Black and White Sheets

On black and white 5×4 beginnings

In mid-2012 when Fuji once again mismanaged the UK film market by suggesting that Velvia 50 would be discontinued I immediately ordered a box of black and white 5×4 Ilford film – Delta 100. I saw the situation as an opportunity to learn a new way of seeing and that was reinforced looking at some darkroom prints that Dave Tolcher had made.

So by the time of this early September Sunday trip to the Wolds with Paul Moon I had already shot 3 or 4 sessions with Delta 100 on my TK. I was still having Peak Imaging process the film.

I picked Paul up early that morning and mentioned that I had seen some amazing thistles as I drove over. They were on Warter Estate land and so inaccessible but Paul mentioned that one of the valleys we both knew well had a lot of thistles. So we headed there first.

I focused on black and white. The main image was about the fourth image I set up in and around the area of the tree. I had not mastered the dynamic range of the film yet and had not considered how development can best be managed for scanning black and white negatives (typically N-1) so my skies were burning out. But the semi-abstracted nature of this image with the tree and thistles worked well. I realised when I processed this image that I was beginning to fall in love with black and white tones.

The alternative image was made in a second location up the road at Tun Dale. I remembered a tunnel of trees I had tried to shoot on colour transparency and wondered how they would present in black and white. Well as it turned out. I used a No. 11 yellowish green filter to lighten the vegetation.

Over the next couple of weeks I learned the basics of sheet film development using a Paterson Orbital and the basis for much of the next few years’ imagery was laid.