We were supposed to have rain today and we did. It was not all that it was cracked up to be, though. I thought we would have a few showers in the morning, and that the clouds would be with us all day, but it turned out the rain was very light, hardly even qualifying as a shower, and by 11 a.m., the clouds were beating a hasty retreat and it looked as if the few celestial sheep in the sky might serve to give me dramatic black and white photos. So, I had lunch and got my cameras ready. This time, I took my Fuji GW690ii, which is my stalwart, and I took a white Holga that I loaded with Kodak Portra 400. Where did I go? Where else, the Hidden Valley Nature Reserve.
I love these short drives. They take me about 30 minutes from when I am out the door to when I am parking, and I get to hear a lecture from my current series about Rome and Greece. This time the professor was talking about architecture and the ideological uses, as well as structural, to which it was used, but mid way there the thought of not ever again seeing my elderly neighbor, doña P., overwhelmed me and I became somber. I turned off the lecture and drove the rest of the way in quiet. She passed away yesterday, and I will never see her again in the house in front, never see her watering her plants, never see her pruning them, never see her fiddling with the trash cans or picking up her mail, I'll never be able to wave to her again.
Arriving at about 12:30, there were almost no cars, just one. I walked down the path determined to head west, young man, and I did, because my destination was the Norco Power House. It was not a long walk, but I made a few mistakes as I tried to navigate the final path. It cuts through this plant nursery on a cliff overlooking the reserve, and I was worried that I would be considered to be trespassing, and I tried to find my way down to the road below, but I couldn't, I made two wrong turns before I made it down. But once I was there, it was a majestic sight, this derelict building that is a cathedral, modest if I may add, but a cathedral none the less to street art, and what makes it better, it is in the middle of Trumpland, of the settlement of conservative Anglos that is Norco.
The lighting was all wrong. To get the sunlight hitting the street art, you have to come when the sun is rising in the east, that is my best chance, otherwise, you only get the side of the building that abuts the cliff being lit up, and you don't see the best murals. I did what I could, I started taking photos with both cameras, and I went inside too. I took cellphone photos but what I have uploaded here are my black and white, HP5+ images which I developed today after I returned home, dried and then scanned just an hour or so ago.
There were few clouds left in the sky, the celestial sheep had scampered south, so there was not as much drama in the sky as I was hoping to photograph. I still tried my best, and I used my red 25A filter. I knew, with 400 ISO, a red filter would cut it down to 1/100 shutter speed in sunny 16, but I didn't use f16, I used f22 and just pushed my development a little. I developed for 11 minutes.
After taking a few photos, I walked along the dirt paths that are mixed with plenty of horse droppings. If cow dung is called cow pies, what are these? I walked and saw a forest of what appeared to be dried bamboo, and that seemed to unusual to me. The trails just go on and on, but you know they are traversed because we have horse prints as well as footprints all over the place, although I didn't run into anyone until I was leaving this section to drive to the other sections.
At one intersection I saw that I was heading further and further away on the path, going always north, and I would not be able to get back to the parking lot, so I cut my exploration and returned, heading back to the plant nursery and the surrounding cliffs. I saw something creepy, too. I saw a Winnie the Pooh doll strung up on a dried-out tree, and it was as if I was in the Blair Witch movie. I wanted to leave, and didn't appreciate the sense of humor of the people who did that. So, I continued walking, and took what was labeled the Tunnel Trail, and it was indeed a tunnel, the bamboo shoots were thick on both sides, but there were also places where they had been cut down by some machine.
Finishing my HP5+ roll, I stopped to remove it and load my JCH Streetpan. I wanted to take infrared photos too, after all, but it takes more minutes than I care to admit when changing rolls, and in the meantime, behind me, I heard voices approaching slowly. It was mostly a female voice, one who was talking to others, but I couldn't make out the others, only that one voice. I decided I would move out of the way if they approached, because I could tell that whoever was speaking was not wearing a face mask. If you are that loud, you can't be.
She saw me before I saw her, and show spoke to her companions, another woman on horseback as well as a man with a cowboy hat. She said to look at the man wearing a face mask (that was me), and she uttered some expression of ridicule, and sounded angry as she scoffed (she was far away from me, though, they decided not to ride next to me) and said she doesn't even wear face masks in Stater Brothers, which is a grocery store here in southern California. Of course, an aggressive anti-masker, and if the others responded, I didn't hear them, she was the one who kept up the loud patter, and I made sure they were well on their way along the other path before I resumed my way, in the same direction, heading east. Just my luck, another Trump adulator. I am not surprised, I have always associated Norco with that movement, even before Trump had arrived on the political scene. I don't know how denying a pandemic ties into social conservatism, but it does for them, and Trump just represented gasoline for that mentality.
I continued walking and soon reached the asphalted path that took me back to the parking lot. Now, just a quick trip to the other two lots to grabe some infrared photos and I would be done. These, however, are my HP5+. I love the way they came out, although I would have to admit, my pushing the film probably blew out some of the white highlights of the bamboo (and other dried grass) vegetation. But I love the austerity of these high contrast scenes.
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