Prudential @ Sunset
From 2013 to 2017 I labored on a project photographing the Prudential and Hancock towers at sunset—particularly right after, or sometimes during, thunderstorms. This project yielded a few striking transparencies. Today, I'm highlighting a shot of the Prudential Tower—which Bostonians lovingly refer to as "the Pru"—taken on a stormy July, 2014 evening.
As I walked home from my day-job at a now-defunct technology startup, I saw a promising break in the clouds along the western horizon. I rushed to my flat, grabbed my supremely heavy Gitzo aluminum tripod, Mamiya RB67 Pro SD medium format camera, light meter, tripod, a handful of filters, and several 120 film backs.
Tripod balanced on my shoulder, camera and supplies swinging from my arm in a heavy tote bag, I hurriedly trudged up five flights of stairs, my mind rushing ahead to visualize a composition. Simultaneously, the back of mind busied itself questioning whether another round of showers would dash my plans. Finally on the roof, sweating a little from the unforgivingly suffocating stairwell, I took a moment to appreciate just how glorious of an evening this had the potential to unfold into...if only the clouds would open up a smidgin.
Fully aware that this could turn out like so many other promising evenings—ruined by clouds not behaving the way I needed them to—I carried on in the hopes that tonight would be different. With my camera assembled, I proceeded to survey the scene with my light meter. Would I be able to capture this shot on my preferred film, Velvia 50, or would the scene's dynamic range demand a negative film instead?
After a bit of surveying, I concluded that shooting with Velvia would send parts of the South End into deep shadow. While I could have brought everything into range with a negative film, such as the Kodak Ektar 100 in my other film back, I made the creative decision to let the South End fall largely into the shadows.
The primary subject was to be vibrant, post-thunderstorm skies, with the Back Bay skyline as a near-silhouette. I was aiming for the juxtaposition of engineered architectural shapes against the seemingly random colors and forms of the cloud formations. Allowing the South End to fall into the shadows contributed to a favorite aesthetic: highlighting a subject by allowing edges of the frame with unimportant details to fade away into blackness.
The wind and rain were not particularly cooperative. Furthermore, I only had one exposure of Velvia 50 slide film left in the first film back, a couple exposures of Ektar 100 negative film remaining in the second, and the third back was awaiting a fresh roll of film. Judging from the rain and light conditions, I didn't think I had the minute it would take to fill the empty back. It was all going to come down to a single exposure of Velvia 50!
This would be a difficult shot. I surveyed the scene again with my light meter to be sure my initial readings had been accurate. They were, but the readings meant the exposure would fall well beyond the documented limit of one second for Velvia 50.
Not unlike digital sensors, film has tricky characteristics in low light situations. Alas, everything in life is a tradeoff. While Velvia is unquestionably a landscape photographer's best weapon, it is a notoriously difficult film to master. Beyond one second, its exposure times don't follow the normal light meter scale. As metered exposure times grow to four seconds, eight seconds, and beyond, actual film exposure time grows exponentially. A few examples: four seconds become five; sixteen seconds become twenty-eight; and sixty-four seconds on the light meter become 158 seconds on the stopwatch.
Modern film is the result of incredible feats of chemical engineering. Velvia produces exceptional images when used exactly as envisioned by Fuji's chemists. Beyond four seconds, already well beyond the time limits recommended by Fuji, color correction complicates matters. The silver halide layers that are sensitized to different ranges of the color spectrum begin to expose at differing rates. If we want the slide to remain accurate, we must add color correction via the use of magenta colored glass filters to compensate for the diverging rates at which different ranges of the color spectrum expose the film.
In the modern digital world, many choose to ignore the color correction steps. They'd prefer to deal with it in Photoshop. While I understand this point of view, and recognize that time spent with photoshop is an important part of the craft, I still consider it tedious. Sitting in front of a computer is my day job, after all. I step out into the elements to take photographs. My love stems from being on location, expressing my creative vision through subtle choices of composition, focus, aperture, filters, exposure, movements on my view camera, etc. I'd rather spend an extra moment screwing a filter onto the camera than half an hour tinkering with Photoshop color controls—all while trying to line up the screen with my mind's eye, praying that my mind recalls the scene accurately months or years after the fact.
I quickly assembled my filter stack, adjusted the polarizer to the position I wanted, re-checked my focus, screwed the cable release connectors into the positions needed for mirrors-up mode, pulled the dark slide out of the film back, got my stopwatch ready, depressed the main shutter button manually—sending the huge mirror thwapping up out of the light path—, watched the vibrations from the mirror movement subside, then stood still awaiting the perfect light.
Mamiya shipped these all-mechanical behemoths with a rather curious cable release device. It's really two cable releases in one. Pressing it halfway down activates the first cable release. Pushing it down further engages the second one. Through this mechanism, we can manually open the shutter by depressing it half-way, then close the shutter at the end of the exposure by pressing it all the way down—all without directly touching the camera. Particularly for exposures of a few seconds, this is invaluable.
Thirty or forty seconds later, perfection arrived. Simultaneously, I depressed my stopwatch and pushed the cable release down halfway. A faint click of the shutter—nearly imperceptible amidst the sloshing of tires through surface water on the street below—announced that we were off to the races.
