Texas Date Nails

Texas Date Nails

        The Fourth of July weekend was a few weeks away. I’d spent the better part of each week since spring looking for urban images. The time was coming for a small break. My girlfriend and I jumped on a plane bound for Texas to visit family. Texas in Houston is about as hot as it gets. The unbearable heat made the lack of road tripping for images a vanishing thought. The first few days were filled with the usual family affairs. Somewhere down the line the desire to explore overcame my good common sense to stay the hell out of the sweltering heat. We both hopped in the car and hit the road in search of adventure. About an hour into our journey a small Texas town came into view. This town had a few antique stores on the main drag.

Time to dig for rusty gold.

       The view past the front door of the first antique store was amazing. There were a ton of western antiques the likes I never seen. What really caught my eye was a center display of nails. These were no ordinary nails. Texas date nails to be exact. I had never seen nor even heard of anything like this in my life. The main display of nails gave a small history. The date nails were used by the railroad to signify when work was done. Paperwork must have been overrated back then. While looking at the main display of nails, I was approached by Frank. He was a rather friendly sort of a man. He was also a bit of an authority on the nails. Frank seemed to be at home giving me the history of the date nails. What amazed me was the quality of the nails. These were made around the turn of the century yet the quality of workmanship was like I’d never seen. 

      There were two large boxes of date nails. Time to get busy here. I spent the better part of an hour looking though those boxes. Sorting down the nails I found three dozen of the best nails. At the time I wasn’t real clear on how I was going to photograph the nails. I just knew there was an image there somewhere. With the bag of nails secure and paid for, we said our goodbyes to Frank and headed down the road. Lunch time came and we found a nice local café. The food and atmosphere were right up there with the best places I've eaten local flavor. Despite the good food I couldn’t stop thinking of just how to get those nails on film. They were small and detailed so a tight composition was in order. My main concern was I was short on nails. The end of the day came and we were back home with family. I found a small piece of cardboard to work the nails. On the cardboard I sketched a 4”x5” area to place the nails in. After placing a dozen or so nails it became apparent there were not enough nails. Of all the bone headed things to do. I could have easily bought more nails. Nothing to do now but head back in the morning to get more nails. 

      The next morning we set out for that antique store. This time I dug even deeper to find the best of what was left. Another hour and I was set. The weather was turning angry so we headed for home. Back home I took another piece of cardboard and repeated the process. This time I could tell there were plenty of nails.

       I hope.

 

Texas Date Nails - Final composition in clay

       The next day we headed back home. During the flight I spent a few hours working on a possible composition. I finally had an idea of what to do. The solution provided yet another problem. The arrangement of nails in my head would prove to require more physical nails. I’d done it again. No reason to panic here. Focus and enjoy the flight. There was plenty of time to work out a solution. 

       Back home I set to arrange the nails. Arranging the nails proved even harder than I had imagined. My original thinking was to gently tap the nails into some soft pine. To accomplish the arrangement of nails I sunk all of the nails into a piece of foam core. This would allow me to arrange and rearrange the nails. The foam core worked real nice. The nails poked out the back so tightly together there was no way to tap them into the wood. There was too much chance for the wood to split. After more tinkering another possible solution came to me. I could use clay. That way the nails could be arranged and rearranged until I was happy with the arrangement. Once the clay dried I could then place the clay on a board and photograph in a vertical position. Sounds good in theory. So did the time frame for the clay to dry. 

       Twenty four hours my ass. That clay ended up taking a good month to harden. 

11"x14" View Camera - Nails Studio Setup

       I was on a serious deadline to get the nails on film. The solution ended up being fairly simple. I tilted the nails at a slight angle. When the clay was placed vertical, the nails sagged and ultimately would fall off the clay. To get the nails on film I brought out the 11”x14” view camera. I could tell from the very first view on the ground glass there were not enough nails. Unbelievable. There were 52 nails and that was still not enough. At that point I decided some retouching work in Photoshop would be required. I sorta figured on adding more nails digitally anyway. 

       No real concern. Right…..

       The first negative showed far too many spaces between the nails. Being on a deadline to get this done I almost gave in and used the first negative. So glad I ended up rearranging and shooting a second time. The second attempt was so much better. Still short on nails yet I was by this point expecting it.

       The negative was drum scanned and sent back in a flash. I then set about to outline each and every nail in Photoshop. The outlines allowed for masking and contrast corrections. This was not going to be easy. Once the nails were outlined I loaded the mask, reversed and filled in the background with black. The negative still showed very clearly the black clay. After the outlines were done I set out to adjust each nail. I could then add more nails digitally. The process to add nails was fairly straight forward yet time consuming. The real problem comes after so much time spent retouching. The temptation to continue working the image becomes crippling. At some point I decided that 48 hours of retouching was enough. I had my ideal image.

