Unruly Branches, storefront, Idaho City, Idaho
Many years ago (1986 according to my negative numbering system), I participated in a photography workshop in Idaho City, Idaho. The tiny town was a wonderful subject for many large format photographers. I spent a considerable amount of time in setting up a wonderful geometric arrangement of artifacts in a shop window. The rule in large format photography is to focus at the maximum aperture and then “stop down” to the proper aperture to expose the negative. I followed this rule but couldn’t see the ground glass clearly at f/32. The resulting surprise was two incredibly sharply focused branches along the left edge of the photograph. What was invisible at a large aperture was brought into focus when I stopped down to the desired aperture. At f/32 the ground glass was so dark I did not see the branch. Sometimes the surprises are good surprises. This time it wasn’t.
Maybe someday I might try to photoshop the obvious flaw with some less than obvious healing brush or content aware fill editing.
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