Shaun Johnston

Last weekend was the beginning of Brisbane’s River Festival, which is traditionally celebrated with a huge half hour pyrotechnic display along the Brisbane River, called Riverfire.

In order to prepare to photograph this event, the Brisbane Meetup flickr group organised a location to meet early at, so that we could hold the area for photography at the right time. I scouted out a location the preceding day and posted a Google Map with my preferred locations, and we worked from there.

I have borrowed a Graflex Speed Graphic from a good friend Greg in Toowoomba and was keen to test out some colour slide film in it, so I figured Riverfire was an ideal event to give it a shot.

The Graflex Anniversary Speed Graphic is a WW2 era press camera - a large format beast which takes sheets of 4″ x 5″ film. The lens I put on it is a Staeble Magnogon 105mm copy / process lens, salvaged from a long-dismantled process camera.

The location we ended up choosing was Wilson’s Lookout above the cliffs behind the Story Bridge. Several group members arrived there at 10am on the day, while Kane, a fellow photography enthusiast, and myself arrived there at about 11am. We had partitioned a small area at a clear corner of the park, which allowed us to set up our tripods between the fence and the cliffs themselves, giving us a nice interrupted view with no risk of bumping from children or what-have-you. Much discussion of camera gear, and consuming of beverages and snacks ensued. By about midday other people and photographers started rocking up, and by about 5 it was quite thick with people.

I composed my shot an hour or so before the fireworks started using the ground glass finder, and weighed my Manfrotto tripod (with a ball head) down with a weighted bag full of camera gear. I then was free to load the sheet film at will and expose using bulb / timer. It was quite a sturdy setup.

As I had already prepared the shot, once the first dump and burn was imminent all that was required was for me to load a sheet holder into the camera, crank the shutter to close the curtain, pull out the film holder blind, and wait for the right moment. The only uncertainty was the exposure time, which I guesstimated and agonised a little over in the week before I had the film processed at Pro Lab.

It turns out I had nothing to worry about.

I bused into Pro Lab yesterday morning and tentatively handed in my film holders, and was told they would be ready be 4pm. Once 4pm rocked around I picked them up and had a look at them in the lightbox room. My jaw dropped.

I had never seen a 4×5 transparency on a lightbox before, and I was still worried at that point that I may have overexposed. However, my fears were completely unfounded as the above photograph shows.

Here are my photographs from the night. Each of these may be clicked to open a new window with a wallpaper-sized version.