Nostalgia & History > …a study in shadow & steam

My ongoing main project, the scanning & archiving of the massive Gibson collection is about to undergo a major change in direction. For the first time I’ll be tackling the big stuff: 4 x 5 inch black & white negatives. After quite a long time looking for material, organizing notes & objectives & ear-marking over 100 B&W prints Art & I will finally be working up our long promised series covering Santa Fe’s “Alma Branch” in Kansas. It’s pure human nature, especially among railfans, to gravitate toward color images rather than black & white. And I’m as guilty as anyone with my dogged, horse-blinder pursuit of any & all things Red & Silver. But the real gold mine in the Gibson collection is the large format Black & White. Bill (aka WAG Sr) got started shooting in the late 1920s. Little “WAG Jr” came along in 1936, and when Art was old enough to be tutored by his Pop he joined “Team Gibson” and started shooting.

There’s just one more teeny, tiny problem to solve: I find that have to purchase a new scanner. My beloved current scanner, the sturdy & ever reliable Epson V550 didn’t come equipped with a 4x5 negative holder. Or if it did, I sure did a great job of misplacing it, as in “can’t find it anywhere”. My original Hewlett-Packard G5040 (R.I.P.) came with a 4x5 holder. But do you think it would work with the Epson?? Ha ha ha, hee hee hee, ho ho ho…

I’ve been thinking about making an upgrade anyhow. So… until I can take that step I’ll just take the opportunity to get some B/W neg scanning practice in with some misc 35mm B/W stuff I shot circa ‘78 ~ ’82. Below is an early attempt at B/W as an art form. I was killing some time at the Newton passenger station and liked the backlit effect of the sun on that steam hose. If my memory holds, this was just after a short rain shower. So Main Street & parts of the platform are still glistening just a bit. Unfortunately this negative (and about 4 dozen others) suffered some water damage somewhere along the way. My entire collection, most of which never saw the light of day for close to 25 years, went through about a dozen moves between 1987 & 2010. You might notice some fungal activity on the left-hand side under the vignette effect. So whatever you do, don’t go looking under the vignette effect. (Over on the left-hand side… ;^)

1. AT&SF passenger platform scene in stark black & white with backlit sunlight. Looking due SW (TT West) across Main St in Newton, KS.
Photo date (maybe): June 1978.

Thanks for looking west!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Looks good. Big negatives are always a joy to print.

John.

I was looking into scanning larger negs with my V500 and the "scanning slot" is only 3" wide. I read where people have scanned the 4x5 in 2 passes then stitch them together which seems like a pain. I just read where the V700 to V850 will scan 4x5's with the included holder. They can scan 12 slides at a time instead of the 4 that the V500 V550 does. I have a V500 and like it. It is slow but does a good job. The new ones are supposed to be a lot faster but the V850 is almost $1000 so it had better do a better job.

Scott O'Dell

Total water theme, with the wet platform, steam line, and water fill pipes under the canopy for the engine boilers.