Amtrak - Coastline Creek

[RJohnston]

This is a shot taken a few decades ago, through the window of the Amtrak "Starlight Express." This train travels up the West Coast from San Diego CA to Seattle WA. It follows most of the coast until you get to Oakland. During the night, through mountains. After daylight it comes to Mt Shasta, then goes through OR, and WA.

[Kellycat]

Now that's my kind of shooting. Great tones and a super, almost surreal sense of the coastline in this image.

[R. House]

Nice work!

[loeee]

Were you doing your own darkroom work in those days, RJ? What was your choice of paper for printing this one? Are we looking at the scanned print, or did you scan in your negative? I really like the look of this one; all the tones are represented, but still high-contrast.

[nldunne]

Champion image for a window image. Those a not easy to do anytime.

[RJohnston]

Originally Posted by loeee

Were you doing your own darkroom work in those days, RJ? What was your choice of paper for printing this one? Are we looking at the scanned print, or did you scan in your negative? I really like the look of this one; all the tones are represented, but still high-contrast.

This was scanned from a print.

Began doing my own darkroom work in 1936, and continued until 45... Then joined the Army in 46, where worked as a Darkroom Tech from 48 to 50 on Okinawa where we processed all the work from 526th Counter Intelligence agents. (CIC) Back then, was not even allowed to tell family where I worked. After I got out after nine years, went to NYIP, mainly for color processing. So also did a lot of my own color processing for decades, had my own lab every where we were until about 1997. From then on processed only my own film, and had prints or enlargements made at MPIX.

Never went to Photo school in the army. But got to Okinawa, they did not need my MOS there, so asked me what I wanted to do. Told them work in Photography, they asked my experience, and sent me to CIC. As I already had a Top Secret clearance for Cryptography, which no one else in the Signal Corps lab had, so was sent to the CIC lab.

Got to use all their fancy equipment there.
It was a better equip't lab than they had in the Signal Lab in command HQ. Plus got a bonus, free film to use in all their cameras when off duty.

This was processed in a two developer formula, that Ansel Adams recommended, that we mixed ourselves from individual chemicals.

The first bath A had chemicals were soaked up in the time it remained in the tray, but showed no image, just absorbing the chemicals. Then the second tray containing bath B, showed the developing image. Development was limited to what the paper soaked up in a minute or so, activated by the chemicals the paper had absorbed in bath A. When they were exhausted no other development could take place. Then, it could not be overdeveloped or underdeveloped, and time in the solutions was not critical for results.
We mixed fresh developer daily.

This required that you have your paper contrast for correct contrast and enlarger exposure timed exactly the way you wanted with an exact, repeating timer. Controlled Voltage power to the enlarger so it could not fluctuate.

But, you could choose any paper you wanted and it made for very consistent prints. Producing a numbered series to sell, they would be identical.

Have used so many papers over the years, have forgotten which was used for this. Generally preferred papers that has a warmer rather than cold cast in papers. In the earliest years we did not have many choices of paper as they had later. Limited to what a couple of companies produced.