One Way

Effingham, IL

Changing Tent

Fairfield Heights, IL

Years ago I learned not to do a critical task like reloading sheet film holders in the evening at the end of a long day. So here was the scene at my room in a Super 8 a little before six AM on May 23. I'd shot 7x17 film at two theaters the day before, and since I only have three holders that size (2 sheets each) I had to reload to be ready for the next day's theaters. The Harrison Changing Tent (developed originally for the Hollywood film industry to load big 70mm movie film cassettes) is made of high tech materials that are not only light-tight, but anti-static as well. I have less trouble with dust reloading in the tent than in my darkroom back home. The support rods give you lots of room to work once you've gotten your arms in through the sleeves. The problem is that you have to get in and out of the tent multiple times—unload the holders into a download box, open up, clean the holders, put back in the tent with a box of fresh film and reload. Now repeat with the 8x10 format. It takes a while.

If you're stuck with a second floor room and there's an elevator, it helps if the place has a cart, though it only holds about 3/4 of the stuff I have to bring inside each night.

Saves

Dugger, Indiana

A cross at the town's school athletic field, with crossword puzzle-style lettering. Saving an "S" I guess.

Very Short Fireplug

Lincoln, Nebraska

Sunlight on the Wires

Red Hill, New Mexico

Just a couple miles from the Continental Divide, at 7796 feet elevation.

Irrigating the Desert at 8,000 feet

Buena Vista, Colorado

Wildflowers

Tarzan, Texas

Road construction delays were everywhere throughout the trip, never missing for more than a couple of hours drive time anywhere. Mostly annoying, though sometimes I could roll down the window and make a snap.  To answer some questions this picture might bring up—yes the land here is really this flat and desolate looking, yes the dirt is so red that it reflects the light back up into the clouds, and yes the flowers appear to be Texas-sized black-eyed Susans, though they may have proper and local names that are different. Obviously there wasn't anyone in Tarzan, TX, I could ask about that.

detail

Carved Aspens and the Ride Home

Bailey, Colorado

Scott asked about the last days of the trip. The Comanche filled the "missing link" needed for the core project—a theater set in the mountains. Several interesting theaters in Idaho, Utah, and Colorado didn't quite do this because they were surrounded by hills, not mountains, or there were mountains but too far away for the sense of immediacy I wanted. Once I had the Comanche, the next order of business was to get away from the rapidly spreading wildfires. I'd gotten to Buena Vista on spectacular roads (routes 50, 25, 285) that included crossing the Monarch Mountain pass at 11,312 feet. So Wednesday I continued along the mountain passes on route 285, which turned out not only to be the most direct route to the Denver area, but also threaded a line between the fires raging above around Fort Collins and below around Colorado Springs. The picture above was made at a roadside pullout at a mere 6,000 or 7,000 feet elevation.

 Fort Morgan, Colorado

From Denver I took I-76, stopping at Fort Morgan where The Valley drive-in had recently been closed, with For Sale signs on the fence and gates. From the look of it, this single-screen venue's owners have decided to cash in on the land rather than invest in the digital projection conversion. The area seems to be expanding and the financial equation is probably quite stark.

Sterling, Colorado

From there I went to Sterling, CO, where The Starlite is still hanging on, showing films from a couple months back, weekends only, on just one of its two screens. The field for the other has been taken by self-storage buildings. I couldn't make contact with anyone, but suspect that will be the fate of the rest of the field by next year. It's hard to imagine this venue managing the six-figure cost of going digital. I found this theater somehow more emotionally resonant than just about any other I've visited, and spent quite a while shooting extensive coverage of it in digital capture. The wind was too strong to make it practical to do anything with the large format cameras, but I found myself visualizing a suite of perhaps six or eight small color prints.

Back in 2002 I photographed three of the two remaining drive-in theaters in Nebraska, so I used I-80 to get as far as Lexington, NE, where I managed to get a room after failing to find anything a couple of towns earlier. Thursday was basically cruise control at 75 mph, except for a relentless succession of construction delays or speed restrictions. After stopping for lunch with a friend in Lincoln, NE, I followed I-80 across Iowa and into Illinois, ending up at eight o'clock in the evening at the home of a  friend in Earlville.

Earlville, Illinois

In the morning we went to the nearby Earlville drive-in theater and then I continued east, hoping to stay in front of the massive storm system heading in the same direction. I finished the day at Barkeyville, PA. Saturday, MapQuest showed seven hours of road time needed to get home, so I thought I'd do some off-topic shooting and stopped in Clarion, and then Bellefonte, PA. But I found I was really too tired to concentrate and decided to simply line out east, getting back to Woodbury a little before five o'clock. This turned out to be just in time to go up to Washington, CT, for the opening reception of a show by the wonderful painter Charles Cajori. I even managed to stay awake.

Storm

Artic, Indiana

This is the storm front that chased me across Indiana and Ohio on Friday. For this shot, I'm looking due west down US Rt. 6, standing literally on the IN/OH state line. I ended up the day at Barkeyville, PA, where in the morning the local news stations reported heavy damage and even loss of life in areas just south of Pittsburgh. I got home a little before five yesterday afternoon.

Before I can do anything else I need to type up my notebooks full of picture ID information, while at the same time tagging all the digital captures with place identifiers to cross reference with the notes. There's also a folder with the pictures of each large format setup. These will be tagged with town and theater name labels. I won't begin to develop the large format film until I'm completely rested up, which is going to be a few days. Developing film isn't difficult, but it has to be done right—mistakes are irretrievable. There's no "undo" key on a stack of eight sheets of 8x10 film. I plan to do one set of film first thing every morning until I've worked through it all.

Effortlessly Sophisticated

Bellefonte, Pennsylvania

But not copy-edited.