 Yo, what up? Welcome back to another episode of me discovering that suffering does not necessarily make great art Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace Once upon a time Caleb and I had this crazy idea to do a thing However, with this thing we wanted to heat things up a little bit and shoot only with our large format cameras A challenge worthy of only the noblest or the dumbest the latter being us Well, now I can confidently say mission accomplished and it was legend wait for it It's terrible. It was terrible 8 by 10 large format film is pretty expensive Oftentimes causing about 10 to 12 dollars per sheet for developing a 10 rack of new Portra 400 in the box goes for about $200 so at roughly $20 a shot you have to be pretty picky and detail oriented Unfortunately, I'm not either of those I fired off the most large format sheets I've ever shot and most of them are for this journey I took along two of my three lenses a Nikkor 240 millimeter and a Nikkor 120 millimeter I love both of these lenses very much and in time you might learn to love them too But I don't know maybe you're not capable of love anymore along with me Of course, I pulled some film out of my ass analog safe storage I brought a box of Ilford HP 5 Portra 400 and a ton of ectochrome 100 s That was kindly donated to me by a viewer from the Great White North Excited with the possibilities of what's to come Caleb and I set sail due north on the 395th highway ready to shoot anything that looked really pretty or really ugly Unfortunately for us either Poseidon Saturn or just mother nature was pissed off that day and it was raining a lot But that wouldn't deter us the only thing that could stop us is wind because our cameras would literally blow away At our first stop there was an abundance of wind and boxed wine After praying that the boxed wine was still loaded and then finding out they weren't we Disappointedly scouted out the area and then decided to come back when the desert hurricane was over Our next location would be an abandoned Hacienda or at least that's what people online were calling it It was here that we started to feel the burning sensation of large format looming inside the building We were actually protected from the large gusts of wind of course We still had to be careful when powerful fart inside this shell of a building and the whole damn thing might collapse Regardless, I found the first shot and I set up a composition with the 120 millimeter lens equivalent to a 15 millimeter lens on 35 A lot of people have found that firing off the first shot is good because it kind of gets you in the groove and Get you a little more comfortable with the process later on I guess it's kind of like killing a man in that way Speaking of homicide it definitely felt like we were in a location where one might have occurred So of course, I was nervous and working a bit fast Nonetheless, I actually really liked this shot shot on HP 5 with a one-quarter promissed and boy is that highlight bloom subtle yet beautiful I didn't even go so far to say this first shot of the trip is one of my favorites So try and enjoy this part of the video because it's all downhill from here With a moment to spare I set up another composition utilizing the 120 millimeter It would be a bit of a tight fit, but with some WD-40 and a can-do attitude. It would work out It's really hard to frame this with like because there's like dicks everywhere I have a shot set up here That is framed by this door pretty nicely. There's two windows directly in here that kind of face towards the mountains This photo is okay I do like the soft glow from the promiss and how layered overall it is with a doorway the windows and the mountains at infinity There's also a nice texture of all that crap on the floor, but something ain't it about this photo Maybe it would have been better if I lowered the camera and tried to straighten the vertical perspective lines a bit more Unfortunately the 120 millimeter doesn't have much coverage. So doing it in camera wasn't really an option. I think that our window of opportunity is closing here, so We might want to get going because we're kind of down like a dirt road And I don't know if it floods or like what it does in the heavy rains, but it definitely seems like there's a system incoming So I'm gonna pack up and get the hell out of here There's a cool shot right here of this window and the power lines that just go off towards infinity But there's a huge dick across the top of the window All right creepy abandoned building. It's been real. It's been fun Hasn't been real fun. Also, you're probably about to collapse As we drove north the clouds parted for a bit and we pulled over on the side of the road to shoot There was no way I wasn't gonna shoot this awesome moment in color But just like how I'm saving my body for marriage I was also saving my portrait 400 for a special occasion and frankly this felt like love I mean it