Underbank Old Road

Black and white photograph by Andrew Sanderson shot on ILFORD Film

 

Technical info

 

Film Used  Ilford HP5

Format  35mm

Camera Rollei B35

Lens  40mm Triotar

Exposure time   1 minute 30 sec at f11

Other equipment Manfrotto Art 055 tripod, Gossan Lunasix F light meter.

Location.

Underbank Old Road, Holmfirth, West Yorkshire.

 

 

Firstly, tell us the story behind this image. What inspired you to shoot it?

I used to shoot a lot of Night photographs, in fact I wrote a book about it in 2001 (Night photography, Published by Argentum ISBN-10 1902538129). It has been quite a while since I have done any, and the recent snowfalls had made me think that it was time I went out again.

My son’s best friend is really getting into analogue photography, and had been asking me about night shooting, so we arranged to meet up and shoot a few frames. Because of the heavy snow, only the bigger, busier roads were clear, so we were limited to a location not far from a main road.

I live in a small town (some people still refer to it as a village), so there are still old, unspoilt areas that are great for pictures. This location is only half a mile from my house, though I had never photographed it before. Sometimes the conditions and the light make a familiar place look suddenly appealing.

Did you come across any challenges?

The challenges were that I had only brought a small camera, with a viewfinder that is hard to compose with in low light. And as it was a really cold night and I couldn’t find my gloves before I left the house, I could hardly move my fingers.

What process did you use (Tripod? Set exposure time? Filters? Lighting?)

See above.

How did you process it?

 I process my HP5+ in Rodinal these days as it suits the look that I like. 1+25 dilution, 6 minutes at 20 Deg C.

What about printing?

The print turned out to be harder than I had anticipated. There was plenty of shadow detail, so the main part of the image printed fine. The difficult bit was to burn in the brighter part of the image so that the tonality still looked natural and balanced, but without too much flare from the light. This was my first proof print, I intend to go back and print it again with more detail in the bright spots.

Which paper did you use and what was your printing process?

I printed on Ilford MG FB Warmtone Gloss, which is my favourite paper. I used my own simplified version of split grade printing.