Japanese House, JFC, 1982

Joel choose a perfect day on December 1, 1982 to photograph the Japanese Garden at Micke Grove Park in Lodi.

I showed few images from the same spot photographed by Joel in 1985 few blog posts back. This time however, Joel uses his 4×5 Graphic View camera to capture the foggy scenery.

From prior experiments, Joel understands very well that photographing in fog adds a special atmosphere to the scenery. Personally, I love the dreamy endresult.

Joel moves around for this shoot, giving us 4 or 5 vantage points of how this garden and surroundings looked like in 1982. Of course, Joel photographs 2-4 shots at each location to ensure he has something “good”, for a grand total of 15 negatives to choose from.

Shooting in fog is tricky as the light conditions change from shot to shot, all based on overhanging cloud density and available sunlight.

Joel kept the development processing the same for the above images, and I kept the negative-to-positive conversion same for all images in this series. So what you see in visual image differences, is a matter of what was visible on the spot.

Joel was clearly taken in with the sweeping line of rocks in the Koi Pond and the Japanese House fading in the foggy background.

Joel can’t let go of the sweeping rock line in the Koi Pond, and he comes back for a second round. This time he orients the back of his camera in landscape format to capture a wider perspective.

Joel pans the camera a bit to the left for the next two shots. The end result is a more balanced framing of the tree canopies in the foreground, top left and top right. The Japanese House is placed at a 1/3rd intersection in the image, for a more interesting appeal.

We’re ending this series with a straight view of the Japanese House, where Joel shows us a perspective looking straight through the house. The diagonal tree in this view moves our view from let to right.

This is also a good example how Joel played with exposure to capture a different feel in each image. Joel knows what he is doing.

All the above scanned and digitized images come from the Jessica Fong Collection of Dardis negatives. Jessica definitely curated an appealing collection of images. I’m grateful for the opportunity to scan, analyse and discuss this 300+ negative collection in this blog.

Cheers !