       In the end I spent close to 50 hours retouching to get the image. Along the way I added another dozen nails. The efforts paid off in a huge way. This is by far the most unique shots I have ever taken. The real irony is in the fact that I left my cameras at home for the trip to Texas. I wasn’t even thinking of scouting for images that week in Texas. I just wanted a break. Turns out I got much more than I bargained for. All in the name of creativity of course. 

  

Texas Date Nails

Spring Road Trip - Digger's Place

Digger's

The first road trip of the season seemed like I'd picked up right back from where I left off last fall. Back to Maine for some good old fashioned Urban images. The first stop on this trip was a junk shop. It even said so on the front sign. Just past the front door was the owner, proprietor and CEO of the joint. Enter Digger. Here was a man in beat up, filthy muddy ass clothes. Seems digger was into digging for bottles. He was looking for that diamond in the rough. That rare 1812 bottle from the pharmacy that still has the label intact. Digger was for certain one of the hardest working locals I have run across. That is to say when he was out digging for bottles. Right now he was busy holding down that front desk while reading the paper.

The shop had the usual junk. Nothing screamed unique. That is until I spotted some old wooden doors out front off to the side. There were stacks and stacks of doors. After digging past the first fifty or so doors I found the all might jewel. The door was still in the frame. Time and water had done a serious number on this hunk of wood. The paint was cracking and peeling in ways I'd never seen. Beyond the paint there was much more to the door. The real uniqueness of the door was the cross. Right down the center was a cross pattern. I'm not sure if there was so significance to the cross. The door did look out of place. I checked with Digger. His take was about what I expected.

“Well......not too sure about that one”.

And with that, Digger went back to reading that newspaper. Such is life in small town Maine.

 

The 8"x10" set in up for the shot.

I went back to the business at hand. Getting that door out from under the heap of the other doors. This was not easy. The various critters were not real happy with the relocation efforts as well. I worked as fast as possible to set up the 8”x10” with the 4”x10” reducing back firmly attached. At this point my 4”x10” film holders were still being fabricated so I was out of luck. The 4”x10” back allowed the basic composition. I ended up shooting the door on 8”x10” and cutting the negative down to size. This shot was simplified by the use of the 8”x10” camera. Composing the image on my 8”x20” would have involved a good hour or so. Within 20 minutes I had my shot and was headed down the road. The irony here is in the destination for the day. My intent was to focus on the rocky shores of Two Lights state park. Digger’s was one of those freakish finds.

Digger's Door 

Just past Digger’s I came upon to Cape Porpoise. The town was like many small coastal towns. Nice inlets to photograph the levels of tide. This day’s weather had made all images next to impossible. I did find a very unusual truck. Too bad the light was dead as a door knob.

Down the road, the shores of Two Lights came into view. A break for lunch and we were on the first trail on the cliffs. The weather was disappointing to say the least. After an hour I decided to cut bait and head further north. The weather proved to be even more frustrating. The northern skies were particularly angry this day. After a late lunch stop I did a fast map check. This was not looking good. I decided to head toward the mountains of Maine and look for some other scenery. 

Two Lights State Park - Maine

Pete's Place

A few more hours into the trip and the weather decided to open up to blue skies. Too bad the coast was behind me. Driving past another junk palace I discovered a cornucopia of broken down junk. This junk was for the most part housed in abandoned tractor trailers. Any junk not in the trailers was scattered about the grounds. Toward the back was a herd of old doors. These doors were heavy, heavy wood with lead pain flaking off. The one door that caught my eye was in the back of the stack of a dozen or so even heavier doors. Beside the doors was a mob of angry bees. Not a good combination. I think the sweltering heat kept the bees at bay. The next 30 minutes were spent digging the door out of the mess and setting up the camera in 95 degree heat. I had the usual glaring stares, comments and general curiosity from onlookers as the door was burned onto film. This was the last shot of the day, and the last shot of the weekend. All in all It was a good weekend. A great first road trip. In time I’ll head back to Cape Porpoise for that old truck.

Pete's Place - 5 Panel Door

The New Panoramic - Part I

The View Camera

This year the I've decided to change up the blog. I am also catching up from the road trips taken in the first part of the year. While I play catch up let me start right in with the first post of the year. I get many questions about the camera I use. Most questions are related to the process used to get the shot. In this post I will detail as many of the intricacies of the large format view camera as possible. Along the way I'll also touch on what it takes to make a Platinum Palladium print. On this first post of the year I'll dive right into describing the camera.

Most of my work in the past 8 years has been done using the 8x20 inch panoramic view camera. The camera takes 8x20 inch sheet film. This is some seriously large film. Sheet film gets even larger. The sizes of sheet film go from 4x5 inches all the way to the mammoth 20x24. The 8x20 is the largest panoramic sheet film camera built. Back in the day the camera was used for taking group portraits in banquet halls. There were three major sizes in the banquet camera family. The 7”x17”, the 8”x20” and the 12”x20”. The 12”x20” is the only size in the banquet camera format that is not panoramic. In time the banquet halls events became nothing more than a memory. The banquet camera found new life as a landscape camera.

