Superior Days, Back Then.

The singular advantage of photographing abandoned architecture is that it doesn't move. So I didn't often shoot landscape with the Linhof. 

But sometimes, real life becomes stone still. Occasionally, I grabbed the opportunity.

Gogebic County, 4x5 Ektachrome 100

While the Toy Canon enabled me to blog my Superior adventures in more or less real time, the Mamiya emboldened the entire gig and the rest of today's images are lifted from that batch.

A couple hundred sheets of large format film isn't a lot, and that's all there was left. Over fourteen straight months of fieldwork, I struck more than ten times that many exposures on 120mm transparency.

I was, in a word, profligate.

Much of that work was pure scenic, no decaying human construct need apply.

It'd been a long time since I'd thrown film willy-nilly through great gear. Years and years.

At the end, the finite supply of 4x5 transparencies was far too precious to risk  expanding my horizons.

But 120mm film stock was still plentiful on the market, it proved easy to carry and when not otherwise crawling around abandoned basements or other such with the Linhof, at arbitrary moments I let the Mamiya fly.

And it took the greater world in.

The Mamiya proved a remarkably dependable tool. Had I paired one with the Linhof ten years prior, it might've altered my creative trajectory.

As is, I'm just happy I became an enthusiastic medium format shooter in the nick of time.

Turned out, simply covering my ass paid unexpected dividends.

Be prepared, the Boy Scouts like to say.

Indeed.