felt like the right time, I guess Is this shot literally everything? I mean, it's okay. It's something. It's not everything the colors are nice and pastel Which is really all you can ask for from Portra. If it were shot on Ektar the shot would have straight up f***ed more than Pete Davidson After getting lunch at a local hidden gem called Subway we headed up to Alabama Hills The clouds rolling in over the eastern Sierra were simply beautiful After changing my composition about 600 times I finally committed to a shot using a very very slight bit of front tilt to get the full depth of the landscape in focus That work for this. I don't know. I guess this shot is okay I don't think I managed to get exactly what I was looking for But it sure looks cool with all the detail that 8x10 brings The only problem with large format is literally everyone that drives by is gonna be staring at you awkwardly Thinking we were done for the day and could finally rest and drink a beer or 12 We were pretty quick to jump back in the paddy wagon when we saw how beautiful the sunset clouds were looking We scurried along to a nearby location that featured some sort of bare-bones structure after looking it up It seems like it was a freight and passenger train station that was left abandoned in the 1940s. Makes sense There were probably bigger issues in the 1940s than running a train station Anyway, the light was going pretty quick So I set up in a hurry and tried to bang this thing out on portrait 400 This is one of my favorites from the trip the colors are nice and surprisingly the composition isn't total megalodon Considering how little time I had my favorite little detail is the reflection of the post in the puddle a smarter person Might reckon that it's a deeply embedded metaphor for how reflections only show us a part of ourselves instead of the bigger picture But in reality, I was freezing my nuts off didn't have time to check the whole comp and just said That night in the hotel room excited from the day that we had just had one of us pitched a tent This is a pride and joy of my life right here. That's sad Bathroom 8x10 worthy Mmm, I ended day one with having shot five sheets of HP 5 and two sheets of portrait 400 To slow myself down a little bit. I loaded up some expired ectochrome for the next day Little concerning how sticky this tent is Like I said before I was kindly gifted a 40 rack of expired ectochrome 100 s that expired in August of 2002 I ran a quick test sheet of this stuff before I left and it's not too bad But I don't think I would make any serious work on it unless I was forced to which is kind of some sh** before shadowing Day two the next day it was time to get to a small abandoned mining town in the mountains To get there it would require some deep and sketchy backcountry trails. There we go The trail wasn't really that bad, but when you're doing it in a 30 year old vehicle, it's automatically sketchy Anyway, the mining ghost town was really cool And no one was there because it was about five miles in which made it especially creepy every time the wind picked up a little I feel like I'm being watched or something Upon arriving it was easy to find the first composition a pair of old trucks cuddling together for warmth A cute photo for a cute film stock ectochrome So this shot is pretty interesting. I actually like it a lot But I f**ked it up and only realized later that I metered it for 400 iso instead of 100 Oh f**k me. I've been rating these at 400 Well, I guess that means that the first photo is f**ked up because it's two stops underexposed On expired slide film. Damn. That was gonna be a good shot, too. I don't know. Maybe it's fine We'll see What's up? We're in this abandoned ghost town. Is that like saying it twice? Like ghost towns are already abandoned I have this composition here of this Cabin, it looks like a workshop or something. I'm shooting with my 35 millimeter lens. It's a 35 millimeter equivalent What film stock am I gonna shoot this on? Good question thinking ectochrome with a warming filter. I think that'll look pretty nice Hopefully it all works out a high contrast scene. I wouldn't recommend Shooting slide film in this kind of environment, but you know what f**k it right? So obviously the shot is very overexposed although if you think it looks cool then in that case I totally did it all on purpose because I'm a master of my craft and people will be studying the shot for centuries mark my words That's so stupid of me. I'm not sure what happened exactly The weird thing is I metered this shot at box speed 100 and it's overexposed and I accidentally metered the truck shot at 400 And it looks better. Maybe a bit underexposed. I don't know now I've never heard of slide film gaining sensitivity after it expires But either I need to revisit how I meter or this s**t is a different film stock in the wrong box Probably the first one though. I suck Doing 8 by 10 is a lot of work, man I