Back in 2004 I thought I wanted to go to a larger camera, 8” x10” was the next step up from my 5” x7” Deardorff camera. I already had several lenses that would work the larger format, so before I actually purchased a camera I was fortunate to borrow one with the idea to see if I liked the format.

         Secret Window resulted from an April trip to New York City with fellow Large Format photographer Peter Bosco. Peter had an interest in shooting the water storage containers that sit atop so many buildings in NYC so we decided to find a parking garage to gain a vantage point that would be conducive to being eye level with some rooftops.   We came upon a parking garage that was closed for the weekend. We knew the garage was closed because the Up access lane was blocked off, however, the Down access ramp was not blocked off. We decided to drive Up, the Down access lane, and got to the top floor, as I remember about 6 stories up. Peter had nothing to lose, we were in my car and me driving, all the risk was mine. In this case, the reward far outweighed any risk I took on. We had the complete roam of the top floor and over in one corner I found the vantage point you see in this photograph. Framing the image was very obvious to me, I remembered something I’d heard Paula Chamlee tell me when looking through the ground glass, “it’s not what it is, it’s how it relates to one another.” I knew the giant letter M would be a boundary on the left while the unusual shapes of the building in front would be the centerpiece of the image, all surrounding shapes would serve to highlight just how unusual the shape of the foreground building was. The random tonalities of the building would just heighten the feeling of dimension and depth. The vantage point from the parking garage provided a perfect angular view to the background buildings, which creates a subliminal sense of depth to the photograph.

         The Pyro component of the image is very important, the shot was taken in almost midday sun with an Orange filter to create some texture in the blue sky. That Orange filter will steal away shadow density because the shadows are illuminated by cooler Blue light, opposite of the Orange filter. With conventional developers, it would be very difficult to hold good rich shadow information.  Pyro developers by their nature add a proportionate stain to the reduced Silver negative and this actually can add density and separation to the shadow areas. That said, Pyro developers are most known for separating delicate highlight values, particularly when the sun is out.

         I printed the image as large as I could @ 20”x24”. It was the centerpiece of a one-man show that traveled from Toronto, CA. to Louisville, KY, and ultimately central Connecticut where I received one of the finest compliments my photography has ever received.   Bob Carnie of Toronto Canada, who I consider to be one of the 5 finest Silver printers in the world said of this photograph, “it is one of the finest Silver Gelatin prints I have ever seen, it belongs in a Museum.”

         As it turned out after several months of shooting the format I realized that I did not care for the 8×10″ perspective in a horizontal format which is what I almost always shoot. The several images that I have made with the 8×10″ format that I am happy with are shot in a vertical orientation which I find more pleasing than the horizontal 8×10″ perspective. I learned from shooting the 5” x7” format for nearly 20 years that I was more in tune with a wider more horizontal way of seeing so I returned the camera and as it happens ultimately purchased a 7” x 17” camera to compliment the 5” x 7” format. I contact print with the larger 7”x17” camera and enlarge my 5” x 7” negatives.

         This image was shot with a Burke and James 8” x 10” camera, 355mm G-Claron lens using Tri-X film and Semi-Stand processed in PyroCat HD developer, printed on Ilford Warm-tone Multi-Contrast silver gelatin paper and Split-toned with Thiourea / Sodium Hydroxide and finally with Selenium. This particular toning process converts the original Metallic Silver to Silver Sulphide, which is considerably more stable than an ordinary B&W silver photograph. I control the split-toning by only allowing the highlights to be toned to a noticeably warmer hue. That warmer hue in the highlights is contrasted by the cooler mid-tones and shadows adding a subliminal sense to a 3rd dimension.