Electro-mechanical tote

This is the fifth photo in the series by Angie Turnbull that she photographed here at the museum with some objects from our collection. Angie uses a Deardorff large format camera with a Honduras mahogany body (because timber accepts harder use better than metal) and leather bellows between the lens and film plane. Angie manipulates the flexible planes to control the image, focus area and adjust parallax errors and perspective. The camera captures images on a negative that is 8 x 10 inches (20,32 x 25,4 cm). Angie revails:

There was no question in my mind as to whether I wanted to photograph the Tote Machine at the Powerhouse’s Castle Hill branch. This intricate well thought out piece of beautiful machinery was a break through by an Australian Inventor whose work was acknowledged worldwide. This piece of the Tote Machine was approx 7 metres long and what you see here in the image is only part of it. In fact the complete piece is several metres long. Using only a 300mm lens I had to try and get the angle I had in mind and get the majority of it in focus. As I found out at the time it wasn’t going to be easy. Using two lights and wish I had more, this exposure was approximately 15 minutes on a maximum aperture of F64. It was only after I had photographed did I find out that this in fact was larger than what was on site and unknowingly I had captured it to reflect this

Photography by Angie Turnbull
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Tags: black and white, collection, Deardorff, film, large format, museum, photographer, tote machine