Crown Tulips © Bea Friedli

Our Single Inspiring Image for mid-November is "Crown Tulips" by Photoworkshop.com member Bea Friedli, who shares her technique and inspiration in creating this beautiful black-and-white still life.

About the Image
"Inspired by a local exhibit of Ansel Adams and Edwin Lands’ Polaroids, I was compelled to take my treasured Crown Graphic Large Format Camera out again. Nothing jazzes me more than looking at quality fine art black-and-white images.  I felt indebted to Ansel Adams and Edwin Land for their pioneer works and development of Type 55 Polaroid film, created in 1961. Type 55 film is a positive and negative black-and-white 4x5 sheet film that is still widely used by artists today, 46 years later! Thankfully Polaroid has not discontinued this valued film and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they never will.

The exhibit finally gave me the chance to see Ansel Adams' works close-up and 'live.' What a powerful and moving experience! Ansel expertly composed  and orchestrated visions of beauty with just the B/W tones that the film Type 55 provides. The images are filled with depth and soul by his knowledge of capturing light and manipulating the tones and contrast.  I looked at his work and learned photography from his generously written words in his books (The Camera, The Negative, and The Print), which rekindled the inspiration to play with my Crown Graphic again.  

The Crown Graphic is an old large-format Press Camera developed in 1947. Happily, with the advent of digital photography, not only are we in a new world of imaging that I embrace, I can also cheaply buy these wonderful relics of finely crafted machines for a song and a dance on Ebay!

The day of the exhibit was cold, wet, and dreary. After viewing the works, I was greatly inspired to create and play with Type 55 film again. But I wasn’t going to take the camera out in the rain. Since still life is my weakest area, I was challenged to try it indoors. They no longer make the flash bulbs for this old camera so I am rellegated to use natural light. Using low light indoors meant that I had to take out the dreaded, often tripped-over tripod."

Technique
"The first challenge was setting up a still life. I am more of a people person, so it took me over an hour just to play and try to arrange a bunch of tulips that I bought for this. Using Type 55 film is not like digital imaging, where I could easily delete it. One sheet of film costs about four dollars. So I took great care and time to set this whole one image up before I took the shot. Which meant moving furniture around so I had space to work in and of course, tripping here and there on those tripod legs!

Placing a large bath towel over my head and around the camera allowed me to look through the huge viewing ground glass without distracting light. You need to manually open up the shutter to view. The scene is visualized upside down and backwards—not so easy and quick to compose. I scrutinized the entire frame for details, and had to move a picture on the wall that got in the corner of the view.

The lens is mounted on a front standard which rides on rails to move the lens closer and further away from the film plane. The old bellows is checked to make sure there are no light leaks and tight. After another hour of moving the rails back and forth and composing via viewfinder, next was placing the film in the camera. The shutter is now manually closed so you no longer see the image on the ground glass. Being a Polaroid film, the Type 55 was placed in the Polaroid Model 545i 4x5 film holder. The film holder now wedges between the Ground Glass and camera body. You are unable to do a last check via viewfinder once the film holder is in. So great care is needed so the camera does not move when inserting the holder.

I used a handheld meter, the Sekonic  L-358 ( which actually cost more than the camera).  Type 55 film has an ISO of 50. I used an f-stop of 5.6 and shutter speed of one second.  With Polaroid sheet film, you pull out the paper cover to expose the negative in the holder, take the shot, and then push the paper cover back over the negative in the holder. In one even sweeping movement, pulled the Polaroid out of the holder. I prayed that the rollers of the holder were even and clean so not get any botched-up areas."

Processing
"Polaroid film processing time varies with temperature and type of Pola films.  For this setting, I used 30 seconds to wait before peeling the film apart. The beauty of Type 55 like I said is that it has the positive print AND a negative! The negative is now fixed and cleaned  in a previously mixed chemical called Sodium Sulfite in a tray in my kitchen sink. The wonders of not having to have a darkroom and still get negatives via Polaroid! Then I used the  Fotoflow chemical to wash. I bought my powdered chemicals online at B & H PhotoVideo. I bought little clips which I taped over the edge of the cabinets over the sink, which I used to hang the negs on to dry.

Now the joy of Adobe Photoshop comes to play. Using an Epson scanner, I scanned the  negative into Photoshop. Nothing like a having a darkroom again, even if it is digital. All the chemical tools are in Photoshop, only digitally. With this program, you can play and orchestrate your image like you would in a chemical darkroom, but it's a bit nicer than being confined in the dark for hours, although I do miss it at times. I wonder how Ansel Adams  and Edwin land would feel about this digital world. Being a pioneer of creating new ideas, I think they would embrace this new age.

Because the film was slightly expired, it created a slightly solarized look for a wonderful surprise. I didn’t do much tweaking in Photoshop except for adjusting the contrast to my taste. I love how I can use film and its old ways and techniques and have the digital world of Photoshop to play and orchestrate further if wanted. The old and new blended in harmony."

About the Photographer
"My day job continues to be a nurse specializing in Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. 30 years of nursing and many more to go. I Joined Photoworkshop.com in 2001 to seriously study and learn the fine art of photography. Since then, I have been the subject of a Cover Story for Double Exposure, had images published in photo magazines, had my image, "Conference of the Birds" published on the cover of  “Om’s" CD, had a floral image published in the book, Photos That Inspire Photo Workshop, have received numerous accolades on photo sites, have given a lecture on photography at the Great Neck Photo club, and have done numerous pro shoots for clients. I also recently shot my first wedding.

I'm hoping to expand my photography journey as a secondary career, and am praying that my images will evoke the viewers' emotions."

See more of Bea's images at http://beafriedli.photoworkshop.com/

Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to Lynne Eodice.