Horizon I
Chapel Hill, NC 2008 | View large image
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I took this image on one of my first forays into shooting with an 8×10 bellows camera. The camera was magnitudes larger than the 4×5 cameras I was accustomed to using, and I wasn’t adept at handling it or the hulking tripod that went with it. Still, I managed to maneuver it into position for the first shot, pointing it at the horizon. I focussed it, loaded the film, and began the exposure. I then went roaming the area looking for other promising compositions. When I came back mid-way through the forty-minute exposure, the camera was staring at the sky. Apparently, I hadn’t locked down a key part of the tripod, and the camera had spent the last twenty minutes incrementally moving from its original position to its present one. 8×10 film is not cheap, and I was resolute to make something useful come out of the situation. Since the composition was lost, the only thing left to me was to make it an exposure test. I left it there for the remaining twenty minutes, during which it once again tracked upwards. Undaunted, I went ahead and processed the “wasted” shot. Unfortunately, I now understand how to work that tripod, and I have never again been to able to replicate this effect.
In the collection of
The Henry-Copeland Collection at UNC
Chapel Hill, North Carolina