Foggy Sunrise, Rocky Hill Meadows
The Rocky Hill Meadows has long been part of my life, I grew up a bike ride away from the Meadows. When photography took hold of my life, the Meadows was a never ending resource for inspiration. Now living in the western part of Rocky Hill, the Meadows is a short car ride away.
Seasonal fog was always a possibility as the Ct. River runs adjacent to the Meadows. If foggy conditions were forecast I was certain that close to the river the fog would be more than adequate to create atmosphere conducive to big film and the Ultra Large Format camera. This image was made on my Folmer Schwing camera, seen in an adjacent photo.
7×17″ Folmer Schwing
The camera I had was made by the Folmer Schwing Co. circa 1905 – 1910, Eastman Kodak acquired Folmer in 1905 and my camera was labeled to that effect. It was a much studier camera than the more popular Korona 7×17″ “Banquet” cameras.
That particular size camera was made popular back when film was the only means to record large gatherings, and therefore became known as “banquet” cameras. These cameras came in various sizes, from 5×12″, 7×17″, 8×20″ and even up to 12×20″ for public events and gatherings. Even in today’s digital world the aforementioned film sizes are still available, pricey as they may be with a dwindling audience.
The 7×17″ perspective in my opinion, is the perfect panoramic ratio. I’ve used 3 different 7×17″ cameras, a borrowed Korona, my own Folmer Schwing and from 2006 to 2020 a Phillips Explorer. The Phillips was made by a retiring engineer / photographer, in my opinion the perfect design of weight, functionality and precision ever made. Over time I would become very proficient at seeing in that panoramic format, some of my best imagery originated from those cameras. I say very good at seeing in that perspective, while fully understanding I could never master the square format as so many others who make terrific imagery as “seen” in the square format.
This month’s image is a perfect example of the odd numbered components in visual art, one dominate feature and then an odd number of 3 supporting aspects of the image. These types of visual arrangements play out in advertising all the time. The brain does not like to see pairs as it creates a tension of which one is the focus of the visual image, in advertising, the product, or concept is always dominate.
Back in the early 2000’s I was using J&C 200 film, the film responded very nicely with the Extreme Minimal Agitation process that I was fortunate to perfect in 2003 with modern thin emulsion films. If you have interest into a deep dive into the EMA Process of film processing checkout the online article I wrote back some years ago, linked here in Blue.