Zoo Redscale Results

Well I’ve had the developed negatives back from AG Photolab. How do they look? are they any good for my project? Can i get a print out of them?

As you might have read in this post, I took my Bronica ETRS with 3 rolls of Lomography Redscale XR film to Dudley Zoo and Castle to make some images of the Tecton Architecture at the attraction. The architecture was designed by Berthold Lubetkin and the Tecton Group with it being completed in 1937, two years before the second world war kicked off. My idea was to take the redscale film to capture some strange colours as though the light in the Black Country was impacted by the smog and smoke from the historical industry that populated the area. The colours would represent the history of the region as well as committing to film strange architectural forms that in one way are so familiar to thousands of Black Country inhabitants yet are so overlooked by the very same people.

Meter

I took my ETRS and when I was lining up a shot, I’d use my Sekonic meter and then set the camera up to suit, rather than rely on the AEII prism viewfinder with auto settings. I wanted to make visual notes of the situation I was shooting in so I could look at the negatives and compare them to the digital shots taken on the iPhone. This plan was so I could see if I had metered correctly and see how the film performed at the recommended settings. Needless to say, this is the first time I’ve used Lomography Redscale XR so it’s a learning curve and it won’t surprise you to find out that it wasn’t wholly successful.

Entrance

We start the journey around the zoo with the Entrance building which was originally Cafe 1. The roof slab is suspended by 9″ vertical columns over the remainder of the building and the top is separated from the walls by a glass section all the way around. It’s a simple building but a statement about the style the architects intended to feature across all of the pieces.

I set up the ETRS on the tripod and found a frame that I captured elements of the concrete structure showing off it’s uniqueness. I metered for the light and the screen showed for the ISO 200 film, 1/30th second at f/16. I wanted the depth of field to capture the back wall with the alcoves in it whilst still capturing the text on the front wall. Camera set and shutter release cable at the ready, wait for the other zoo-goers to clear the scene before releasing.

The redscale image, as scanned by AG Photolab can be seen below. The 75mm lens on the ETRS obviously took me in closer than the iPhone. The photo is ok but it’s a bot of a thin negative, apparently underexposed. There are also some strange spots that appear in the negatives, scans and prints that look like some sort of water stain from the dev process or could even be a defect in the film. Looking at this I don’t think I could use this in any prints, it’s not really an interesting shot and with the lack of contrast it feels like a messed up image.

Undulations

Next up it was time to look at the entrance gates/turnstiles on the slope that used to see thousands of guests arriving at every year. The wonderful wave structures are there to help with the sloped landscape and allow each turnstile to have a uniform look, whilst the next one along is lower down with an overlap of the roof slabs.

The meter still read 1/30th at f/16 so I fired off the next shot once it was composed in the waist level viewfinder with the magnifier flipped up.

You can see the lighting was a bit dull but it should pose no real issues for the 200 ISO rated film.

the negative is a bit thin again and underexposed with the Redscale film and the scans have been edited to try and pull as much detail as possible from the negative. The colour is a nice range of orange and whilst it lacks the detail in the shadows it is obviously a photo of the entrance kiosks at Dudley Zoo. Annoyingly you can see the splotches over the film too, I wonder if it might be damage when the film is traversing across the film plane, the emulsion is actually touching the film back whereas it wouldn’t normally do this if the film hasn’t been reversed. The image looks underexposed and it’s a bit of a let down again.

Kiosk

After a couple of other photos of the entrance and the Cafe 1, I found the Kiosk at near the Polar Bear Pit so I was setting up the ETRS again.

This location had the light change so I set the camera to 1/8th second at F/11 and started taking photographs. The results didn’t come out as underexposed as the previous few so I was a bit happier.

These photos look a lot better exposed than many of them on this first roll of film. The wider view of the Kiosk is nicely lit, and the abstract of the painted glass, and the shot through to capture the people all are containing enough light to provide a decent image. The wide view and the shot of the woman with push chair are nice images and the lovely orange tint from shooting through the rear of the film stock is having a nice effect here. I did go and stand with the meter at the kiosk when taking the photo whereas in the Entrance (Cafe 1) I was metering in the region of the shot, not against the actual walls.

