Large Format Road Trip

Yo, what up, welcome back to another episode of me discovering that suffering does not necessarily make great art. Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Once upon a time, Caleb and I had this crazy idea to do a thing. However, with this thing, we wanted to heat things up a little bit and shoot only with our large format cameras. A challenge worthy of only the noblest or the dumbest. The latter being us. Well, now I can confidently say, mission accomplished. And it was legend. Wait for it. Terrible. It was terrible. 8x10 large format film is pretty expensive, oftentimes costing about $10 to $12 per sheet for developing. A 10 rack of new Portra 400 in the box goes for about $200. So at roughly $20 a shot, you have to be pretty picky and detail oriented. Unfortunately, I'm not either of those. I fired off the most large format sheets I've ever shot. And most of them are sh**. For this journey, I took along two of my three lenses. A Nikkor 240mm and a Nikkor 120mm. I love both of these lenses very much. And in time, you might learn to love them too. But I don't know. Maybe you're not capable of love anymore. Along with me, of course, I pulled some film out of my ass. Analog safe storage. I brought a box of Ilford HP5, Portra 400, and a ton of Ektachrome 100S that was kindly donated to me by a viewer from the Great White North. Excited with the possibilities of what's to come, Caleb and I set sail due north on the 395th highway, ready to shoot anything that looked really pretty or really ugly. Unfortunately for us, either Poseidon, Saturn, or just Mother Nature was pissed off that day and it was raining a lot. But that wouldn't deter us. The only thing that could stop us is wind because our cameras would literally blow away. At our first stop, there was an abundance of wind and boxed wine. After praying that the boxed wine was still loaded and then finding out they weren't, we disappointedly scouted out the area and then decided to come back when the desert hurricane was over. Our next location would be an abandoned hacienda, or at least that's what people online were calling it. It was here that we started to feel the burning sensation of large format looming. Inside the building, we were actually protected from the large gusts of wind. Of course, we still had to be careful. One powerful fart inside this shell of a building and the whole damn thing might collapse. Regardless, I found the first shot and I set up a composition with the 120mm lens, equivalent to a 15mm lens on 35. A lot of people have found that firing off the first shot is good because it kind of gets you in the groove and gets you a little more comfortable with the process later on. I guess it's kind of like killing a man in that way. Speaking of homicide, it definitely felt like we were in a location where one might have occurred. So of course I was nervous and working a bit fast. Nonetheless, I actually really liked this shot. Shot on HP5 with a 1.25mm promist and boy is that highlight bloom subtle yet beautiful. I'd even go so far to say this first shot of the trip is one of my favorites. So try and enjoy this part of the video because it's all downhill from here. With a moment to spare, I set up another composition utilizing the 120mm. It would be a bit of a tight fit, but with some WD-40 and a can-do attitude, it would work out. All right, hopefully you can hear me and it's not too windy, but it's probably too windy. It's really hard to frame this with like, because there's like dicks everywhere. I have a shot set up here that is framed by this door pretty nicely. There's two windows directly in here that kind of face towards the mountains. This photo is okay. I do like the soft glow from the promist and how layered overall it is with the doorway, the windows, and the mountains at infinity. There's also a nice texture of all that crap on the floor, but something ain't it about this photo. Maybe it would have been better if I lowered the camera and tried to straighten the vertical perspective lines a bit more. Unfortunately, the 120mm doesn't have much coverage, so doing it in camera wasn't really an option. I think that our window of opportunity is closing here, so we might want to get going because we're kind of down like a dirt road and I don't know if it floods or like what it does in the heavy rains, but it definitely seems like there's a system incoming, so I'm gonna pack up and get the hell out of here. There's a cool shot right here of this window and the power lines that just go off towards infinity, but there's a huge dick across the top of the window. All right, creepy abandoned building. It's been real. It's been fun. Hasn't been real fun. Also, you're probably about to collapse. As we drove north, the clouds parted for a bit and we pulled over on the side of the road to shoot. There was no way I wasn't gonna shoot this awesome moment in color, but just like how I'm saving my body for marriage, I was also saving my Portra 400 for a special occasion and frankly, this felt like love. Or I mean, it felt like the right time, I guess. Is this shot