewhere, but despite driving around for the entire afternoon, and keeping our eyes peeled, we did not.  But, much to Anna's delight we did see a Great Gray Owl.  As we passed through a stand of heavy trees beside the road I noticed the huge bird perched on a snag.  We stopped and watched it for quite a while and even managed to get a couple of snapshots.  Later we saw another large bird in the distance, flying over a snowy field.  It was too far away to be certain what it was.  It was definitely not a raven as the wings were very broad, and its flight was very different.  It might have been another owl... perhaps another grey or maybe a great horned.  It was dark in color so it was definitely not a snowy.  It was very large so it is possible that it might have been a bald eagle.  It was just too far away for us to be able to positively identify it.

At one point in the late afternoon I stopped along the road to take my first photograph of 2017 with the view camera.  The shot was pretty simple, just some hoar frost and tree trunks beside the road.  I was trying out my Nikkor 500mm telephoto lens with my Ebony camera.  In the past I have always used this lens with my older Sinar cameras and wanted to determine if the Ebony has enough bellows draw to use this long focal length.  It does, but when focusing on something relatively close, additional bellows draw is needed and the Ebony has just barely enough.  It only took me about 10 minutes to expose two sheets of film.  The controls of the view camera are small and delicate and can only be properly operated with bare hands.  Of course these same controls are all metal so needless to say, in these conditions, it is very cold on the hands.  I've tortured my hands like this for many years now and they just don't take it very well any more.  The skin on my thumb became hard as it began to freeze and the pain was excruciating as my hands warmed up upon my return into the cab of the truck.  Sure hope the image is worth it....