Champagne Light on the Ings

On continuing my black and white development experiment even in champagne light

By early October 2012 I was well into my black and white development experiment. Both these images were processed at home. After a busy week, I managed to grab a couple of hours over the weekend to make images and given the amount of recent rainfall I headed out onto my local Ings.

I am lucky to live close to what is now the Lower Derwent Valley National Nature Reserve which – when the Ings is in full flood – is beautiful. It is usually winter when the Ings floods so to get these conditions in October was unusual to my memory. I headed out onto the Ings from a location I had worked a couple of times in the past. As I walked along the banks of the Derwent on the public footpath the light got better and better and as I looked back, I noticed the scene in the main image. The light by now was nothing short of champagne light and by rights I should have shot in colour. But I was already too far gone down the path of black and white and I only exposed a sheet of Delta 100. When I processed it – this experiment in an HP Combi-Plan – and scanned it, the tones in the black and white image were lovely.

On the way back I found the second composition looking in the other direction and set up using my wide angle 90mm. Into the light was a bit of an experiment and it held the detail in the highlights because I aimed for some compensating development. Over the following weeks I was to start experimenting with continuous development using a Paterson Orbital.