The bitterness of the winter wind whips my face. The temperature is five degrees above zero. I'm outside thinking, "What the hell am I doing out here?" But I have this idea, one that I think is unique and interesting and I want to create it through this wonderful photographic process. I hold the camera steady framing my composition all the while hoping that I've loaded the film properly into the magazine. I'm fiddling with the f-stop and and shutter speed until it's just perfect and that's when I decide to press the button...and nothing happens. I realize while my fingers are feeling bloated, that I forgot to pull the dark slide from the filmback of my Hasselblad camera. With my frozen fingers pulling the dark slide is more difficult, but I manage. Placing it into the pocket of my hoodie, I recalibrate again while getting colder hoping the light doesn't change because it's just perfect right now or it was a minute ago. Now I press the button once more to hear that wonderful "thwacking" sound that my Hasselblad makes. "It's a perfect image" I think until the doubt starts creeping into my mind a second or two later.
The sun is setting fast, so I quickly advance to the next frame and restart the process once again. Taking another photo like the last one, then changing the compositions until I've reached the end of the film roll. I'm thinking to myself as I hurriedly jump back into the car, setting my camera down in the seat next to me, that "I have twelve perfect negatives." Or at least that's the hope.
As it turned out, there was two good negatives on that roll of twelve or at least ones I find interesting. Of those photographs, the one at the top of this rambling, was a creation of that day. The silhouette of the tree in the coldness of winter backlit by the sun saying, "I'll see you tomorrow", the coldness of it all; this is my metaphor of winter. This is how I see and feel it. It's how I live it.
I made this photograph using a Hasselbald 503CX camera with the Hasselblad 50MM CF FLE lens. By adding a red filter, I was able to create a darker image with more contrast. You can see there are some mid-tones that were also captured in the image. I used Ilford's Delta 400 film developed in Kodak HC-110 dilution B.
