MAYBE NOT

as usual no sooner as a decision has been made than i am second guessing. trying to make something of the days when i have to sit at home and watch the house being painted, when i realised that the painters’ day end at 3pm, i made plans to pack the motor with something that i had been meaning to try and head out. putting my money where my mouth is, i took the hobo 10x8 mistake of a camera that i bought from bostick and sulllivan with a back pack of film and headed to the flooded areas by the desplaines river.

although i know that i don’t have the disposition for it nor the comportment, i have always been jealous of mammoth camera users. this was brought about recently as thaddeus holownia’s name came up someplace and i went to stare at his website – wounds open he got a gros morne residency – deservedly – but it didn’t stop me from being envious, this time it was the image of rocky harbour that did it. then i heard of the limestone barrens project - http://www.swgc.mun.ca/research/limestone.html - that i heard from listening to the week-end programme out of st. john’s. a photographer was being interviewed about his work in the great northern. looking at the website the usual bunch of suspects show up – burtynsky doing the bruce peninsula etc.

headed out along route 164 here park the motor and head into the wetlands –and almost immediately know that this isn’t for me. don’t have enough exposures with my arm is falling off from the weight and this camera doesn’t need a tripod.

nevertheless, cursing i move to make just one more than again one more and run out of film before i want to. returning to the car i am happy that this has confirmed my decision not to take large format to the rock.

the next day when again the painters vanished at 3pm – i look out and the pick ups are gone - i lugged the deardorff out to photograph all the things that they left strewn about the place. it was another attempt to make something of the day. used the 10x8 to narrow the focus as much as possible – swinging and tilting the standards and using the lens wide open. sharp focus was always overrated. used another box of film which brought up another problem with cameras on steroids – unloading and reloading film. i am always afraid that i will make all these photographs and the film holders will be empty. it was another nail in the large format on the rock coffin.

well not so fast.

while developing the film isn’t the most enjoyable thing to do –twenty minutes in pyro – the developer that gave all those west coast photographers parkinson’s – in total dark strains even the most zen like state that i can get into, even with the wireless on and this time i didn’t have one, the second hand seems not to move. this time i had three such sessions, i did like the negatives.

on another day when i was trapped at home, awaiting the owner of the painting company to have a look at the shrubbery that they butchered, it being sunny brought out the printing out paper and the print frames and made prints in the front yard. i stored them in a box until i could wash and tone them.

the pang of slow photography was awakened. it was completely possible to do this on the rock. it would save me the agony of coming back and having to face developing all the film that i used. it would calm my fears of security and x-rays.

i wouldn’t do this at martin and gabrielle’s – don’t want to mess up their place and there are no interior rooms, the pipe house would be perfect. this i know from former experience when i was the only one in both studios - a perk for being there in january. i’d live up stairs and use the downstairs as a lab. in january when the nights were longer there was plenty of time to develop the negs. in july it would mean that i could have more pints at the duke before starting.

the option died quickly when i made a list of what i would have to take. another reason why a place, my place on the rock is needed. wonder how holownia does it