Kay was out of town for the weekend, and I spent much of Sunday afternoon driving around Oklahoma looking for cool subjects to photograph. Grain elevators always interest me, and I zeroed in on this one in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. When I saw this old locomotive sitting idle near the elevator, I knew I had to get this shot.
I was working from the back of our new 2-door Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. It is easy to drive around to out-of-the-way places with the Jeep, and working from the flip-up back window and door of the Jeep makes it easy for me to park nearby and set up my large format camera right out of the back.
There was nobody around and the weather was nice, so I was able to take my time and set up my camera for the shot. Shooting my large format Toyo view camera is therapeutic for me. I get to mix both technical skills and artistic skills. Shooting large format film requires deliberate actions and thought. I don’t want to waste film since it is both expensive and a lot of darn work to process. With moderns digital cameras it is easy to just snap away, chimp the photos until you find one you like, discard the others, and move to the next subject. Even with 35 mm film you can take a lot of shots and toss the ones you don’t want. But with large format film, it takes a lot more work to process each image and they cost a lot more per shot, so I tend to be more careful and put more thought into each photo. Not to mention it is REALLY easy to screw up a 4×5 piece of film, either by fogging, wrong exposure, incorrect processing, bad film handling, or a plethora of other issues that can ruin your film. It pays to be methodical in your process and thoughtful in your choice of subject and exposure.
I am quite happy with this photo. I have no idea what I will do with it. Doesn’t matter really. I took it for myself, for my own pleasure. What happens next with it really doesn’t figure in my calculations.
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