Every once in a while my heart skips a little bit when I pull a roll of film out of the development tank to inspect it. It’s such a nice feeling when you know you got that perfect shot even before you scan it. The exact composition you wanted. Spot on exposure. Wonderful light and form.
That was the case when I pulled this frame out of the development tank yesterday afternoon and I was excited to hop out of bed this morning and scan it once the roll of film was done drying overnight.
This image is from a photoshoot I did down in California last spring. It was a really great session overall and this may be my new favorite image from that afternoon. The model and I went to a nature trail on the outskirts of Morgan Hill, which is where I was staying, and we found a couple of abandoned houses filled with graffiti. It was a nice day out with plenty of sunshine and just a little bit of wind which meant I could get some good exposures even inside the structures. Given that we did this session mid-week and given that Morgan Hill is a really small community, there wasn’t another soul in sight and we pretty much had the whole park to ourselves to make whatever photographs we wanted.
In order to ensure as much detail as possible in a scene with a wide range of light values I decided to stand develop this negative in Rodinal at a ratio of 1:100 for sixty minutes.