Eamples from the Upcoming Book “Unknown Patrons”
A Small Slice of Spokane 1994-1995. Forward by J.J Wandler. Afterword by Dave Johnson.
The book should be available early-to-mid 2025.
Rick the Bartender. The Mayfair Cafe, 1995
Lopez. Big Dipper, 1994
On the Phone Mother’s Pub, 1994
Gwinn. The Mayfair Cafe, 1995
Unknown Patrons. The Mayfair Cafe, 1995
Char, Trucker Mouth. The Big Dipper, 1994
Unknown Band. Big Dipper, 1994
SanCyre Big Dipper, 1995
Kathy. Big Dipper, 1994
Camera?
The camera I used for this project was exclusively my grandfather’s Minolta SRT-Super with a 58mm 1.4 press lens, purchased in Kowloon. The shooting technique was fairly simple. Light meter readings with that camera were impossible at such low light. I simply opened up the aperture to 1.4 and shot at either 1/15 or 1/8 of a second, shooting either Tri-X or more frequently T-Max 400.
The trick was in the developing. I used hot developer, usually 2-3 degrees warmer than recommended, and doubled the development times. This gave the negatives that grainy feel, emulating human vision at lower light levels. Printing at the time always required a 5+ filter and a 30-60 second exposure of the paper.
Many of the negatives were unusable at the time under normal darkroom conditions. Nearly 30 years later, they would be rescued by digital scanning utilizing a Nikon CoolScan V.
The original 2017 Spokane showing for this project was covered by Dan Nailen in the Inlander.
https://www.inlander.com/culture/shooting-a-scene-3005782
