[LargeFormat] Giant pinhole contact print

[Guy Glorieux]

Hi friends,

It's was exactly two months ago this weekend that we shot our giant
pinhole photograph from the 10th floor of the Wyndham hotel in Montreal
and after considerable struggle, we've finally created a contact
positive from the paper negative.

Of the 3 prints we made during the weekend, one is successful and one is
OK.  The last has really weird streaks which would normally be
unacceptable but turns it into a rather surreal print.  I will be
shooting pictures of the prints tomorrow and hope to be able to post the
images on the web soon after.

This whole project was incredible hard work and I understand why those
who do giant paper negatives do not make contact positives.  It requires
a big team (there were seven of us and that was not too much),  a
detailed script of each and every task to be done, by whom and when as
well as a tremendous amount of coordination between the team members.

It also requires huge facilities.  The printing and processing was done
in a light tight 20'x30' studio with a 12' ceiling and this was cramped.
We needed an additional light tight room with a large 3'x6' sink to
pre-wash the unexposed paper before making the contact print and to wash
the prints after processing.  And then we needed a clean room to hang
dry the 12.5' x 8' prints and the paper negative after they were washed.

I won't talk about costs, but all in all, we've used 1 1/4 roll of 50''
x 98' of Ilford paper for the negative and the contact prints; close to
100 sheets of 16x20 paper, 50 sheets of 11x14 paper and about 250 sheets
of 8x10 paper for the exposure tests; and finally over 300 litres of
developer and 300 litres of fix for the processing.

We plan to take a break this summer from giant pinholin' but we're doing
location search for more images.

Talk to you soon,

Guy