This was a delicate operation. Nearly everything my lens was rendering, onto a six centimeter by seven centimeter rectangle of film, was over half a mile from my lens. The tiniest vibrations could destroy the end result. I was standing on a somewhat rotten pressure-treated lumber landing right next to an elevator equipment room. This is a busy building; the chances that I could make a half-minute exposure without the elevator being called were modest at best.
Too afraid to shift my weight, breathing shallowly, I anxiously awaited my stopwatch swinging through twenty-eight. With each tick I pondered the rising probability that somebody below would hit an elevator button. If I'd had time to plan, I would have asked my wife to hold the elevator as I took the shot. But, tonight, I was alone.
Seizing happenstance and assuming risk are siblings. The most spectacular light is as much ephemeral as it is unpredictable. Maybe I'd get my shot. If not, post-storm light shows happen from time to time. I'd capture one of them eventually.
Twenty-eight seconds later, I jammed the plunger all the way down, ending the exposure as the mechanical shutter snapped back to its resting place in less than a thousandth of a second. As I depressed the cable release to end the exposure, I let out a sigh of relief—I'd missed the elevator's vibrations by mere seconds. This photograph is brought to you by unadulterated fortuity.
Seeing that optimal light was going to fade soon, I rushed to replace the dark slide on the film back. With a loud crinkling sound, I unwrapped a new roll of Velvia 50 from its foil sleeve, clicked it into its sprung bearings inside the holder, raced to weave the rubbery plastic leader to the strip of film around the film path of the empty film holder, finally slipping the tab into the middle of the spool at the opposite end of the holder. As I closed the lightproof door on the holder and worked its film advance lever to get frame 1 into position just behind the dark slide, I gazed with sadness upon the waning light. A duplicate exposure would be underwhelming. As I packed up my gear amidst surprisingly cold, wet gusts of post-thunderstorm winds, my thoughts drifted to whether the lone exposure would turn out.
I faintly recall being happy with the slide when it returned from the lab a few months later. It went into a folder, where it would sit for the next four years, forgotten, dormant, biding.
Fast forward to the summer of 2018. I came across this slide in my collection, threw it on the light table, then asked my wife for her opinion. Her decidedly positive reaction tipped the scales. A few days later it was off in the mail to be drum scanned by a gentleman on the west coast whose attention to detail I consider unparalleled.
A few weeks later, he sent me a pair of 3 gigabyte files, one scanned in a linear mode, the other in a logarithmic mode. The linear scan provided remarkable tonality in the skies, whereas the logarithmic scan pulled out more of the shadow detail at slight expense to tonal gradation in the sky. Each scan was approximately 500 megapixels—over three times as much data as can be captured with the best digital sensor on the market in 2019 (whose price tag is in excess of $50,000 as I write this). The quality of both scans was exceptional.
After a few hours of comparing them side-by-side, I settled on the logarithmic scan. The logarithmic offered an entire new world of shadow detail absent from the linear scan, at modest expense to sky tonality. As an experiment, I also spent the ~100 hours in photoshop to construct, pixel-by-pixel, a layer mask border nearly 100,000 pixels long to combine the two images. That experiment didn't end as well as I'd hoped. The purely logarithmic scan still looked better than the painstakingly combined image. Alas. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
While photography is largely a solitary pursuit, I think we must all realize when it is better to ask masters of specific crafts for their time than strive to be masters of everything ourselves. If I spent more time mastering drum scanning, then I would have to sacrifice something else I hold dear. We are lucky to have folks out there who specialize in obscure crafts such as drum scanning. I happily take advantage of specialization, as I could never equal this gentleman's abilities.
The firm I collaborate with to print my work can print on chromogenic paper up to 48" wide. (Chromogenic papers are light-sensitive papers that are typically exposed by computer-controlled lasers, then developed just like film.) From the raw numbers, this scan could support 300dpi prints of approximately 60" x 70". That said, I'm not at all sad that I cannot print at the maximum theoretical size. There is something to be said for throwing away some data. This process of reduction helps ensure that the image reveals extraordinary detail upon close inspection. True fine art photographs should feel like fractals: they should continually reveal more detail as we step closer and closer to the print.
As I'm sure many of you have encountered before, it pains me when I step into a gallery, walk up to a print—my nose an inch or two away—only to find that I cannot discern any detail amongst a morass of pixelation. Far too many photographers digitally blow up their images because they are under the misapprehension that size is the sole arbiter of intrinsic value. Art should please the eye from a multitude of distances. Standing 1 inch from a fine art print should feel like missing the forest for the trees, not the disorienting feeling of standing amidst a blizzard of seemingly random pixels.
I insist on not only printing fewer pixels than were captured with my original scan, but—moreover—that whatever sizes I choose to print will all behave like fractals. I want to invite viewer, even the repeat viewer, to step in close and thereby discover the unforeseen. Anyone paying thousands of dollars to hang a fine art photograph on their wall should expect nothing less.
Without further ado, here's a web-friendly thumbnail of the final result...
As I write this, I'm in the midst of performing test prints. Once I decide whether the final product will be Fujiflex behind museum glass, or Fujiflex face mounted to museum-grade 1/4" acrylic, I'll update this page. Likewise, available print sizes and pricing will be forthcoming by early summer, 2019. All prints will come with signed certificates of authenticity. Larger prints will be limited editions.