A Saturday morning meet up with fellow large format photographers combined with a fascinating abandoned railway building, what a great setup! Join me for a shootout with the big guns!
After a bit of a break from photography through lockdown and a shockingly bad winter and early spring, I am delighted to be back! Back with a bang as they say, with this post showcasing part of a mini outing at the weekend with FOUR other large format photographers in Munich. I say that in caps as it is unusual to have so many large format photographers out at once.
Actually, there are even more of us, so this may be more of a regular update to my site. I had a really excellent time visiting an abandoned railway control building and learned quite a bit from my fellow photographers about the art of large format photography. The area we visited, in Berg am Laim, Munich, is a sort of ecological park concept, with a mix of retail and housing space around it - more information here (in German).
Film choice for the day was Fompan 100 and although I managed to make a small mistake in developing, I still got some decent results.
This was the first stop of the morning.
Legendary Speed Graphic and my Linhof Master Technika in the background.
One of my fellow photographers also brought along his Linhof, so I was able to experiment with some of the longer lenses he had. Pictured here is Florian with a crazy 360mm lens!
I used the 360mm lens on my Linhof, with the bellow all the way out! What a beast of a lens.
Actually this shot was taken with a 270mm lens. My first shot of the day. I really like the contrast in this shot, although the composition is a bit lacking.
Shot with the 360mm mammoth lens. I really like how this shot came out and I would definitely like to try this lens again. It is probably too big and heavy for the usual hikes up mountains I do for ‘The World in Large Format”, but for something closer to the ground it is very interesting.
Obligatory Dark Cloth shot.
A very proud Ricky with his Speed Graphic, and for good reason too!
Shot on my 150mm lens.
The inside of the abandoned railway building, to what looks like some sort of control system area. I am going to call these railway switches, but I could do with an expert telling me what they are actually for.
It was really bright, even so early in the morning, creating quite a hard environment so get consistent light in (hence the strong highlights in this shot).
A cropped shot of the scene. The railway switches (or whatever they are called) remind me of a Concept 2 rowing machine!
Setting up for the money shot.
I really like how this shot came out. It is curious that when I look at the final image I am very drawn to the overlapping burnt out ceiling and wooden frames, however when I was setting the shot up I was not that focused on them as the key subject.
Shot two - portrait mode.
Disaster! I managed to load two film sheets next to each other in my development tank (what an amateur move). Surprisingly enough, once I washed (and re-washed) the negative and got rid of excess chemicals, it seem to be “ok”.
The fully scanned image, blotches included!
A cropped version actually looks much better.
I wasn’t quite sure how this one would turn out, especially given high dynamic range in this scene.
Actually not a bad result considering I left the shutter open by mistake for at least a few seconds! There was plenty of detail to recover with a bit of post processing in this shot. Not a bad composition either, the railway switches look like shotguns!
My home setup with a Stearman Press 445 tank (4 sheets at a time).
Overall observations
I can’t remember the last time I exposed 8 sheets of large format film in one go, so clearly I had a good time. Even writing this sentence makes me laugh (“8, not 80!). It just goes to show how much time, attention, effort (and cost, depending on the film used) there is in working with large format cameras. I really enjoyed the total geek out over gear, abandoned building scenes, and general photography discussion! Thanks to the group who came along, maybe next time I can do a profile of each with portraits of their cameras (now isn’t that a good idea…).
I hope you enjoyed these shots as much as I did taking them. I am now back and rearing to go, I have quite a few posts waiting to be uploaded, including a few hiking trips from late last summer, a special review of Santa Rae 1000 film, and some other general photowalks I did over the lockdown period.
Stay safe all!
Cheers,
Neil
