 Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. Well, the prophecy foretold that this might happen. What prophecy, when? Don't ask questions. 2023 was a year that brought quite a bit of change to my photography and it wasn't all bad. I had some incredible opportunities to shoot some semi-wonderful if you squint work, but it was never really the kind of work that was slower, more intentional, and thought out. After some introspection, I realized I hadn't shot any 8x10 last year. It's been over a year actually, since I've hurt myself in that way. Let me explain. Two years ago, my buddy Cale and I packed a ball of our large format gear, which for me was only 8x10 at the time. When we hit the road up into the mountains, limited only by the format. Though some okay work was produced, it was certainly backbreaking. It was tiring and ultimately, yeah, it was really expensive. I only just last week financially recovered from it. But just like having a baby, the humans really only remember the good parts, I guess. So now I'm starting to think, I was just a wiener back then. I was like Steve before he was Captain America. And now, well, I guess I'm still like Captain America, just, you know, current day. 8x10 is a beautiful format. If you can get it right, the resolution is just absolutely insane. And the depth of field you can achieve with it is something else entirely. Though this all comes at quite a cost, you know, literally and figuratively. For starters, the film is pretty expensive because it's basically the size of a printer paper. The gear is expensive because it has to be precisely made and you have to be on sticks at all times. You even have to slowly load the sheets in film holders one at a time. It's like you're getting ready to fire a musket that takes like five minutes to reload. Meanwhile, Genghis Khan and his army is charging at you or whatever. I don't know, time periods that well. But at the end of the day, it's super rewarding and totally worth it, right? Right, guys? Anyone? Oh my God. There's film in here. What was the last 8x10 I shot? It's gotta be ectochrome, right? This baffles me. So with all that packed up and ready to absolutely just power crush some photons that won't see it coming, my main man and I headed out to the desert, the center of it, actually. After parking really f***ing far away and loading up the same amount of gear you'd bring on a deep sea expedition, I hiked in to our first location. This location was interesting but just like a Las Vegas hooker. It was riddled with signs that many people had been there. I didn't really love how much graffiti was all over the place, so I was kind of at a loss trying to find the right composition. A lot of detail to be captured here for sure. Perfect. Luckily a lot of the graffiti there was less of the penile variety which is just oh so common in places like these. On the toilets, kind of trying this new thing where I scout the location before I set up for a photo, you know? We'll see how well it works. I'm not gonna shoot a picture of the toilet if that's what you're wondering. So on that topic, my new strategy for large format these days, especially 8x10, is to leave my comrades, I mean all my gear, and do a quick clean sweep of the perimeter, kind of like an army rat deep in the jungles of NAMM as night begins to fall. Okay, so I'm gonna be using the 16 millimeter lens on the Sony. It's kind of a guide, I guess you could say, to try and figure out the frame lines for my 120 millimeter lens. This isn't bad. I kind of like the light coming through the door. I wish we'd see a little bit more of that. Maybe there's a way I can frame it. Unfortunately right behind me is just a bunch of crap. I think this would work pretty well. Yeah, with the mountains up top, let's do it. I found my first composition and began setting up the beast. Your first shot is never anything too special so I wanted to get it out of the way and I had the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone. The one sheet of Ilford FB4 that I had loaded up was essentially a test sheet. The box was given to me by my friend Joey and he'd mentioned it would be kind of funky and he didn't really know how it would look. It expired in 96 so it could go either way. As a joke, I threw on the 120 millimeter lens and started setting up the shot a nice ultra wide angle with the subject, more or less being this light pleasantly splashing through the doorway. I mean, is it anything groundbreaking? No, but I think we both know I'm not capable of that anyway. Okay, I think I got some light metering off my phone today. FB4, I have one sheet. We're just getting it out of the way. It's expired. So I'm shooting it at 100. Did I miss a step? Il loaded the Pentax 67 really, really fast apparently. So the shot, it's not half bad actually. At first glance, it's conceptually all there but there's something definitely going on with the film. I can't really imagine I loaded it wrong or mishandled it but there are these like wavy crinkles burned into the edges of it. I'm gonna chalk it up to expiration and not, you know, in this case it being something really dumb on my end for once. I do really like the lighting and I do like how the black and white kind of mutes the amount of graffiti to some degree. It feels very layered all the way, you know until infinity, which is nice but overall this shot is more or less a discard. I guess I never really had super high hopes that it would work out which is what all my parent teacher conferences sounded like from outside the room. Onto the next one. I found the next one. It was literally where the camera was just a second ago. I'm gonna shoot that on the wide. Anyway, after spitting on the lens like all the pros do I set up another ultra wide of the entire gymnasium or whatever the hell this building was. I never really personally liked the reverse images you'd get from systems like Hasselblad or Mamiya 645 if you're using the waist level finder. I always just confused my little caveman brain but for some reason on the eight by 10 I don't really have that issue which really could only mean one thing. I'm getting smarter bitches and my enemies should be terrified. I mean all the levels say it's flat. Doesn't seem, oh I see what's throwing me off. The roof is like slanted so I was kind of looking at the