My last post showed latent images that I made in the Summer of 2016 at a revisited Edgelands site. Another long running project I am engaged in is making a documentary record of the seemingly endless changes presented to us along the docklands of the Orwell.

I am very grateful to Richard Lister and his estates team at the University of Suffolk who have granted me, and my fellow compatriots making this documentary, access to the rooftop of the James Hehir building which is part of the campus estate.

We have had several visits to the roof now and having got to know the lie of the land as it were with using digital equipment I thought it best to finally haul up some large format gear. The final ascent to the rooftop involves a 14 feet vertical climb and all our gear has to be hauled up and lowered using ropes. My monorail case weighs in at 3 stone so that was out of the question without using some form of block and tackle so I fell back on the lighter field camera setup.

When I bought the Toyo 45A I deliberately went for a 135mm lens on the basis that it was a tad wider than the normal 150mm and suited my Edgelands approach to things and it has served me well in that respect. This setup would work well for a large panorama of the Wet Dock. There was a break in the weather pattern hitting the country on 22nd December and Kevin Marrable was the other member of the team making it to the summit on this visit. We had intended making images on the Winter solstice but the forecast was just too grim by half. Luckily UoS were able to agree to our changed plans at very short notice.

I think it worked out quite well despite the fact that I shot in landscape mode – I normally shoot in portrait mode whilst making panorama images but decided on landscape for this first session. Made on FP4+ and developed using 1:50 Rodinal and scanned on an Epson V750 Pro, the made up panorama is made from 3 5×4 sheets shot at 1/30th at F16 with a touch of tilt.

Post production was performed in both Lightroom and CS6

Here is a 100% crop of the central portion.

All in all I am very pleased with this exercise and I believe my stalled mojo is back on track.

I love using different cameras to make different images and the tool helps me make the image in my mind’s eye. Shooting B&W film for this exercise pays a certain homage to the early record making of what is believed to be the most photographed dock in in Great Britain. Queen Victoria granted Royal assent to dig out this dock in 1845, just 6 years after the dawn of fixed image photography. The camera I used to make this was made in 1974 but any Victorian photographer could have used it with consummate ease as very little has changed with the tool in 178 years, just the subject matter.

Kevin and the others are on notice to haul more large format gear up there as this project progresses.