Gaia and I went to Pendleton, Oregon in March 2013 on a well deserved vacation. It was entirely too windy to get out my 8×10 camera, but I could hand hold my Speed Graphic if I kept the shutter speed high. Here is the first picture.  It’s one of the few things that wasn’t flapping in the breeze.

©2013 Gary L. Quay

Old structures like this catch my eye. I happened to be carrying my Speed Graphic, but no tripod. I held the camera down low to alter the perspective a bit. I could have approximated a back tilt to square up the lines, but I opted for this composition instead.

Camera: Speed Graphic 4×5
Lens: 127mm Kodak Ektar.
Film: Fuji Astia.

We drove up Cabbage Hill, which is east of Pendleton on I-84.  The hill extends from the valley floor up an engine-toasting seven miles to Deadman Pass.

The westerly wind at our faces, we stopped at a viewpoint about halfway back down the hill.  My hands quickly went numb.  The stiff wind, and the bitter cold teamed up to make large format photography extremely difficult.  Using a tripod was impossible.  When I set it up, the wind tried to take it the moment I let go.  My workflow went like this:  Set the focus with the rangefinder on the Speed Graphic before leaving the car, and then run out, lean over the railing, and take a series of pictures without a tripod, and then run back to the car.  Aperture and shutter speed ruled the day.

©2013 Gary L. Quay

Looking down from “Cabbage Hill” near Pendleton. The wind was a tad stiff. Semi trucks rolled gently past along with the tumbleweeds. 

It’s extremely hard to catpure this view, and just how impressive it is with a single picture, and the panoramics I have done have not been a good as I would have liked. When I go back, I hope to finally make the picture I wanted when I first saw it in 1991. I have a few ideas. We’ll see how they pan out.

Camera: Sinar Alpina 4×5.
Lens: 210mm Schneider Symar
Film: Efke PL 50 developed in PMK Pyro

©2013 Gary L. Quay

The negative suffered from dust, and a few light scratches, but they weren’t hard to remove, just tedious.  Other than that, it’s a moody picture with good tones.  I like it.  

Camera: Sinar Alpina 4×5.
Lens: 210mm Schneider.
Film: Efke PL 50 developed in PMK Pyro

©2013 Gary L. Quay

Gaia and I learned a lot about this place after we took the underground tour. It was the most reputable brothel in the area back in the day. I took this handheld at 1/60 sec., so there’s a little motion blur. I like the effect, though.

Camera: Speed Graphic 4×5.
Lens: 135mm Kodak Ektar.
Film: Kodak T-Max 100 developed in PMK Pyro.

©2013 Gary L. Quay

I have made two pilgramages to Pendleton, Oregon, which is many too few.  I took this handheld.  

Hamley’s is a big name in Pendleton.  We stopped at pretty much all of their businesses, including a wonderful dinner at the restaurant.  

Camera: Super Speed Graphic
Lens: 127mm Kodak Ektar
Film: Kodak T-Max 100 developd in Ilfotec HC

We returned home after 3 days to develop the negatives.  None of the Black and white roll film negatives worked out.  There was a problem with developing them.  I don’t know what happened, but they all ended up streaky.  It must have been related to deciding to use a pyro developer, which is notoriously unstable.  The color pictures, however, worked out just fine.

Note 11/23/23: I wrote the above before I figured out what went wrong with the pyro developer.  It was entirely my technique that killed those pictures, which I happily corrected this past summer.  

Thanks for looking!

–Gary L. Quay

Featured Image
Earth and Sky Near Pendleton, Oregon
Camera: Speed Graphic 4×5.
Lens: 127mm Kodak Ektar.
Film: Fuji Astia.