Back.

it’s hit or miss.

I keep trying to use 4×5 film backs with a crown graphic Graflex rig from 1951, I know everyone is saying, “you talk a lot about photographs, but I never see any.” Anyway recently, I’ll throw the back into the camera pull out the slide and when I put the slide back in it buckles the film some way and I just throw it out. (the film not the back) One film popped in-between where the back goes, lodged between the back and the lens where the bellows reside. I couldn’t focus. Film blocking the through the lens view. I took off the lens and threw out the film. Get this, I thought well maybe, some backs are bad and other’s are fine, I don’t think that’s the case. ( one back that was being bad worked fine a second time around,) It probably has to do with impatience when loading the film in a light tight bag. Not to mention laziness, or thinking that is other than photography imagining, instead of keeping my eye on the ball. And that’s the big if. How to stay focused in photography when there’s so much distraction. Odd memories, other peoples thoughts, a whole maelstrom of indignation, participle clouding, of the vernal cyclops, what? It’s not easy, Then there’s the game, If you cannot manage a 4×5 size film, how’s it going to work with 16mm cinema stock? A lot of people are developing their own 16mm in makeshift contraptions with success and you lose films to negligence in preparing a 4×5 film back. Oh by the way, I discovered the iiiC leica needs to see a shop, I was exposing nothing, maybe just a broken spool film sliver slowing down the shutter mechanism. It wasn’t exposing the 1000 of a second several years ago, this phenomena encroached on the 500 second ratio, as such I thought I’d had all these stellar images of scenes enveloping while I was plodding along with the 4×5, only to come up blank, well not exactly, there are six or seven images on the roll. Funnily, that day, the 4×5 worked perfectly. no miss loads and all except one picture perfectly exposed, the one that got away way is double exposed and kinda strange. It’s only when I lose a meditative process, lose track of the ball, that things get iffy. Yesterday I blew threw about twelve exposures obtaining may six images, I guess I was all in a bunch mentally, I had a camera with me that had been lying dormant for five years, I processed it, ( I nearly gave up on loading the film onto the developing real because half the film had been spun around backwards so long it was counter spooled to the turn of the stainless steel film wires, I patiently coaxed it into a closer to usual form factor and managed to obtain good negatives,) with some surprising images of relatives all dead in the last four years. I made some more 4×5’s last evening losing two or three films to maladjusted loading syndrome? Funny, I just blasted through the film from yesterday, totally underexposed or, FP4 require full strength d76 of id11.

The light seals arrived, it’s funny the first back I tried to open , the top righthand Screw wouldn’t budge,( this back must have gotten wet , the screws are rusted in, that one goes to a repair shop someday.) I nearly stripped it out. It’s a back with horrendous light leaks. Unusable negatives, from what I can see, It’s the only one I ran film through after two or three tries to test backs without film. I am so grateful for this experience. It’s kind of the same as when you keep your mouth shut, and no body has anything that they can use against you. The photography I was attempting without film is banal and perfunctory. A kind of a hodge podge walk in the park variety, ooh, speeding motorbike, cutesie graffiti, some sculpture, Smashed bud light can, flying birds, but what I noticed, I avoided things and places I might have thought to photograph, I did not attempt with the empty camera. Yesterday, Loaded and locked with a new seal, I came across a couple of images through the viewfinder,( I ran into Jay Maisel once and he said if you see it, it’s not on the film ,) First picture, a 50’s Porsche, a huge cement truck rolls through the frame mimicking the contours and lines of the sports car, after missing this juxtaposition, I hesitated to trip the shutter, I didn’t have the nerve to point the camera at an on coming Motorcycle that would have filled the frame perfectly. Rusty, Chicken? of afraid the film might not work? Subsequently, some of the photographs from the first test with sealed up back are gorgeous, sensitive little forays into the tiny brook that trickles down the dry creek bike walk , and other ancillary nuances of suburban life,” I’m just testing a back.” The second back, failed to fire with the camera, I wasted an image in the wind up, I kept fiddling with it though and eventually it came to life.