This year I decided to simplify a bit and add a smaller panoramic format. Not all shots are practical or even possible on the 8x20. I decided to start working with the 4x10 as well. The format is the same as the 8x20 and is much more practical to travel with.  Not much has changed in design of the view camera. Very similar to what was used back in the late 19th Century. There have been some improvements here and there over the years yet the basic design and concept is the same. A light tight box surrounded by leather bellows. The image is projected onto a glass screen on the back of the camera for a view. Thus the reason for the name view camera. The image is viewed upside down and backwards as there are no mirrors to reverse the image. To better see the image a large black cloth is draped over the back of the camera.

Ebony SV810 View Camera

Here is my Ebony 8x10 view camera. Specifically a wooden field camera. The field camera was designed to fold up and travel. The 8x10 view camera is for the most part the standard size all view cameras are judged upon. I ordered a 4x10 reducing back for the Ebony. The 4x10 back lets me shoot panoramic images. When the view changes to a more traditional look I can switch out the back for a more traditional rectangular perspective. The Ebony view camera is arguably the finest in the world. The wood used is either quarter sawn Honduras Mahogany or Ebony wood aged for twenty years. All the metal parts are titanium. These cameras don't come cheap and take time to acquire. The wait can be as much as a year to get an Ebony.

The design of the field style view camera is pretty ingenious. The camera folds up into a box shape for travel. Once on the tripod, the camera opens up and takes on a whole different look. The basic components are fairly simple. The front section that holds the lens is called the front standard. The back standard holds the film and ground glass for viewing the image. Most 8x10 field cameras extend out to around 34 inches of bellows. To focus the camera, the bellows are moved back and forth. The longer the focal length of the lens (larger lens) the longer the bellows. A normal lens on 8x10 is 300mm or 12 inches. That means that the distance between the film and the center of the lens must be 12 inches to focus at infinity. Get the camera closer to the subject or use a longer lens and you need more bellows. I equate bellows to light. The more you have the better off you are. And light is another tricky factor. Double the bellows and you loose ¾ of the light in the distance it takes the light to travel through the lens, past the bellows and onto the film. Fortunately there is a formula for calculating the bellows factor. And all that loss of light means a longer exposure. Thus we hit another problem in what is called film reciprocity. Most films suffer the same fate when dealing with long exposures. The longer the exposure the more time must be added to compensate. Most times the best approach is to take a good old fashioned swag (Scientific Wild Ass Guess) and hope for the best.

The film for large format cameras come in sheets. The sheets are loaded into a wooden film holder. All wooden film holders are custom made to order for each camera. The film is loaded in complete darkness. The holder is double sided and will accommodate one sheet of film on each side. The larger the size of film the more problematic things get. Light leaks from the holders are the most common problem. Film can even be bad before it leaves the factory. Using large wooden view cameras is a huge gamble. The larger the camera, the larger the gamble. There's no way to know if what you see on the ground glass is what you will get on the film. There are simply too many factors. On most days luck is on my side and I get the shot with no problems. On rare occasions even my back up shot is ruined. 

Ebony with a 4”x10” Panoramic Back

Sheet Film Holders

The film holders are all hand built custom and custom sized for each camera back. Below is one of the 4”x10” holders for the Ebony. The dozen holders I ordered took a craftsman six months to fabricate. These really are a work of art. Each film holder can take two sheets of film. One on each side. With a backup shot I use one holder per shot. Film is cheap. A reshoot is not.

Ebony 4”x10” Sheet Film Holder

View Camera Lens

The next component is the lens. The lens is really the most critical piece of the image creation process. A good lens will make or break the shot. This particular lens is a very specialized piece of glass. The design is for a wide angle view on an 8”x10” view camera. When used on the 4”x10” the view is very wide side to side and about normal from top to bottom. A modern lens like this is heavy, expensive and tricky to use. The angle of coverage is so extreme that light will often fall off on the edges producing a vignette type of effect. Fortunately when shooting 4”x10” I rarely see that effect.

Schneider Super Angulon 165mm Lens

These are the basic components of the camera. In part II I will show what it takes to get the shot. This is where the real fun begins. Personally I am not one the type to dwell on the merits of one particular camera over another. The view camera is a basic design that happens to have a handful of variations. The real deal breaker is always the lens. My first wooden view camera was a good 50 years old when I managed to snag it. The first few shots I was forced to use duct tape and toothpicks to make the thing work. Over the next few years I set out to restore the camera. When all the work was done the quality of the negative was the same. Any wooden view camera can take a good shot. A finely built wooden view camera can make getting the shot easier to get. I’ll get more into that on the next post.