Flashback Friday: Canterbury Moon

Does anyone else remember Scotchchrome 1000?  I became fascinated with this film back in the mid-1990s, for a number of reasons.  I was carrying three cameras with me on all my travels—one with 100-ISO black and white film for fine monochrome shots, one with Tri-X pushed usually to 800 for fleeting opportunities, and a third for color work, for which I used slide film.  For the latter I usually chose an ISO rating of 100.  At some point, I learned that 3M had come out with a fast (1000-ISO) slide film under the name Scotchchrome 1000, and when I tried it, I was intrigued and delighted to find that, in addition to its ability to allow me to shoot faster under lower light conditions, it had another unique characteristic:  exceptionally large grain.  While this was not highly desirable for conditions requiring a lot of fine detail, it did lend a very artistic, pronounced pointillistic effect to the photographs, that I found could be very interesting.

During one of my early journeys to New Zealand, in March 1996, I traveled from Greymouth on the South Island’s northwest coast across the divide through Arthur’s Pass on my way to Christchurch on the eastern coast.  The sun had set as I left the eastern foothills gradually behind and reached the flatter Canterbury plains, but a full moon was rising.  My route took me close to a fine, even row of Lombardi poplars—very popular for windbreaks—between fields, between the moon and me.  As soon as I got the inspiration, I acted on it immediately, parking the car at the very first opportunity without putting two wheels in a ditch, grabbing my tripod, and sprinting gingerly across very coarsely-plowed ground to put the moon in the position I was envisioning behind the silhouetted trees.  I made a dozen photographs; these two are my favorites.