IX
Jill and I had gone out to dinner/shop and we were on our way home when I took this. I had been photographing the entire night and most of the day but there hadn’t been a lot of very interesting things that I could find. I was also just starting to use 3200 ISO film so I was seeing how it looked when I shot it at night. We were almost home when I saw tis construction equipment from a distance and once we got close enough, I made a few exposures. I was really happy with how the shots came out for a few reasons. First, the grain is really nice in all of the photos I took. I know a lot of people hate grain but I’m a huge fan. Sometimes in color photographs it can look bad, but in black and white it’s almost always fantastic. I’ve always loved taking photographs at night; there’s something about the darkness and the artificial light that create this eerie, artificial atmosphere. Lastly, the me the scene that I ended up photographing looks like a model set. The light falling on the equipment is just right and since it was a rainy night, there is absolutely nothing in the background. There’s two or three more photos of this site but this one shows the idea of a “model” the best. The ground even looks exactly like the fabricated ground that people put down around their model train sets. I actually wish I had a second 35mm camera, that way I could dedicate one to shooting at night and the other for during the day. It’s frustrating when I’m halfway thought a roll and the film doesn’t really match the conditions that I’m shooting in. Maybe when I get a little bit of extra cash I’ll buy a K1000 or a second ME Super.