The Kiosks look bland and although nicely painted featured some advertising many moons ago as per the photo below:

When I saw this on the https://tectons.dudleyzoo.org.uk/repairs/bear-ravine/ website, it struck a chord with something I’d seen the month before. I’d gone on into Dudley Town Centre after my previous visit to the Zoo and Castle and looking back at the photos from that afternoon I found the following photo that I had captured. It’s amazing to think that this information is no longer visible on the back of the Bear Ravine kiosk, but it was a link to the sweet shop that provided confectionery to the kiosks in the zoo. Not having been to Dudley before this project I have no history of the shop below, but my favourite sweetshops in my hometown of Shrewsbury will stay with me forever and I bet that hundreds if not thousands of Black Country folk who went to the zoo would still have fond memories of the kiosks selling sweets and the shop in the town centre. one of those little links that make up the the pesonality of all those that have lived through the time and put their teeth through so much torture.

Turning around 180 I could see the Polar Bear Pit with Lion and Tiger pits on either side of it. The Polar Bears have since been replaced by Arctic Foxes whilst the Tigers remained, the other side was full of Wolverines. I set the camera up to capture people in front of the enclosure as I was not able to get an image with zero people in. I waited for the people in the shot to stand still and have noone walking through the shot, this is because the shutter speed was metered to be 1/30 sec at f/11 and I didn’t particularly want motion blur.

Polar Pit

You can see from the photo in the small gallery above that the camera was pointed at the group and I was waiting for the the people to move out of the left of the shot. I was taking photos with my phone of the scene and the settings on the camera so I could write it up and keep the notes alongside the photos and negatives. This photo resulted in the following scan from the Redscale XR film.

You can see from the quality of the final image that there is not a lot of contrast, this is because I vastly underexposed the shot. I have since read that Redscale film loves light and that I shoudl be adding a couple of extra stops to each shot. The photo above, when the blacks are made blacker, takes all the rest of the detail from the image. To allow the detail to be seen then everything goes a greyer level of black.

Whilst I was in this area I had spotted a poster on the wall of a covered area to the left of this shot, the poster depicted a polar bear leaping off the “diving board ” that can be seen in the original promo picture as featured on the information boards. I liked the composition as it showed the ferocity of the polar bear and the curves and lines, with fixtures, fences and fittings designed to keep the wild animals at bay.

You can see from the photos above that there was a wealth of evidence that it is now autumn and this provided some contextual detail to the shot. You can see the reversed image in the viewfinder of the camera that shows the structures that I was interested in committing to the film. The yellow painted I thought would provide a wonderful contrast to the darker parts of the images too so I looked forward to this photo. Alas, it was also a little underexposed.

It looks much better through the viewfinder than through the veil of the redscaled film. To get a true black on the black details it would mean losing the shadows more than I’d like.

After a bit of a tune up in Lightroom you can get the photo below, but there are also the same splotches visible, to remove them would mean some cleaning up in Photoshop or using another method in the darkroom. As the plan is to scan these negs in a large resolution I plan to get them printed from a digital print route rather than go through the enlarger process, but it’s still good to see the results after a darkroom print.

Thick and Thin

When I’m talking about “thin negatives” I’m not sure it’s a technical term but waht I mean is that there is not much information in the frame. Studying the negatives to see if I can spot why there are pink splotches appearing I was looking for water marks or similar. Even with a loupe or magnifier I was unable to make out this detail on the negative. When I show you the images below it might go some way to explaining why I think it’s underexposed and comparing it to a better exposed photograph.

This is the negative for the last shot, shown on an LED light table of sorts. It’s not been altered to bring out more detail or hide anything, it’s a true representation of how I see the negative. You can see that the brighter parts of the image appear as darker areas on the negative as the light reflecting from the light painted walls hits the film and alters the chemistry. The areas where there is less detail is in the shadows and darker parts of the frame. You can see the top of the polar bear poster in the alcove is showing very little detail at the top of the poster and there is even less detail on the poster to the side of it. You’ll note that the detail of the leaves on the floor are also very difficult to make out. If I’d exposed the frame of film for a stop or two longer I would have had more detail captured, the film would have had more time for the reflected light from the scene to reach it before the shutter closed.

