Albany Architecture

Last weekend I was in Albany, GA for the weekend playing in the symphony there. There is always a big gap between the final rehearsal Saturday morning and the concert that night, so I brought along the 4x5 to take some architectural photos.

This was the first time I tried using the Wista for architecture. The limited front rise can be frustrating but there are workarounds so you can get enough rise. My biggest problem was keeping the standards parallel and totally level parallel to the ground, as the Wista does not have any levels on it. I was using one I bought from the hardware store but it didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped due to it's size and such (I bought some small triple-axis levels for use from now on.

Here are some scans from the sheets of film that were good. Most of them needed a little bit of tweaking to fix the perspective in Photoshop, but so be it. All were on T-Max 100 film. This first one was my favorite: it is the arch that goes over the main entrance into town. I used the Schneider 58mm f/5.6 XL lens:

These next two are some local churches shot with the Schneider 150mm:

A couple more after the break.

Here is a cute house that was on a side street (also with the 150mm):

And finally here is an abstract of the wall of an abandoned building. Taken with the Schneider 210mm:

There were two other photos that didn't come out. I tried developing one in Pyrocat HD with disastrous results, so I need to figure out what I did so I can rectify it. Pyrocat is a great developer for contrasty lighting situations that I often run up against.