Lost Lagoon
Lost Lagoon is the freshwater lake at the Stanley Park end of downtown, and it was not always a lake. It was once part of Coal Harbour, tidal and open to the sea, until the causeway built across the park in the early part of the last century cut it off from the ocean. Over time it filled with fresh water and became the calm, enclosed lagoon it is now, ringed by a walking path and full of birds, herons, ducks, the occasional beaver, right at the edge of the city.
Why it is a good frame
Still water is the draw. On a calm morning the lagoon holds a clean reflection of the trees and the downtown towers just beyond them, so a single frame gives you the subject and its mirror image at once. That doubling is a gift for a large format camera, because a big negative renders the fine detail in both the real scene and its reflection with the same clarity, and the symmetry gives the composition a spine to build on.
The lens that did not quite fit
There is an honest technical note on this one. I used a Fujifilm 210mm lens, which does not fully cover the 8×10 sheet, so the corners fall into vignette where the image circle runs out. Normally that is a reason not to use a lens at all on this format, but I liked what it did here, the darkening at the edges pulls your eye into the centre of the frame and toward the water, so I left it in rather than fighting it. Sometimes the equipment’s limitation ends up serving the picture, and the trick is being willing to keep it when it does.
Developed for tone
This was shot on Catlabs MII film and developed in Rodinal, a classic developer known for sharpness and a distinctive rendering of grain and tone. On a quiet, low contrast scene like a still lagoon, that combination keeps the fine detail crisp while giving the midtones a particular quality that suits the calm of the place. It is a very traditional black and white approach for a very traditional subject, a still body of water at the edge of a great park.
The city at the edge of the frame
What I like most about the lagoon is the tension in it. It looks like wilderness, a quiet lake full of birds, but the towers of downtown sit right at the tree line behind it, so every frame is really about the seam between the park and the city. Photographing that seam slowly, on a camera built for another century, is a way of paying attention to a place most people walk past on their way somewhere else.
Camera: Gibellini AG810
Lens: Fujifilm w 210mm (outside text, lens doesn’t cover the full 8×10 that’s why you can see a bit of vignette, I ended up leaving it there)
Film: Catlabs MII 80 ISO
Developer: Rodinal 1+50
Developed at: 80 ISO
Number of interruptions of people asking about the camera: 0
Exposure time: 1/8s
Aperture: f22
Digitized: SilverFast 9
Post Process: Photoshop