I needed to develop some film yesterday because, if I don't, it just accumulates. I want to go and photograph a variety of places, but I notice that I end up returning to the same spots. For example, this one, an intersection next to the county courthouse in Riverside, CA.
After having gone earlier that afternoon to visit a Nature Retreat Center in Fontana, I found the next natural thing for me to do was to go to downtown Riverside. So I went, and took my wood 8x10 pinhole camera that I purchased a few weeks ago. I am delighting in using this camera because it is so much easier to work with than the other one which I had purchased at the beginning of the year, and the results are much, much better.
I took some photos of the courthouse and the statuary but they will have to wait for development. The sheets are still in the film holders. I walked down the street to this intersection, which I had photographed before. I had an orange filter over the pinhole, and I aimed it at the building. There was very light traffic, and almost no one around. It was almost 3 p.m., but the sunlight was fast declining.
Setting up across from the building, one gets the sense that it looms over me. But the pinhole camera is so wide-angle that it makes it retreat. I gave it an exposure, as I recall, of 40 seconds, and looking at the negative, it seems about right. The image doesn't cover the entire sheet, there is an image circle, but that is fine, I think it gives the compositions more personality this way.
Developed on Monday night, this is Arista 200 film. I used Arista developer, for 9 minutes, 1 part solution for 9 parts of water. I used my Stearman Press tray which allows me to process one sheet at a time, and which is very economical with chemicals.
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