I took the above photo years ago, with my Nikon N70, using a Kodak film called technical panchromatic, or tech pan for short. Tt was an amazing film that practically sucked up light; you could capture incredible detail and it had such a fine grain that it could even be difficult to focus your enlarger. The only downside, perhaps, was that it took special chemicals to develop. I never liked developing film and usually had someone else do it so that I didn’t have to fuss with those reels in the dark. But I never stopped loving working with film. When digital cameras came down in price, and up in quality enough, I made the switch (just a bit reluctantly) but quickly went all in on digital. I’ve never regretted that choice, but I still look back on my darkroom days with fondness, nostalgia even. The smell of the chemicals, the red light, the paper safe … there was never a time that I didn’t get a thrill when seeing an image emerge on paper in the developer tray.
This image, which I think of as a “found still-life”, was in the window of an antique store in Cambridge, MA. Antique stores always have a trove of such items, and this one was particularly well chosen.