This weekend I photographed some amazing industrial scenes at the historical Gladding McBean factory in Lincoln, California. This was a field workshop put on by Gene Kennedy and Viewpoint Gallery .
Friday night was orientation at the Viewpoint Gallery in Sacramento. It was a great introduction to see other photographers work from previous workshops. Saturday it was bright and early at the factory gate where we met and drove to the buildings we would be photographing in. There were about 30 or so photographers which seems like a lot until you realize how big this place is! After Gene gave a brief tour for the newbies we were set loose. I spent the first hour or so just wandering around looking at things. This place is overwhelming! There are historical workareas dedicated to terracotta reproduction, and very modern industrial areas that manufacturer clay sewer pipe. There is a huge building with wonderful beehive kilns, some working and firing, and some looking like they’re about to fall over. Photography continued non-stop until quitting time at 5 o’clock. Sunday morning same drill, this time I had an idea of what to expect and some notes and images I would like to make. I focused on those, but as so often happens I only touched on the surface of what this place could produce in terms of images. We will see how many keepers I get after doing my darkroom work.
I brought a mix of cameras to the workshop just in case. My DLC45, Nikon D80, Diane medium format and my trusty Canon G7. I wanted to shoot a series with my Diana but didn’t end up doing that. Instead I focused on my 4×5 black and white. I was distracted enough by all the wonderful potential images, I didn’t need to be bouncing back and forth between color and B&W, large format and “lomo style”.