The highest point in the park
Prospect Point is the highest spot in Stanley Park, sitting on the cliffs above the First Narrows where the Lions Gate Bridge crosses over to the North Shore. It is the view everyone stops for, the bridge, the freighters lining up to pass under it, and the mountains behind, so it is both an obvious subject and a hard one, because a scene that famous has been photographed a million times and you have to find a reason for one more frame of it.
My reason was the light
What pulled me to make this one on 8×10 was the layering. From up there the land steps back in planes, the near trees, the bridge, the far shore, the mountains, each one a little paler than the last as the atmosphere stacks up between them. A big negative separates those planes cleanly, holding the tonal steps that give a distant view its sense of depth, where a smaller format tends to flatten them into one grey mass.
Where I messed up
I will be honest about this frame, I got the exposure wrong. The shot data says Delta 100 developed at 12 ISO, which is me pulling three stops in development to rescue a badly over exposed sheet, because I shot it at f/6.3, wide open, and misjudged the light by a wide margin. Pulling that hard is not a clean fix, it flattens the contrast and changes how the tones sit, but it saved a frame that would otherwise have been a total loss. Film is unforgiving up front and occasionally generous at the back end, if you know how to work the development.
Wide open on 8×10
Shooting at f/6.3 on an 8×10 is unusual for a landscape, where you normally stop down for depth of field, and it is part of why the exposure ran away from me. Wide open, the depth of field is thin even at this distance, and there is far more light hitting the film than at the small apertures I usually work at. It was a mistake, but the kind of mistake that teaches you exactly where a film’s limits are, which is worth a sheet now and then.
The famous view, slowly
In the end that is what these entries are about. Not just the postcard from Prospect Point that everyone already has, but the whole slow business of standing at the rail with a big camera, working out the light, getting it wrong, and pulling the frame back from the edge in development. The view is the excuse. The process is the actual subject, and this one has a good story attached because it nearly did not survive the day.
Camera: Gibellini AG810
Lens: Fujifilm W 360mm f6.3
Film: Ilford Delta 100
Developer: Rodinal 1+50
Developed at: 12 ISO (I messed it up and had to pull 3 stops)
Number of interruptions of people asking about the camera: 0
Exposure time: 1/8s
Aperture: f/6.3 (reason why I had to pull couple stops)
Digitized: SilverFast 9
Post Process: Photoshop