lines of the roof as like horizontal lines. There we go. All right, let's lock it down. It was time to shoot my first sheet of HP5 and I wasn't about to waste it. Oh, but we're gonna do it at 1600. Yep, I was gonna give this HP5 the old film photography special. I was gonna push it two stops to 1600. Bit unusual for large format because when you're kind of forced to use a tripod ISO really starts to matter a whole hell of a lot less. Really I just wanted to add a bit of contrast and a decent amount of, I guess, textural grain. Eight by 10 is so high resolution that it'd be nice to have some break up. Always get so scared pulling out the dark side. One, two. That is it, the fun was over. I had shot two sheets of eight by 10 and spent something like $450 already so it was time to just pack it up. Just kidding, hoes. You think I'd go down that easy? We do have three hours to get there and it'd be another three hours to get home so we're definitely gonna make the most of it. That might be a pretty good shot. I don't know, do we do it? So I ultimately decided that potential shot would be a little too similar to the FP4 shot that I took first. So I proudly said that I'm not an artist who makes duplicates of my own work and then realized I've made 137 nearly identical videos. This location is pretty well known and I've shot it before but it changes quite a bit every couple of years. Several years ago when we were here everything was pretty intact but now all the windows and doors are kind of bashed in. So it's a prime opportunity to shoot some interiors before they turn into graffitied meth holes. I decided to check out this garage thing off to the side. I couldn't really tell what it was a garage for. It seemed like somebody was maybe disassembling train cars out of it potentially. But speaking of locomotives I decided to run a train on some dank-ass 8x10 in here and there was definitely one obvious choice. That might be a shot right there. What do you think? Kind of interesting. A truck camper cover thing in the corner and some beautiful lighting splashing onto it from the side. Anyway, after blatantly disturbing the scene a little bit with my footprints I set up heavy and low for the angle. For this one I used the Nikkor 240 millimeter to punch in a little bit and go for less wide angle distortion. Throw the promise on and then fire off HP5. So I quite like this shot. I guess I see it as a bit of a still life or like an environmental portrait. The lighting is good and it feels three dimensional which is the key here. The glow on the window is a little bit distracting if I could go back in time and stop myself from adding the promise I would have. But honestly who knows what catastrophic series of alternate events would have transpired if I even had that ability. I'd like to also give an honorable mention to the Nikkor 240 millimeter lens or maybe just eight by 10 as a format because the back corner here is slightly out of focus separating it from the camper top quite nicely. Sometimes photography is just all about separation. It's like divorce in that way. It was all over for me and I finally headed towards the light. But after that we decided to check out the main attraction, the destroyed cafe itself with a hidden wiener graffiti all over it. On the other side of the wall. Going a little further, go further. There were definitely plenty of shots in here for the taking on eight by 10. I think sometimes you just gotta find a one that stands above the rest. And for me, that shot was hidden in the back rooms where the light was pretty dim but coming in from kind of a nice angle and hitting this cash register looking thing on this desk. There's definitely gonna be a tight fit for the eight by 10. I had to shimmy and shimmy it in between a punched out window. The hallway and office were definitely a lot smaller than the wide angle lens on my Sony would have you believe. That and they were also quite destroyed probably by someone with rage issues. Well, if I'm gonna do color, I don't need a promise. I threw on the only choice really for this image the 120 millimeter. The lens, not the term for medium format that everyone gets wrong. I also committed to shooting color for this one. I felt like it would help differentiate the scene a little bit. And I wanted to grab those orange wood tones, you know, paired nicely with the green paint of the wall that was probably filled with lead. Portra 422, I'm gonna do 15 seconds. With reciprocity is 34 seconds. Okay, no problemo. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, 34 Mississippi. So this shot isn't bad. It's definitely super wide and I love the detail. It's fun to zoom in and just look at all the crap everywhere. I definitely think I would have changed some things up if I could. A lower angle, maybe it would have been kind of nice, but there was a cabinet here that definitely would have blocked the drawers of the desk and we wouldn't see all the papers littered all over the floor. Maybe a push in frame right and a tilt up might have solved that. The shot is possibly a bit overexposed as well. I probably could have taken, you know, a stop or two off the top, but I like the photo for what it is, plunger bong and all. My next shot was also going to be a tight one, you know, butthole-wise. If I thought there wasn't any room to work on the last shot, well, it was definitely in for a challenge here. The space was cramped in, darker than a well digger's ass, but I was riding high off as best as fumes probably, so I went for it anyway. Today's special, tuna casserole, super salad, Texas toast, all for $4. No wonder they went out of business. In fact, I had to take the whole eight by 10 back off the camera to load the film because I was kind of like sandwiched against a door frame and the bailback couldn't really open fully. I have to wiggle this one a little bit. Oh, because you can't get it in because of it. It wasn't all the way in, man. So somewhere in between F16 and F22, and we'll do one second, test exposure. Yeah, it's working. All right, one, two. In the end, this shot is just okay. I like the lighting and the overall concept is, I guess, good. The other thing about it just kind of feels off balance to me and it doesn't really read as a kitchen for some reason. Anyway, with the hot water tank mocking my attempts at