52:500c – Week 39 – Black Creek

I love visiting museums and thankfully there are plenty around the area for me to visit. Or in many cases revisit after many years of not having been there. Black Creek Pioneer Village is one such museum located on the northern border of the city of Toronto. The village, a living history museum is very much like Upper Canada Village, the buildings are from the same area, and many have been moved to build this unique look into the mid 19th-century expansion further north in Upper Canada following the Anglo-American War of 1812. Some of the oldest buildings on the site were built by the Strong Family, on the same property in 1816. Also they have a fantastic historical brewery on site that brews beer as they would have in the mid-19th century!

Daniel Strong was of German decent and originally came from Pennsylvania (where they’re known as Pennsylvania Dutch) but emigrated to Upper Canada during the American Revolution with his family as they remained loyal to the British Crown. He married Elizabeth Fisher and in 1816 settled on the banks of Black Creek well north of the City of York (today Toronto, Ontario). The pair welcomed and raised six children on the property. Eventually expanding from the simple log cabin to a larger frame house. Daniel would play a role and join in the rebellions of 1837 fighting for responsible government against the Family Compact. The rebellion was easily crushed and Daniel imprisoned as a result. The whole family would end up being laid to rest in a small cemetery on the property with the final members of the original family passing away in 1885. The farm continued to operate until 1952 under Oliver Strong, the great grandson of Daniel. And what makes the Strong Farm unique is that the family never demolished the older buildings to reuse the materials making Black Creek Pioneer Village unique in that all the buildings related to the Strong family are original in their original locations. The museum has operated there since 1960.

But you’re probably wondering what the heck is up with these photos. So when your fixer is in a similar bottle as another developer, mistakes happen. Also when you had previously used that bottle that now has some leftover developer for fixer. You end up trying to fix your film in a developer. And you end up with this weird hybrid between positive and negative shots. Maybe I’m onto something here, I’m sure that people spend hours trying to get this look in Photoshop. Or maybe I can use this technique and refine it to get some sort of positive image from my negative film?

Hasselblad 500c – Carl Zeiss Distagon 50mm 1:4 – Rollei RPX 25 @ ASA-25
Ilford Perceptol (1+1) 10:00 @ 20C & Kodak DK-50 (Stock) 5:00 @ 20C
Meter: Pentax Spotmeter V
Scanner: Epson V700
Editor: Adobe Photoshop CC (2015)