When I refer to a thin negative, it’s about this lack of detail, the brightly lit areas should be darker on the negative and shadows should have more detail. In the image below you can see the strip of negatives containing the above image and underneath it on the LED table you can see another frame in the bottom right corner that I wouldn’t describe as “thin”. The exposure is more appropriate and you can see this clearly just be looking at the negatives. The dark areas of the negative are the brighter parts of the real image and there are fewer places where you can see the standard orange of the film backing.

In fact these last two frames on the strip above can be seen after scanning and converting. Once you see it in the reversed form it will make more sense.

You can see that the inverted photos make way more sense, if you compare them to the negatives. There are a ton of red splotches on the left photo, where they are not visible on the right hand image. I think that this is likely due to the lab trying to wring as much out of a poorly exposed negative that they see all of the minor issues in an exacerbated manner.

Underexposure

The remainder of the photos from this series of three films suffer from the same issues. Where I didn’t think to give it an extra stop of light, by extending the shutter open time or opening the aperture, the negatives are very thin and it’s difficult to get anything from the images without trying too hard. The old sayings “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” or my favourite “you can’t polish a turd” apply to these thin negatives so I suspect that I’ll have to just look at the images that are better exposed. Luckily I did think about the advice on giving an extra stop or two, a couple of times, particularly where it was very dark, so I do not have three lots of 15 negatives with zero images on. I have at least three or four where they are exposed in a better manner.

Of the above shots in this five shot gallery, I was most disappointed with the photo of the kiosk near the Bear Ravine. The setup of it looked smart in the viewfinder of the camera and I was gutted when I got it back and it was underexposed by a long way. You can see the sky above the Zoo Entrance is better and the detail in the shadows is also acceptable to me. Again this shot was just as it was turning darker and I thought to up the exposure two stops from what the Sekonic meter was suggesting. The shot of the Bear Ravine platform is also very underexposed and difficult to get some useful information from the redscale negative. I am a bit underwhelmed by this really but I know that if I buy some more I can recreate some of the shots with an additional two stops of light.

Unfortunately Analogue Wonderland is showing as sold out of the film at present but I’ve managed to find some expired but stored in a freezer films off ebay. and instead of it being three rolls for £27, I’ve picked up 4 rolls for £25. If it’s been stored in a freezer since it was purchased then it will be good.

Revisit Required

Maybe I can phone up Dudley Zoo and ask them to let me in for free as I’ve already paid twice to get in and it’s getting a bit expensive. I’ve sent them a note on the contact page (see below) and I can probably go and reshoot some of the films.

Hi, I’m a mature student at University of Wolverhampton studying Photography and I’m engaged in a project titled “The Matter Of The Black Country” in which our group is being sent out to capture the essence of the Black Country and what it is made up of. Some of my coursemates are photographing people in Bilston Market or at the West Brom football matches etc, I however am slightly obsessed with photographing the Tecton buildings at Dudley Zoo and Castle.
I’ve made two trips over from Shrewsbury to make images inside the zoo using film and digital cameras but my last visit left me with a bunch of practically unusable film negatives. I could do with revisiting in the next couple of weeks and shooting the amazing architecture once again with the lessons I’ve learned from the previous two visits.
This is needing to be done before Christmas as our work is being exhibited in the Centrala Gallery, Digbeth, Birmingham as a way of spreading the good word about Wolves Uni and the Black Country in general.
Please could I be cheeky and ask if there is any possibility of a discounted (or comp) ticket to return for this shoot? Having paid for entry twice already I’m struggling to be able to afford it, with the costs of the film and processing. It is a wonderful Zoo and the Castle is also amazing and if I get any reasonable photos I do tend to tag in the Zoo’s instagram as a way of promoting the architecture and the history if it.
If you want to read about and see images from the previous visits, they can be found on my blog at http://bobgriffiths.uk or on my instagram @bob_griffiths_photography
Many thanks for continuing to provide this amazing set of facilities to the residents of the Black Country and the visitors from further afield.
Kind regards,
Bob

Fave Frame

The one frame that I am happy with from the three films is of the Entrance Turnstile buildings. The wavy roof at the front. I chose to focus on a corner of one wavy slab and its overlap of its neighbouring slab. There is a slot built into the the slab almost as if it has been carefully milled out on a machine as a locating slot awaiting a peg to slide into it. Reading the tectons.dudleyzoo.org website it appears that these are “projecting edge beam on three sides, a device that avoids water staining from the run-off of rainwater.”

