A light rain was falling one morning a couple of weeks ago as I left the house and headed to Montpelier Station. I had not been there since the restoration was completed in 2010, but I had an idea of how I wanted to picture it, so I was equipped with black and white film and the medium format Mamiya RB67.
There was no one around when I pulled into the parking lot. I got out and walked all around the building and up and down the tracks. By then the rain was about over and the clouds were becoming more luminous, so I got the digital camera and took some practice pictures. Then it was time to get down to business. The RB67 is a brick of a camera, and I almost always use it on a tripod, but in this case I couldn't see struggling with a tripod on the wet banks and rocky road bed, so I decided use the camera handheld.
The light meter was not in the bag, so I based my exposures on the digital camera readings and hoped for the best. And after all of that, only two exposures came close to the picture that I envisioned. The photograph above was taken looking north with the old freight house in the distance.
The duPont family purchased the Montpelier estate in 1901, and in 1910 William duPont financed the construction of the train station to provide both freight and passenger service to the Montpelier community. Passenger service was discontinued in the 1960s and the freight depot was closed in 1974. Today Norfolk-Southern freight trains pass by the depot, but rail service to Montpelier is a thing of the past.
Ah, ha! I knew there was more to your excellent work than digital photography. Film with an RB67 to boot. No wonder these photos stand out as being different. I suspected film but wasn't sure. Nicely done. Almost makes me want to dig out my Minolta SRT201. I said almost... :-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Glenn. It has been almost a year since I have taken the RB67 out, and after lugging it around all morning I remembered why . . .
ReplyDeleteBut I do like the look I get with film.