literally everything? I mean, it's okay. It's something. It's not everything. The colors are nice and pastel, which is really all you can ask for from Portra. If it were shot on Ektar, the shot would have straight up f***ed more than Pete Davidson. After getting lunch at a local hidden gem called Subway, we headed up to Alabama Hills. The clouds rolling in over the eastern Sierra were simply beautiful. Good luck. Be safe. Have a good summer. After changing my composition about 600 times, I finally committed to a shot using a very, very slight bit of front tilt to get the full depth of the landscape in focus. And all that work for this. I don't know. I guess this shot is okay. I don't think I managed to get exactly what I was looking for, but it sure looks cool with all the detail that 8x10 brings. And I'll tell you, the only problem with large format is literally everyone that drives by is going to be staring at you awkwardly. Thinking we were done for the day and could finally rest and drink a beer or 12, we were pretty quick to jump back in the paddy wagon when we saw how beautiful the sunset clouds were looking. We scurried along to a nearby location that featured some sort of bare bones structure. After looking it up, it seems like it was a freight and passenger train station that was left abandoned in the 1940s. Makes sense. There were probably bigger issues in the 1940s than running a train station. Anyway, the light was going pretty quick, so I set up in a hurry and tried to bang this thing out on Portra 400. I got it. This is one of my favorites from the trip. The colors are nice and surprisingly, the composition isn't total megalodon sh** considering how little time I had. My favorite little detail is the reflection of the post in the puddle. A smarter person might reckon that it's a deeply embedded metaphor for how reflections only show us a part of ourselves instead of the bigger picture. But in reality, I was freezing my nuts off, didn't have time to check the whole comp, and just said f**k it. What do you got to say for yourself, Jason? You're a little too close. That night in the hotel room, excited from the day that we had just had, one of us pitched a tent. This is the pride and joy of my life right here. That's sad. Is this bathroom 8x10 worthy? Kind of weak. Have you ever had Johnny Walker blue label? Not blue. Have you? I'm thirsty. I ended day one with having shot 5 sheets of HP5 and 2 sheets of Portra 400. To slow myself down a little bit, I loaded up some expired Ektachrome for the next day. A little concerning how sticky this tent is. Like I said before, I was kindly gifted a 40 rack of expired Ektachrome 100S that expired in August of 2002. I ran a quick test sheet of this stuff before I left and it's not too bad. But I don't think I would make any serious work on it unless I was forced to, which is kind of some sh**ty foreshadowing. Day two. The next day, it was time to get to a small abandoned mining town in the mountains. To get there, it would require some deep and sketchy backcountry trails. There we go. The trail wasn't really that bad, but when you're doing it in a 30 year old vehicle, it's automatically sketchy. Anyway, the mining ghost town was really cool and no one was there because it was about five miles in, which made it especially creepy every time the wind picked up a little. I feel like I'm being watched or something. Upon arriving, it was easy to find the first composition. A pair of old trucks cuddling together for warmth. A cute photo for a cute film stock. Ektachrome. So this shot is pretty interesting. I actually like it a lot, but I f**ked it up and only realized later that I metered it for 400 ISO instead of 100. Oh f**k me. I've been rating these at 400. Well, I guess that means that the first photo is f**ked up because it's two stops underexposed on expired slide film. Damn, that was gonna be a good shot too. I don't know, maybe it's fine. We'll see. All right, what's up? We're in this abandoned ghost town. Is that like saying it twice? Like ghost towns are already abandoned. I have this composition here of this cabin. It looks like a workshop or something. I'm shooting with my 35 millimeter lens. It's a 35 millimeter equivalent. What film stock am I going to shoot this on? Good question. Thinking ektachrome with a warming filter. I think that'll look pretty nice. Hopefully it all works out. This is a very high contrast scene. I wouldn't recommend shooting slide film in this kind of environment, but you know what, f**k it. Right, so obviously this shot is very overexposed. Although if you think it looks cool, then in that case I totally did it all on purpose because I'm a master of my craft and people will be studying this shot for centuries, mark my words. That was so stupid of me. I'm not sure what happened exactly. The weird thing is I metered this shot at box speed 100 and it's overexposed and I accidentally metered the truck shot at 400 and it looks better. Maybe a bit underexposed, I don't know. Now, I've never heard of slide film gaining sensitivity after it expires, but either I need to revisit how I meter