Packed up the Prius for another outing.

I had originally hoped to try and do my first North American 8x10 plates for the Prius darkbox’s second outing, but I lost all but 45ml of my collodion thanks to a dodgy glass stopper pour bottle from Amazon I was trying out. While the glass stoppered bottle worked fine for my last shoot, it turned out the seal was less than perfect, and after a week or two the collodion I had left in there as a test was a solid mass. Whoops. But at least I know now.

I ordered some more UVP-4 from UV Photographics, but in the meantime figured I’d probably have enough for eight to ten 4x5s with what I had left. I’d previously found a good spot on Boulder Canyon Road and saw a number of other likely prospects on my drive home, and while I was browsing around on Google Maps found Boulder Falls. Chucked it into the GPS and an hour or so later I was there. 

While it’s a fairly short walk from the carpark, it is uphill over somewhat uneven rocky steps, plus crossing a road. Normally, my ideal workflow is to take my time to frame up a shot, go back to the darkbox and sensitise a plate, then shoot, but this would have halved what I could do. 

Taking a page from William Henry Jackson’s autobiography, I wrapped the plate holder in a damp paper towel  to create a humid microclimate, extending its shooting life. For each shot, I’d roughly scout out my next composition on my way to/from my previous plate, develop that plate and sensitise the next one back at the darkbox, then set up the next composition while the plate waited nearby wrapped in the damp shop towel. 

Of course, one alway starts with a test plate:

From bottom to top: 2s/2s/4s/8s/16s @ f/16. Note that exposure is cumulative: the second section is 4s, middle is 8s, etc. 

My spot meter read EV11 in shadows EV13 for mids, and EV15 for highlights.

Plates:

A few more BTS: