Week 52: Blairsville – B&W

I have never been really good at following rules.  While on our holiday vacation (see previous post) I took along a few rolls of film and shot more than one.  Since they were different stocks and much different feels, I felt it was better to break them into two posts.

One of the things I can thank this project for is allowing me to see textures and contrast.  Before this project I would load black and white film and hope the images would come out. I know get a much better sense of what surroundings and subjects would lend themselves to the media.

On our trip we visited a road side attraction called Pappy’s Trading Post.  I shot a few frames with my digital but from looking around I could “see” that this was a prime candidate for black and white.  While my family was in the general store shopping for chow-chow (please don’t ask), I went to the car and switched out my D610 for my N90s loaded with Ilford Delta 400.  I proceeded to walk around and find some very interesting “subjects” to photograph.  Keeping in line with my approach to this whole project of not editing the scans, I had to leave the lady in the upper right of the tractor picture.  She was later edited out.

The second set of pictures are from the Sleepy Hollow Fairy Gardens.  This was a great place to take the kids and see the houses built by a former Disney artist.  While there we ended up meeting the whole family who, in addition to building fairy houses, are active in steampunk builds as well.  Something for everyone in one place!

In addition to the buildings lending themselves to being photographed in black and white, I felt I had to include the last frame (featured image) as part of this project.

The next post will be the hardest; wrapping up this amazing, fun, frustrating, challenging project.