think we've been here for like an hour and a half and I've shot two shots Maybe once f**ked up. I'm gonna take this shot of a uh, it's like a sink There's a bunch of like old oil things in it and the light is kind of coming through this cracked window At a really nice angle Dude, I can't see s**t in there. Wow. This is just gonna be a best guess kind of thing I actually really dig this shot It's nothing special really, but the one quarter promise ping the highlights quite nicely And the chair in the back room is a cool detail Looking back at it. I'm not sure how I was able to expose both the shaded interior lighting and the outside lighting Well enough that I didn't lose too many details I'm gonna write that down as one of my greatest accomplishments ever right after learning how to duggy last week It always sounds like somebody like I can hear someone's footsteps There's this beautiful composition here with a bunch of windows that are kind of blown out and way off in the distance. You see The eastern sears. I guess the question is do I shoot this on black and white or ectochrome? Yeah, I'm gonna do black and white. Oh, I don't like bees All right. Well Here goes nothing So we knew about this mining building down the road a little bit But what once used to be a road had collapsed into a creek and while the big blue bitch can do most things It can't climb vertical canyon walls Apparently This is a road Either out of shape or it's the altitude It's the altitude for sure So Caleb and I hoofed it up We didn't know what this mine would look like or if it was even still there and this mystery was too exciting to ignore Well, like most JJ Abrams mysteries, the truth was not that exciting It was a cool location, but the lighting wasn't really doing it for me I guilt exposed one photo because it was a long way to come for nothing But it's definitely just a bland photo that I shouldn't have taken If I'm being frank, this shot sucks hard. If Ansel Adams saw this, he'd probably want to smack this out of me I did look up the history of this place and apparently it was used for lead and or silver mining Kind of on and off from the 1860s to the 1970s Some guy named Turner was violently killed in a mining accident and it bankrupted the ownership in 1910 So that place was definitely haunted But perhaps it was a comforting sight for Turner's ghost to see two assholes hauling large format gear up a mountain On our way back to big pine We spotted several interesting ruins that might make a cool shot as the sun was starting to cast that Sweet sweet golden light nectar Hi, howdy, we made it out of the deep deep back country. So we found some Ruins, I guess you can call them. We're gonna shoot them because the lighting is just really really nice I feel like this would be a waste to not shoot on color Unfortunately, all I have is ectochrome, but uh, I'm gonna give it a shot I feel like it'd be fine. Yeah, I'm no coward You might have seen this filter that I've been using with the ectochrome a few times. It's an 81a filter It's very subtle, but it adds a little bit of warmth to your image If you've ever shot ectochrome, you're probably aware of how it renders colors a bit blue purplish sometimes Needless to say for this shot. I think it really helped The orange yellows of the plants really popped off while the atmosphere going towards infinity remained blue With those sheets put away, we cruise back to the 395 and eventually wound up in Mammoth, a popular ski town It was time to rest our backs, cracks, and our sacks. To be honest The work required to haul around all this large format gear was starting to get to us Our bodies were starting to hurt quite a bit and it wasn't going to be something that beer and pizza could fix So it was probably impossible to fix Day three After getting breakfast, we set our compass north to Bodie State Park, a huge historic ghost town But we were soon slapped in the face, heart, and testicles with reality But we did actually spot a few cool locations on the way up, so we headed back down towards those So what happened here? Well, first of all, it looks like at some point someone spilled coffee or diarrhea on this particular sheet of film Aside from that though, the borders of the film are totally fried I assume from the years of sitting in the box These ectochrome sheets were a bit difficult to color balance due to the exploration They came out quite purple overall. After some sweet tender love-making in Lightroom I was able to get something kind of close to a balanced image We soon headed down to a familiar location, Mono Lake We actually visited this location the last time we were in the eastern Sierra But this time I was determined to shoot it in black and white for some crusty ass images that might outdo the crustiness of the lake itself I gotta shoot this one wide open I decided to shoot the first image wide open to render the image with a crazy depth of field Almost like a portrait the 240 millimeter nicor lens barely seems to fully cover 8 by 10 when it's wide open But it does deliver a certain look because it was brighter than holy hell at this location I would need to use an ND filter to make things even crazier I threw on the one quarter promissed and the 81a filter because I don't know why maybe my body was aching so much at that point I felt like I had nothing left to lose Admittedly it was a bit strange being in a location where everyone who walked by was noticeably perplexed by the large 8 by 10 camera you could always kind of tell that they were confused about what year it was and if I was a time traveler from the past I think the shot worked out just fine though the camera was quite a ways away from the subject It was still able to separate the pillars from the background nicely in a way that only large format can One of my main gripes with this photo though is that the foreground is not very interesting On the next setup though, I would rectify that ha rect is close to another funnier word 45 seconds This shot is a lot better. The long exposure turned the water surface to an otherworldly mirror like reflection, which is super cool If I could change one thing though, it'd be my dumbass not leaving footprints everywhere in the sand where I was going to shoot It's like that old saying all my teachers used to write on my tests can't fix stupid So I also took this photo, which is by far my best from the trip Sadly the battery in the camera I was using died So you won't be able to witness the shot being taken in all its glory Just imagine god rays beaming down on me as I set up the 8x10 and executing the shot with pinpoint accuracy akin to that of a World War two sniper taking out nazis There's also a lot of dust and crap on these shots for whatever reason I decided to leave the dust from the film and scan in the final image I felt like it actually gave the overall image more texture Which is really just a convenient excuse for me to not have to paint all 12 million of those little shits out But enough lolly gagging around it was time to head up to a nearby mountain lake and see what we could do As we arrived we noticed all the leaves had turned beautifully yellow. It was perfect for some color film I found a composition of a walkway with a tree and tons of leaves on the ground with a mountain in the background The shot was going to be hella lit fam 420 It would have been even more perfect if I was ready to fire the shot as this couple walked through but Alas it wasn't meant to be Honestly, I wish I had some portrait loaded for this shot But sadly ectochrome would have to do After slapping the 81a filter on the lens like I was slapping around some flex tape. It was time to fire away On the first go around the lens shutter stuck open and ruin the exposure Unfortunately in colder environments two things are kind of known to happen to large format photographers shutter mechanisms getting stuck open And tingly nipples. I'm gonna get this shot or die trying The shot turned out not too bad ectochrome was definitely not the best choice, but it did its job I guess whatever the hell that means the detail on the image is incredible I often find myself going to sleep at night only to wake up surprised that somehow I'm at my desk Naked and looking at the sheet through a magnifier I attempted exposing one last sheet of hb5 I wanted a long exposure of the lake reflecting the mountain, but here's the twist for you not me I already know about this issue One of the dark slides on one side of my sheet holder had a cracked off corner Meaning light leaks would run amok. I really didn't think it'd be a huge issue But clearly I was wrong Last time I was in this room I shot what many professionals consider to be the best photo of my entire photography career It is it it is but it was a different room Let's see if the toilet is any good It's not It's not That night over some downright filthy barbecue Kale and I congregated and had a gentlemanly discussion over f stops and shooting large format We concluded that as photographers I subscribed to the f 64 club where everything is in focus Whereas Caleb is more in the wide open club where he prefers a lot of out of focus separation After coming to this realization that we were two men of different photography philosophies We got hammered The next morning we got our broken tattered bodies out of bed and hit the road for more abandoned I was happy as ever to be there and definitely not in emotional and physical pain. Good morning To everyone out there except the people that make whiskey Because i'm hungover I ended up exposing one sheet on exochrome, but it doesn't really matter Because I was ignorant and dumb later on in the day and accidentally yanked the dark slide out partially I'm a professional dammit The next location was a really cool super photogenic abandoned roadside service station Despite how cool everything was I could