Masonic Joys

Masonic Building, Minneapolis. March, 2011

I just shot this 4x5 photo yesterday. I was having a low week at work, and decided that packing the view camera down to 6th and Hennepin and doing the Masonic Building would cheer me up. The whole kit, including a vintage Minolta lightmeter, 4 film packs, monorail Calumet 4x5 View camera on a 26" rail, etc fit pretty well into a big shoulder bag. With tripod I was lugging 20+ pounds, and I had a 12 block round-trip through the skyways. I think that coming back into the system through the Plymouth Building might have put me in a node I hadn't actually visited before.

When I went out to set up on the sidewalk, I realized I hadn't worn a jacket and it was about 38 degrees. I fought the urge to rush the set-up, and had to go under the dark cloth several times to recheck the focus. The corner I was on was good for attracting attention from groups of street kids, but they just wanted me to take their picture. No real hassles. When I had the front and rear tilts and front lift set on the camera, I realized the battery had gone dead in the spotmeter, so I had to guess the exposure. That wasn't too hard. The lens and shutter I was using was an uncoated 140mm f4.5 Kodak Anastigmat in an 1930s vintage Compur shutter, which I had to trust for timing in the cold. This was a 50th of a second exposure at f16 on Ilford Delta 100 film. I took another at a 10th of a second which I intended to underdevelop, but forgot and it came out way too dense to print.

I tray developed the two exposures I made, one at a time. This print shows that I over-agitated the negative, but I have to say that sitting in the complete darkness at 3 a.m. listening to the motor on the old Gray Lab timer and gently rocking the enamel pan back and forth was a spiritual moment for me. Total focus and total defocus, pardon the expressions, simultaneously. I had to be completely in the moment because my only clue that the timer was up was the sudden silence of the motor, which was only as loud as a cricket walking through straw in the first place. But, while my senses were acutely tuned to the chirring sound, and my wrist was flexing slowly enough to not slosh developer on my drawing board, I felt an immense peace, a completion of my sense of self that rarely occurs.

People wonder why I go to this trouble to take a large format photo that my Nikon D90 could do as well or better, they think. With so much less trouble.

The photo is just the package of the experience, and the experience is a distillation of years of being and hours of effort. The package has its discipline, the experience has its shape and meaning, the whole arc results in a few moments of pure joy that cannot be secured through any shortcuts I know.

So how do you like the "vintage" look? Seems appropriate for the old building.