photography, I broke down and left. Broke down the camera, not my emotional state. Yeah. There was definitely a lot more to explore in the back. Time was kind of starting to run out. This one was sitting behind this like mountain and it was looking more and more like we were gonna get, you know, maybe five minutes of golden hour light. So our next moves had to be carefully calculated. Naturally, because of this, I started sweating more than a bomb defusers ass crack. Why am I so obsessed with asses today? We may never know. Is that a comp? It might be. I don't know. We got time for like one more eight by 10 shot. Maybe get some sunlight. I think this is the shot, but is this the shot? I spent far too long trying to find, you know, it, but whatever it was, I didn't. There were shots here that could work well, but eight by 10 demands more and the clock was definitely ticking. All right, lighting is good. Got a rush though. Eventually I made up my indecisive mind and pointed myself towards the light, which is super poetic or whatever. I had one sheet left of Portra and two sheets of HP5. So I chose black and white, counting on it to just absolutely slay the drama of the scene. And to help inch it along, I threw on a red 25 filter on the lens. Yeah, here it is. Probably my favorite shot of the day. It's very moody and the subject feels distant and just overall kind of isolated. I do love the detail of the smashed in windows and the way the shadows fall off in between the buildings. So with no real time left to deconstruct, I threw out my scoliotic back, carrying the eight by 10 over to kind of a reverse angle of the cafe sign that was being lit up quite nicely. But for how long? Literally only another two minutes as it would turn out. So I hot swapped the back to vertical. I tried to quickly straighten out the lines of the building, threw on the red filter, then remove the red filter because I forgot to meter, put the red filter back on and I pounded out the last sheet of HP5. While I had the setup, well, already set up. I figured the lighting wouldn't get much better than this and I wanted to kill off my last sheet of Portra. Portra 400 at 320, 1 eighth, F 22. Almost didn't take the red filter off. We did it. I think the last three shots were pretty rushed, but it wouldn't be eight by 10 on this channel if I wasn't rushing eight by 10, huh? I don't think I screwed any of them up, but maybe. Definitely feel like I'm gonna be feeling this in my back tomorrow. You know what I mean? It's gonna be hurting. So how did those last two shots look? Here's the HP5 pushed two stops to 1600 with the red filter. It's pretty good, but it's also pretty cheesy, I think. I don't know, maybe I should be proud of this shot, but it's kind of an angle that's been taken, you know, 30 billion times by people passing through. So it's not exactly something refreshing, but frankly, my dear, it's not like I give a sheet. Here's the Portra that I shot at 320 ISO. Also not too bad. I think I like it more than the HP5 here. It definitely held onto the shadows more elegantly, which is to be expected in this case. The light is pretty solid and the colors are warm and pastel. What more can you really ask for? I don't know. The composition is still cheesier than Chester Cheeto, but overall I dig it. Speaking of things that I dig, I'd like to quickly take a moment and thank today's sponsor, Squarespace. If you're new to Squarespace, let me introduce you. Squarespace is an all-in-one website building platform that turns over the control to you and your own capabilities to build a website that surpasses even your wildest dreams. Start with one of hundreds of professionally designed templates and get to work building your visionary website with the knowledge and ability for you to scale up later, if necessary. When I eventually start selling prints of your work, no problem. Squarespace features a plethora of nodes and custom modules for building a seamless online webshop. I've personally been using Squarespace for years now to host my own photography portfolio and now that I have new commissioned work coming in, I'm gonna get to work rearranging my own website to show off my favorite pieces from that project. As a photographer trying to emerge in the industry, I'd personally say having an online portfolio is one of the most important steps towards getting hired and spreading your work out to the masses. Additionally, if you reach a point where you'd like to begin building a community centered around your brand or just your work in general, Squarespace makes it easy and convenient with its member areas architecture, a monetized way to give access to exclusive content through your website. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainydays. If you use the code grainydays at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase. Anyway, that was the end of the end, but also the rebirth kinda. I didn't have any more sheets and the light was beyond this little dusty dry ass town, though the sunset was incredible in its own right. Caleb and I drove back to LA in complete silence as per usual and it sure gave me time to think about eight by 10 quite a bit, especially after taking quite a long hiatus from it. I do really love shooting the format as a whole. It's wonderfully rewarding at times. I mean, it's a lot of work for eight photos, but they're eight photos that I think came out really well. Well, okay, six photos that I think came out really well. The scope and breadth of detail in these shots make them quite a lot of fun to zoom in and stare at for just hours on end. Unfortunately, I don't really have hours on end to do that because I'm busy toiling away all my remaining time editing these videos, but you get the idea. Like I said before, this is probably my favorite shot from the day. It just worked out well and captured the mood I was looking for. It feels very, I don't know, post-apocalyptic. I'll definitely be doing a lot more eight by 10 this year now that I've kinda got my groove back a little bit and I even MacGyvered an eight by 10 film holder out of popsicle sticks, which has made scanning this stuff just a whole hell of a lot easier. Of course, I basically had to give myself diabetes to acquire all those popsicle sticks, but if you aren't dying for your art, then what are we even doing here?