​  18 hour exposure

      For those who participated in last month’s GO Fund Me campaign for our granddaughter, it was a smashing success, my sincere thanks for your support.

     This Month’s image is extraordinary to this 1992 B&W photographer. The thought of an 18 hour exposure seemed somewhat plausible, nevertheless, this church’s interior was considerably darker than the moonlit night detailed below.

     In the early ’90’s I was still in pursuit of changing careers in favor of photography. I took a position with Olan Mills, a large company owned business with brick & mortar studio fronts across the United States with a focus on family photography. Olan Mills also had a “Church Division” where a salesman would offer to various churches a free directory with each paristoner’s family picture as well as a free 8×10″ color photo for those members who chose to participate. My job was to travel the greater southern New England area 6 days a week to make photographs of singles, couples and families from 3 – 9:30 pm. After an 8-10 minute studio session with me a 3.5″ computer floppy disc of my portrait sitting was displayed on one of two sales people’s computer screens. Various packages with those who had signed up to be included in the free church directory would be discussed. During my 3.5 yrs I would photograph over 14,000 sittings, likely 30K faces and learned a lot about people and a vast number of family dynamics. In the end I simply couldn’t support two children in private universities and reverted back to my previous profession.

      On setup days I would always arrive early as setting up the studio and related introductions was a moving target. I’ve always had an appreciation of the geometry and grace of man-made structures and would often checkout the church sanctuary in older churches to see what they looked like. This particular church in Winsted, CT as I recall had the darkest interior I had ever come across, all the while being in the middle of the afternoon! I was assigned 4-5 days of shooting at this particular church and on the drive home that first evening I wondered if I could make an overnight exposure with my large film camera. I would check with the Pastor the next day and receive his permission as the sanctuary would be free of activity until the weekend.

    My interest was fueled by a trip to the Southwest back in the late ’80s where I camped out with two good friends in Johns Canyon in the Utah backcountry, seen in the color photos. Prior to nightfall I setup the 4×5″ view camera on some generic landscape close to the tent. The days were shorter in October and after a few beers with the boys I opened the camera lens @ 8pm on this moonlit night and got up @ 4am to close the shutter, the result was a near perfect exposure and development of that piece of film. Nothing at all special about the image, but it taught me that no matter how little light, any light continues to build density that only the film can see. I gotta give a shout-out to my buddy in the middle, Tim is an avid outdoorsman who provided the tent, cooking materials and all related knowledge to survive in grand style, albeit 30 miles or more from civilization. A fresh pancake breakfast with an unrivaled backyard is a memory I treasure! Over the years I would share many memorable adventures in the Southwest with Tim & Glenn.

       The clear windows at the very top of the church would provide some illumination to see the various shapes in the darkened church. I wanted to include the high up windows on each side as a means to further illuminate the interesting ceiling area. Setting the camera in the center of the isle would determine 3 of the 4 borders of the photograph. However, the nearly black pews in the foreground could not be seen at all in the camera. I used a flashlight to try and approximate what pews would be in the final image, at best it was a guess what would be seen in the close foreground. Focusing the image was a challenge in such limited light. I ended up shining the flashlight on the candles seen on the left side as the point of critical focus. In most types of photography 1/3 the distance in-front of that critical focus point and 2/3 the distance behind the critical point will be sharp. Using an f-stop of f-32 would add some much needed depth of field during the 18 hour exposure !  The camera was set-up prior to any sittings with the idea I would try and begin the exposure around 8:30 that night and return the next day and close the shutter before my first sitting @ 3pm, thus, the exposure was 18 hours. I would process the film normally as I had no idea what the contrast range would ultimately turn out to be. 

    It’s clear the upper window on the right side is brighter than the opposite window to the left, from that it was easy to determine that was East and the large center windows were close to due North. Notice the shadows on the carpet as well as the walls creating shadows from both sides of the church due to the windows at the very edges of the image, a clear sign the sun was passing over head during the long exposure. For those photographers in tune with the Zone System densities back in that time frame, the Red arrow shows a density of 1.02 above film base + fog, which as seen is approximately Zone 7 and easily prints with detail.  The actual densest (brightest in the final photograph) part of the window measures 1.46, and while higher than one would like, still able to be printed in the darkroom. To be clear, this was a quest for knowledge at best. The fact that the negative densities turned out as very manageable was a bit of a surprise. That same quest for knowledge is still with me 30 years later as I pursue new to me areas of image making and darkroom challenges !

    Stay tuned next month for one of those new areas of interest.