Company Store

This is another photograph from the Nordegg Historic Site.  Like my earlier post, this one is also from a previous visit.  I always book a tour of the site and do my photography work that way.  The site is not open to public access and is only operated under guided tours, twice a day during the season.  The tour is well worth taking, as not only do you get to see the extent of the site, but you also get the backstory about what everything is, and how it operated.

This is another one of the twenty one 4"x5" sheets of Ilford FP4+125 that I developed back on July 25th.  The batch was designated for N+1 development, and an expansion in contrast of one stop.  I used Kodak HC-110 Developer, dilution B, for 14:20 minutes at 20C.  The film was exposed at 160iso, resulting in slight underexposure.  This combination of extended development and slight underexposure resulted in the desired contrast increase.

I shot this on March 31st of 2025 at about 2:30 in the afternoon.  The site was not open to the public that early in the season, but I made special arrangements for a private tour.  These storage bins are located in the Company Store, the oldest building on the site.  The mining company provided all the necessary equipment and supplies to the miners, but they had to buy it, with the cost deducted from their paycheques.  

I shot this with my Ebony SV45Ti view camera and an ultra wide Nikkor 65mm lens.  The exposure was for 60 seconds at F41.0.  It is quite dark inside the building, hence the lengthy exposure.  Fortunately nothing was moving in this interior shot, and this did not create any issues.  The small amount of light spilling in some of the windows gave nice soft highlights and I think the image worked out well.