or this s**t is a different film stock in the wrong box. Probably the first one though. I suck. Doing 8x10 is a lot of work, man. I feel like we've been here for like an hour and a half and I've shot two shots. Maybe one's f**ked up. I'm gonna take this shot of a, uh, it's like a sink. There's a bunch of like old oil things in it and the light is kind of coming through this cracked window at a really nice angle. Dude, I can't see s**t. Wow, this is just gonna be a best guess kind of thing. I actually really dig this shot. It's nothing special really, but the one-quarter promis pinged the highlights quite nicely and the chair in the back room is a cool detail. Looking back at it, I'm not sure how I was able to expose both the shaded interior lighting and the outside lighting well enough that I didn't lose too many details. I'm gonna write that down as one of my greatest accomplishments ever right after learning how to dougie last week. It always sounds like somebody, like I can hear someone's footsteps. There's this beautiful composition here with, um, a bunch of windows that are kind of blown out and way off in the distance you see, uh, the eastern Sierras. I guess the question is, do I shoot this on black and white or ektachrome? Yeah, I'm gonna do black and white. Ooh, I don't like bees. All right, well, here goes nothing. So we knew about this mining building down the road a little bit, but what once used to be a road had collapsed into a creek and while the big blue bitch can do most things, it can't climb vertical canyon walls. Apparently, this is a road. Either out of shape or it's the altitude. It's the altitude for sure. So Caleb and I hoofed it up. We didn't know what this mine would look like or if it was even still there, and this mystery was too exciting to ignore. Well, like most J.J. Abrams mysteries, the truth was not that exciting. It was a cool location, but the lighting wasn't really doing it for me. I guilt exposed one photo because it was a long way to come for nothing, but it's definitely just a bland photo that I shouldn't have taken. If I'm being frank, this shot sucks hard. If Ansel Adams saw this, he'd probably want to smack the ---- out of me. I did look up the history of this place and apparently it was used for lead and or silver mining kind of on and off from the 1860s to the 1970s. Some guy named Turner was violently killed in a mining accident and it bankrupted the ownership in 1910. So that place was definitely haunted, but perhaps it was a comforting sight for Turner's ghost to see two assholes hauling large format gear up a mountain. On our way back to Big Pine, we spotted several interesting ruins that might make a cool shot as the sun was starting to cast that sweet, sweet golden light nectar. Hi, howdy. We made it out of the deep, deep back country. So we found some ruins, I guess you can call them. We're going to shoot them because the lighting is just really, really nice. I feel like this would be a waste to not shoot on color. Unfortunately, all I have is ectochrome, but I'm going to give it a shot. I feel like it'd be fine. Yeah, I can do it. I'm no coward. You might have seen this filter that I've been using with the ectochrome a few times. It's an 81A filter. It's very subtle, but it adds a little bit of warmth to your image. If you've ever shot ectochrome, you're probably aware of how it renders colors a bit blue purplish sometimes. Needless to say, for this shot, I think it really helped. The orange yellows of the plants really popped off while the atmosphere going towards infinity remained blue. With those sheets put away, we cruised back to the 395 and eventually wound up in Mammoth, a popular ski town. It was time to rest our backs, cracks, and our sacks. To be honest, the work required to haul around all this large format gear was starting to get to us. Our bodies were starting to hurt quite a bit, and it wasn't going to be something that beer and pizza could fix. So it was probably impossible to fix. After getting breakfast, we set our compass north to Bodie State Park, a huge historic ghost town. But we were soon slapped in the face, heart, and testicles with reality. Ram it! But we did actually spot a few cool locations on the way up, so we headed back down towards those. So what happened here? Well, first of all, it looks like at some point someone spilled coffee or diarrhea on this particular sheet of film. Aside from that, though, the borders of the film are totally fried, I assume from the years of sitting in the box. These ectochrome sheets were a bit difficult to color balance due to the expiration. They came out quite purple overall. After some sweet, tender lovemaking in Lightroom, I was able to get something kind of close to a balanced image. We soon headed down to a familiar location, Mono Lake. We actually visited this location the last time we were in the Eastern Sierra, but this time I was determined to shoot it in black and white for some crusty-ass images that might outdo the crustiness of the lake itself. I gotta shoot this one wide open. I decided to shoot the first image wide open to render