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There are those who advise one should wait for certain times of the day to go take your outdoor photos in the best light—that advice, primarily: Avoid midday! It’s not bad advice, but if I waited for perfect hours of daylight or lack thereof, I wouldn’t take many pictures. I’ve never minded trying to find or create a scene in less-than-optimal conditions, be it bright sun, no sun, or snowfall, when I have a small window of time between work meetings or motoring the kid around.
I had about an hour free on May 3, 2023, between 1 and 2 pm after a meeting in Minneapolis, not far from Minnehaha Falls. I also had some film holders I loaded months ago for a project idea that failed to materialize—gotta use ‘em!
Into the car went the 1948 Pacemaker Speed Graphic, tripod, two lenses and those three loaded film holders. It occurred to me, as I realized I loaded those holders sometime in the fall, that I had only shot the Speed Graphic once last year—six shots at a Ukraine rally at the state capitol in March, 2022. Further thought made me realize that was it for large format for all of 2022! My Calumet CC400 4×5 view camera, which I purchased to better teach myself the wonders of the Scheimpflug principle, a camera that takes some beautiful shots with the Schneider lenses I’ve procured, saw no work in 2022 and thus far in 2023 sits stoically on a tripod in front of a bookcase in the living room, gathering dust. Egads!
Time to just get out and use the damn camera, right? (The Speed Graphic, of course—it fits in a backpack.) To those that wait for the shadows to appear “just right” when the sun hits a certain angle, for clouds to appear in the sky to amp up the effect of your yellow, orange and red filters, I now offer up a spittle-laced (but good natured) raspberry: “ThhhBBBbTtt!!.” The challenge is to make something work, whenever you have the time.
(Now, if you want to complain about film prices restricting work, well, that I can grasp.)
Anyhoo. I parked the car and descended the steps to base of the falls, squeezed past a fence line meant to keep folks out of a certain area (that many ignore) and set up. And I realized just how out of practice I was (and am). I fumbled around, but eventually got stuff inserted, stacked and connected in the correct order—including my shutter release cable (something I often forget on my common medium-format adventures). I brought my spot meter an aging Minolta, and was glad of that. Given it was close to high noon, the creek base was in full sunlight, where the waterfall itself was creeping into shadow.
I’m not someone who seeks out waterfalls to photograph. I’m not a fan of the overly smooth, extreme, long-exposures of moving water that renders a rapid-filled river more like a cotton-candy lava flow. But. I heard a podcast a couple years ago with Wayne Setser, a large format photographer based in Tennessee, in which he said he rarely goes longer than a second when shooting water. And I like his work a lot. I tried that the first time I shot a waterfall and rapids (the Willow River in Wisconsin two years ago) and can concur: one gets a smoothing effect, but also the power of the water and the detail, down to small rivulets that often get washed out in a longer exposure.
What drew me to Minnehaha Falls this day was hearing that they were flowing strong—good news, considering it was dry when my daughter and I visited them last November, the result of our severe drought. Back then, we were able to step across the creek bad and climb up into the barren rock that normally would be hidden behind cascading water. Record snowfall this winter restored some of what was lost, and the runoff was providing high water in the Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. And, a restored Minnehaha creek and falls.
As mentioned above, the time of day provided some challenges, but one no-so-secret weapon I have is a funky wide angle lens. It’s tiny, a 90mm f6.8 Graflex Optar in a Graphex shutter that doesn’t work at the top end (1/400) or in “T” mode. Neither restriction has impacted my uses, however, and the lens can be remarkably sharp—or eerily not, and is prone to vignetting unless one pushes a very long exposure.
So, that shot above is with that lens, topped with an orange (G) filter at 1 second and f22. I cropped the image a tad because—remember I’m out of practice?—I neglected to drop the bed on the camera and that little lens picked up the tips of the rails. (Why? Because an older gentleman, a photographer who used to use a Speed Graphic, saw my setup, came down and started talking to me, knocking me out of my routine. I don’t regret this one bit. My only regret is not having a business card with me to hand to him—I had more questions for him.)
Still, one can see how the detail in that lens renders the further one gets from where it was focussed—which was the waterfall. It sometimes renders like a high-end Holga, for lack of better description, at these shorter exposures. It’s one reason I like using it when conditions aren’t optimal. Or even when they are.
The photo below is one with the standard Kodak Ektar lens, a 127mm f4.7. Shot at f16 at 1 second with that G filter. It’s a fuzz overexposed to the front of the frame, but, with the spot meter, I was looking at getting detail from the shadows, and hoping to not burn out all detail in the foreground (particularly with the concrete slabs baking in the sun) to make an adjustment in post-processing. In short, I was arriving at an average with which to work—a zone, perhaps; something we all do in our heads when we’re making decisions based on out various meter reads, whether we’ve read Ansel Adams or not. Like the first photo with the wide angle lens, I was able to knock down the brightness where the sun was hitting full force by adjusting the highlight brightness and midtones in Photoshop. I also bumped the contrast a bit. I am not skilled enough (nor interested at the moment) to do the area-specific digital dodge-and-burns that might have made this a more balanced shot, but I also think, what’s wrong with depicting mid-day light accurately?
Between the two, I like the photo taken with the wide-angle lens, because one can see better the “shape” of the landscape surrounding the fall itself. And I do like the little bit of random weirdness the lens gives. The second photo is a good example of just how sharp those old “standard” Kodak Ektars are, however. I will have to get back there to take another photo with that wide angle, set up in a slightly different spot—and remember to drop the bed!
Despite my large-format rust, I’d call it a successful outing. A reminder to get out and shoot—film or digital, just do it. The perfect time is when you have the time.