only really focus on one thing This random ass broken chair sitting a hundred yards away from everything perfectly backdrop by the eastern sierra If I wasn't meat sweating out all that barbecue I had the night prior. I think I would have appreciated it a lot more This is definitely going to be portrait 400 This one turned out pretty good. I think I love the depth of field separating everything and mainly just how simple The whole shot is it's basically just a portrait subject in background As we moved on back towards where we came we stopped at possibly one of the best abandoned locations We've ever been to and we've almost died at some sketchy locations These buildings didn't have a ton of graffiti and were in decent shape overall a rare gem At this location. Caleb and I both agreed that we didn't really have the right gear and that it kind of Sucked to be confined to the film that we had already pre-loaded into our film holders I feel like it was one of those things that I wish I had the memia again So right there and then we made a blood oath to the well-endowed egyptian baboon god Babi that we would return one day with the right gear and blast away Which we did but more on that in a different video for the here and now we were cursed with an awesome location Good light and only our large format sheet film at the ready Expired ectochrome would be my weapon of choice for these shots. Was it ideal? No, but it was basically all I had left This shot is okay. The lighting is pretty harsh and that's definitely not ectochrome's strong suit But I actually think the ectochrome renders the color orange super nicely, especially if you edge it along a little bit with a filter Finally with one sheet of portrait left on the day I found the holy grail of light and composition behind one of the buildings amongst a few blown up toilets It was picture perfect and it would soon become difficult to work with my pants slowly tightening Probably my favorite shot. I've ever done on 8 by 10 The light is very moody The broken window serves as a perfect subject and the mountain in the deep background is looming over the whole scene On portrait the colors turned out stellar as well As we bid farewell to our favorite location, we headed back the way we came as the sun started to set All I had left was a single sheet of hp5, which I put to good use for one final shot of the day The promise in 81a filter glued to the lens. I took this shot After all that I was pretty happy to call it a day four days of driving shooting 8 by 10 and making a video We're all weighing pretty heavily on my body because I'm weak and I need a gym membership Well today's the day Today's the last day Does that mean I can finally rest? Yeah, we're back. Okay On our way home, we stopped off at the same location that we visited first when it was raining Now sunny and begging for us to be inside it. We grabbed our cameras for one last ride I set up a shot with the 120 millimeter wide angle trying to capture the entirety of the room With the promise on board. I snapped this I really like it. The only thing I would change is everything I guess by everything I mean I should have just pulled the camera back a bit more to get more of the room and maybe lowered it a little But hey, we live and we learn On our way back to la we thought about our future in large format after such a tumultuous and backbreaking trip It would likely be a while before either of us shot large format again But now here in 2022 I think that the itch to get back on the horse and shoot large format again is coming back Well some kind of itch Maybe unrelated. I think if anything this trip solidified the fact that I don't want to go bigger than 8 by 10 ever I mean, have you ever met someone who shoots 16 by 20? That's happy Me neither But speaking of happiness and things that'll make you jump for joy I'd like to thank today's sponsor Squarespace Let's face it as photographers the best way to be seen nowadays is online So why not have a beautiful website that displays your work in a professional and modern design? Squarespace lets you do just that with over 100 website templates for you to pick from Customizing your own personal website is a breeze for my own website I simply uploaded and rearranged my work in a manner that was conducive to a strong portfolio layout Squarespace makes it easy with an all-in-one website building package You don't need to download install or update anything to get going even better Their user interface is incredibly straightforward to navigate If you do run into a snag Squarespace even offers award-winning 24 7 customer support 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 grainy days And if you use the code grainy days at checkout you can get 10 off your first purchase Well that about does it on this trip I shot 16 sheets of hp 5 12 sheets of expired ectochrome and 8 sheets of portra 400 totaling to about $800,000 worth of film and developing