A Baking Mecca and Local State Park on Film
Back in the winter/spring semester (2025), I had enrolled in a film photography class at the college where G and I both work (you can read all about my somewhat short-lived adventures in that class here and about the magic of developing my first roll of film here). For this post and the next few posts, I figured I’d write about the roll of film I completed, developed, and printed for that class. While life, stress, and health (mental and physical) led me to the tough decision to drop the class, I do have such great memories of the hours spent taking images I’d be proud of for the class—and, more importantly, for myself.
Our second roll of film was another “open subject” assignment—our only restraints were making sure we used: 1) a 50mm focal length and a shutter speed greater than 1/60, 2) outdoor/natural light and 3) Ilford HP5 rated at 320 (instead of 400). Since I was taking a pretzel-making class at King Arthur Baking in Norwich, Vermont, one Sunday afternoon, I took along my film camera. The following Saturday, I spent a few hours in a state park that’s local to us, Bear Brook State Park, to see what I caught my eye—and damn, there’s just something about the silence and solitude exploring after a recent snowfall. I finished the roll at just down the street at a local cemetery and church in town. The next day, I headed to campus and into the darkroom to develop my second roll of film. And I have to admit, seeing images appear on the negatives really does feel like magic!
Note: While we developed our negatives and made contact sheets in class to be able to enlarge and print images in the darkroom, the images included here are home-scanned using my Fuji XT-3, 7 Artisans 60mm macro lens, and the Valoi Easy 35 system and Negative Lab Pro software paired with Lightroom Classic. I could have (should have) include a cleaner crop on the images, but I actually really like how these looked as-is (click on each for the full image).