the image with a crazy depth of field, almost like a portrait. The 240mm Nikkor lens barely seems to fully cover 8x10 when it's wide open, but it does deliver a certain look. Because it was brighter than holy hell at this location, I would need to use an ND filter. To make things even crazier, I threw on the 1.25mm ProMist and the 81A filter because I don't know why. Maybe my body was aching so much at that point, I felt like I had nothing left to lose. Admittedly, it was a bit strange being in a location where everyone who walked by was noticeably perplexed by the large 8x10 camera. You could always kind of tell that they were confused about what year it was and if I was a time traveler from the past. I think the shot worked out just fine. Though the camera was quite a ways away from the subject, it was still able to separate the pillars from the background nicely in a way that only large format can. One of my main gripes with this photo though is that the foreground is not very interesting. On the next setup though, I would rectify that. Haha, rect is close to another funnier word. 45 seconds. I really hope I'm not in the shot. This shot is a lot better. The long exposure turned the water surface to an otherworldly mirror-like reflection, which is super cool. If I could change one thing though, it'd be my dumbass not leaving footprints everywhere in the sand where I was going to shoot. It's like that old saying all my teachers used to write on my tests. Can't fix stupid. So I also took this photo, which is by far my best from the trip. Sadly, the battery in the camera I was using died so you won't be able to witness the shot being taken in all its glory. Just imagine god rays beaming down on me as I set up the 8x10 and executing the shot with pinpoint accuracy akin to that of a World War 2 sniper taking out Nazis. There's also a lot of dust and crap on these shots for whatever reason. I decided to leave the dust from the film and scan in the final image. I felt like it actually gave the overall image more texture, which is really just a convenient excuse for me to not have to paint all 12 million of those little shits out. But enough lollygagging around. It was time to head up to a nearby mountain lake and see what we could do. As we arrived, we noticed all the leaves had turned beautifully yellow. It was perfect for some color film. I found a composition of a walkway with a tree and tons of leaves on the ground with a mountain in the background. The shot was going to be hella lit fam 420. It would have been even more perfect if I was ready to fire the shot as this couple walked through, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Honestly, I wish I had some portrait loaded for this shot, but sadly, Ektachrome would have to do. After slapping the 81A filter on the lens like I was slapping around some flex tape, it was time to fire away. On the first go around, the lens shutter stuck open and ruined the exposure. Unfortunately, in colder environments, two things are kind of known to happen to large format photographers. Shutter mechanisms getting stuck open and tingly nipples. I'm gonna get this shot or die trying. The shot turned out not too bad. Ektachrome was definitely not the best choice, but it did its job, I guess. Whatever the hell that means. The detail on the image is incredible. I often find myself going to sleep at night only to wake up surprised that somehow I'm at my desk, naked, and looking at the sheet through a magnifier. I attempted exposing one last sheet of HB5. I wanted a long exposure of the lake reflecting the mountain, but here's the twist. For you, not me. I already know about this issue. One of the dark slides on one side of my sheet holder had a cracked off corner, meaning light leaks would run amok. I really didn't think it would be a huge issue, but clearly I was wrong. Last time I was in this room, I shot what many professionals consider to be the best photo of my entire photography career. But it was a different room. Let's see if the toilet is any good. It's not. That night, over some downright filthy barbecue, Caleb and I congregated and had a gentlemanly discussion over f-stops and shooting large format. We concluded that as photographers, I subscribe to the f64 club where everything is in focus, whereas Caleb is more in the wide open club, where he prefers a lot of out of focus separation. After coming to this realization that we were two men of different photography philosophies, we got hammered. Day four. The next morning, we got our broken, tattered bodies out of bed and hit the road for more abandoned sh-t. I was happy as ever to be there, and definitely not in emotional and physical pain. Good morning to everyone out there. Except the people that make whiskey, because I'm hungover. I ended up exposing one sheet on Ektachrome, but it doesn't really matter, because I was ignorant and dumb later on in the day and accidentally yanked the dark slide out partially. I'm a professional, damn it. The next location was a really cool, super photogenic abandoned roadside service station. Despite how cool everything was, I