This particular frame was not as bad as the other images that I had made during the day of photographing around the zoo. Once I’d printed this out on a 10×8 paper in the darkroom, see this post, I found it to be very pleasing to my eye. The redscale film has tinted the grey overcast sky as a yellow/orange, whilst the grey edges and pale blue underside are both a shade of orange. This is exactly what I was hoping for from the redscale film stock.

Local Meaning

To me it signifies a structure that would be instantly recognisable to members of the community that have visited the zoo over their lives, first as kids, then as parents, grandparents and even great grandparents. This listed (grade II) structure and the other remaining 11 listed buildings must live in the memories of many thousands of excitable people. No doubt, many international and national visitors have been to the zoo but I would guess that a large number of visitors remain local to the region.

Whilst trying to research the origin of visitors to the zoo and castle attraction I stumbled on lots of stats that showed the total number of guests but nothing about the distance travelled to get there. I was pleased to see that, in 2023, it was the third most visited attraction in the West Midlands region. Only bested by its next door neighbour, The Black Country Living Museum and the more local to me Attingham Park. I’ve been to Attingham many times and I can’t believe they have half a million visitors per year, that is crazy big numbers.

The zoo saw 700,000 visitors through those concrete undulations in its first summer back in 1937 so it’s still a way off but the number is still impressive. According to the tectons.dudleyzoo.org website, “he main interest was to see the animals but for many it was likely to have been their first experience of modern architecture.” which is a big about face from today. Not many of the patrons I saw in the zoo the two times I visited were interested in the structures that surrounded them.

The tectons.dudleyzoo.org.uk website says the following:

“The 12 listed Lubetkin-designed concrete structures at Dudley Zoo, built between 1936 and 1937, are the greatest collection of surviving Tecton buildings in the world and some of the most important modern movement buildings in the UK. As time has moved on and zoological practices have changed some of the Tecton structures have become unused and left to serve only as monuments.”

For me, “The Matter Of The Black Country” could be anything from the landscape that the region is built on, the remains of the industrial processes from the industrial revolution, the people, the shops, the sports teams, the products that have been made in the region over the years or a mixture of all of the above. The architecture in Dudley Zoo must be ingrained in the consciousness of many residents of the region, and those outside the region. There are a small number of Tecton structures outside of Dudley and I would hazard a guess that those in London based locations are paid more attention that those in the Midlands but the investment in the mid-2010’s shows that the architecture is hugely important. The collection of the Tecton buildings here was also named on the World Monuments Fund 2009 Watch List.

The redscale film I chose to photograph the structures and surroundings lends a red/orange/yellow palette to the images similar to the ambience I like to imagine caused by the many iron foundries and forges back when the region earned it’s “Black Country” title. It’s a sort of fiery sky, illuminated by the fires of the industrial processes, clouded over by a thick cloud of soot particles preventing you from seeing the true blue sky and colours of the buildings. A sort of “industrial winter” if you like.

Conclusion

A revisit to the Zoo is required. No doubt. I have purchased some more Redscale film and will revisit it in the next couple of weeks, when possible with work and family commitments not withstanding.

This time I will shoot with the Bronica ETRS 645 Film camera, once again, but using a different strategy. I will use my Sekonic light meter and then add another two stops of light to the exposure. This way I should get some more usable negatives, which I can then print on the enlarger as large as I can, I’ve only currently got 10×8″ and 10×12″ colour paper, or even scan them in on the Epson Scanners at uni and then print on a large format board.

This will then provide me with three images for the exhibition at Centrala in Digbeth and in reference to the overall aesthetic I quite like the title for my work as “Industrial Winter” as it harks back to the fears of the Nuclear Winter post nuclear holocaust. The atmosphere of the Black Country was obviously a big feature, that’s why it is called the Black Country. What if the remains of the region are only the way they are today due to the “Industrial Holocaust”, I don’t think I could use that as a title though as there are too many connotations regarding the mid-20th century Holocaust which brought on World War II.

I will see if I can revisit and retake some of the same frames and at the same time use my previous images to learn from and avoid some of the locations that simply did not work. You can be sure however that I will write it up on this blog, so don’t forget to come back and revisit in a few posts time.