This image was shot in the abandoned townsite of IOCO. This was the company townsite set up by Imperial Oil Company. Back in the day, the nearby refinery was way out in the boonies, and the Imperial Oil Company set up a townsite to house it's employees. The was at the eastern tip of Burrard Inlet. Fast forward to today, and the townsite is abandoned, and just about swallowed up by the City of Coquitlam.
There is not a lot left of the original town. Just a grid of a few streets and avenues, maybe three or four in each direction. The old grocery store remains, as does the community hall, the school, and a handful of houses. Everything is all boarded up and secured with fences. These steps are in front of one of the houses and to capture this image was quite an adventure.
I had to back my truck right up to the fence in front of this property. I extended my tripod up as high as it would go, and even blocked up the legs a little on a piece of firewood and a rock. I perched myself up on the endgate of the truck and tried to view the ground glass in order to compose this image, without knocking anything over. This was all necessary to just get me above the level of the security fence that was in place around the property. Given the somewhat awkward circumstances I don't think I created the best composition that I could have. But it was all I could do not to knock over the tripod and the camera.
This shot was taken on Kodak Tmax 100 film, rated at 80 iso, and developed in 510 Pyro. I used a slightly long Nikkor 200mm lens on my Ebony 4 x 5" view camera. The light was fairly contrasty and I also tried a second shot on Ilford FP4 which was given plus development in HC-110. I like this one slightly better, although a reasonable print could probably be made from either negative.
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