could only really focus on one thing, this random ass broken chair sitting 100 yards away from everything, perfectly backdrop by the eastern Sierra. If I wasn't meat sweating out all that barbecue I had the night prior, I think I would have appreciated it a lot more. This is definitely going to be portrait 400. This one turned out pretty good, I think. I love the depth of field separating everything, and mainly just how simple the whole shot is. It's basically just a portrait, subject and background. As we moved on back towards where we came, we stopped at possibly one of the best abandoned locations we've ever been to. And we've almost died at some sketchy locations. These buildings didn't have a ton of graffiti, and were in decent shape overall. A rare gem. At this location, Caleb and I both agreed that we didn't really have the right gear, and that it kind of sucked to be confined to the film that we had already pre-loaded into our film holders. I feel like this is one of those things that... I wish I had the Mamiya again. So right there and then we made a blood oath to the well-endowed Egyptian baboon god, Babi, that we would return one day with the right gear and blast away. Which we did. But more on that in a different video. For the here and now, we were cursed with an awesome location, good light, and only our large format sheet film at the ready. Expired Ektagram would be my weapon of choice for these shots. Was it ideal? No, but it was basically all I had left. This shot is okay. The lighting is pretty harsh, and that's definitely not Ektagram's strong suit, but I actually think Ektagram renders the color orange super nicely. Especially if you edge it along a little bit with a filter. Finally, with one sheet of portrait left on the day, I found the holy grail of light and composition behind one of the buildings amongst a few blown up toilets. It was picture perfect, and it would soon become difficult to work with my pants slowly tightening. Probably my favorite shot I've ever done on 8x10. The light is very moody, the broken window serves as a perfect subject, and the mountain in the deep background is looming over the whole scene. On portrait, the colors turned out stellar as well. As we bid farewell to our favorite location, we headed back the way we came as the sun started to set. All I had left was a single sheet of HP5, which I put to good use for one final shot of the day. The ProMist and 81A filter glued to the lens. I took this shot. After all that, I was pretty happy to call it a day. Four days of driving, shooting 8x10, and making a video were all weighing pretty heavily on my body because I'm weak and I need a gym membership. When I get gone, you can hear me roar. Well, today's the day. Today's the last day. Does that mean I can finally rest? You have your room key? Yeah. Cool, I'll be right back. Okay. On our way home, we stopped off at the same location that we visited first when it was raining. Now sunny and begging for us to be inside it, we grabbed our cameras for one last ride. I set up a shot with the 120mm wide angle, trying to capture the entirety of the room. With the ProMist on board, I snapped this. I really like it. The only thing I would change is everything. I guess by everything, I mean, I should have just pulled the camera back a bit more to get more of the room and maybe lowered it a little. But hey, we live and we learn. On our way back to LA, we thought about our future in large format after such a tumultuous and back-breaking trip. It would likely be a while before either of us shot large format again. But now here in 2022, I think that the itch to get back on the horse and shoot large format again is coming back. Well, some kind of itch. Maybe unrelated. I think if anything, this trip solidified the fact that I don't want to go bigger than 8x10 ever. I mean, have you ever met someone who shoots 16x20 that's happy? Me neither. But speaking of happiness and things that'll make you jump for joy, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Squarespace. Let's face it, as photographers, the best way to be seen nowadays is online. So why not have a beautiful website that displays your work in a professional and modern design? Squarespace lets you do just that. With over 100 website templates for you to pick from, customizing your own personal website is a breeze. For my own website, I simply uploaded and rearranged my work in a manner that was conducive to a strong portfolio layout. Squarespace makes it easy with an all-in-one website building package. You don't need to download, install, or update anything to get going. Even better, their user interface is incredibly straightforward to navigate. If you do run into a snag, Squarespace even offers award-winning 24x7 customer support. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainydays. And if you use the code grainydays at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase. Well, that about does it. On this trip, I shot 16 sheets of HP5, 12 sheets of expired Ektachrome, and 8 sheets of Portra 400, totaling to about $800,000 worth of film and developing.