"Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?"

Negative: Ilford PanF plus 50 (8m DDX)

Exposure: 50mm f/5.6 @ 1/250th

Printed At: 50mm f/16 1m

On: 8x10 RC grade 4

File: 14-26 & 14-27

There are a number of themes at work in this composition - and an overall continuation of the idea of movement. Also I'm aware that for some reason there's a number of train themed pictures in this series, which I think is OK. If you don't, well, too bad. :)

Some of this might seem like a stretch, but stay with me, I had to walk a really fine line with this title. For one thing you might have noticed that there are two file numbers for this print. I took two frames in quick succession as this train slowly went by. As a result, the black bar in the center is dividing the transposed sides of two almost identical images. At first glance it might look like the black bar is simply obstructing the middle of the frame, because there's really not much difference between the front of one car and the back of the next. In this case the cold steel rail is a laboratory construction from my darkroom - not the green field of real life. A black and white photograph in particular is an abstract construction representing reality - but people see these constructs as reality more often then the cold representations they really are.

I like trains for a variety of reasons, one of which is the fantastic efficiency at which they operate. A steel rail perhaps, but nothing could be closer to a green field for modern society than a diesel train pulling a couple hundred cars. This train in particular was carrying some phase of an agricultural progress; corn, I think.

Also in "A smile from a veil" I left the open question hanging about printing paper being sensitive to only part of the spectrum. No one commented with a hypothesis so I wasn't particularly motivated to answer right away. I'm not sure if anyone besides my wife is even reading this. I told her when she had the baby that her primary job outside of raising him was to comment on my blog whenever I post. She does a pretty good job.

So anyway the reason is that you don't need printing paper to be sensitive to more than a small slice of the spectrum. The end result is monochromatic anyway, and you're controlling the light in the darkroom. Safelights work by being red or orange, longer light waves which don't expose the paper but still let you see what you're doing. It's sort of easier to make prints than develop film because of this, when you develop panchromatic film it must be done in complete darkness. This means when I developed this film for 8 minutes in dektol, and 3 minutes in sprint fixer, I was in complete darkness for probably 15 minutes. It's weird to have no difference between eyes open and eyes shut for that long. I can't decide where to look sometimes, and sometimes I don't know if I'm cross-eyed. Sort of an unusual experience. It reminds me of a Quaker service in a way. It's peaceful and reflective.