Moore State Park in Winter — Hasselblad 500cm / Ilford HP5
I took this image on Ilford HP5 120 film with the Hasselblad 500cm and the 80mm f/2.8 C lens. The negative was developed in Rodinal, and the enlargement was developed in EcoPro Paper Developer.
What drew me to this scene was the scale — a single figure trudging through an enormous snow-covered field, with nothing but footprints connecting them to where I stood. The tracks fan out in the foreground and then converge into a single path leading to the subject, almost pulling your eye straight to them. The bare branches reaching in from the top of the frame add a sense of enclosure, like you’re watching from the edge of the woods.
HP5 handled the high-contrast snow beautifully — there’s detail in the highlights without blowing out, and the midtones in the sky have a nice, moody gradation. Rodinal gave the grain just enough bite to complement the texture of the snow. There’s something about printing a winter scene in the darkroom that feels right — the silver gelatin tones suit the cold.
Sometimes the simplest compositions hit the hardest. One person, one set of tracks, a lot of white space.
This was my first go at using the Omega C-700 Enlarger. It worked very well but I quickly realized I needed a film easel because of how much fiber paper curls.
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