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The next steps were pretty much the fluff-art equivalent of doing a dangerous chem lab experiment. The water had to be exactly 68 degrees (which was inconveniently colder than the faucet water so off to the water fountain we went), the developer/water mix had to be 1:1, I had to agitate the mix with a gentle twisty motion for 10 minutes total (time varied based on the type of film + ISO) but for 30 seconds first and then five seconds for every 30 seconds until time was up… to shorten the rest of the steps, it went something like: pour out pour in stop bath and agitate, pour out and pour in fixer and agitate for 90 seconds, pour out and dunk in running water bath for two minutes, mix around in hypo clear for 30 seconds, wash, dunk in photo-flo for another 30 seconds, hang and dry for 30 minutes… and then cut up my film into strips of five to slip into a film sleeve to create a contact sheet for tomorrow. (This is just the film; I have no actual photos yet.)
If I had messed up somewhere, I would’ve lost those shots forever—no memory recovery, no disc repair. view more →
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To clarify, I did not go to Beijing for any of the Olympic action or any other major city to check out any monstrous architectural feats in the making; I went to Kunming, Dali, and Lijiang in Yunnan, a Chinese province near Tibet and Myanmar with 94% mountainous terrain and 52 out of 56 of the indigenous tribes in China. The scenic places I hiked and stone-paved old towns I rode through in horse-drawn carriages were nothing less than breathtaking. I imagined I was a trader traveling along the Southern Silk Road stopping at Dali for a few nights to absorb in the harmonious clash of cultures and people, before I passed on my goods to another horseman who knew how to cross the rockier, higher-altitude terrain up ahead. view more →
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