My Process
This is my camera:
It’s a large-format film camera, the kind that photographers such as Ansel Adams used back in the day. It’s the kind I’ve always used.
Making a photograph with a large-format camera takes time. Not only can it sometimes take several minutes to make an exposure, but it can take hours to process a negative and days to finish a print. It’s a far cry from the point-and-click ease of a digital camera.
Why bother? Because I am (to use a term coined by my friend Lee Shuer) a “slowtographer”. I like slowing down the photographic process and feeling my way through every part of it, from releasing the shutter to hanging the finished print up to dry.
I don’t believe that this archaic process has a magical quality that, say, the camera on your phone fundamentally lacks. I do believe that it is conducive to a different way of looking at the world. It is less reflexive and more reflective. It is less about “what” and more about “how”. But the proof's in the pictures: if I do my job well, this care will be evident in the results.
Making a photograph with a large-format camera takes time. Not only can it sometimes take several minutes to make an exposure, but it can take hours to process a negative and days to finish a print. It’s a far cry from the point-and-click ease of a digital camera.
Why bother? Because I am (to use a term coined by my friend Lee Shuer) a “slowtographer”. I like slowing down the photographic process and feeling my way through every part of it, from releasing the shutter to hanging the finished print up to dry.
I don’t believe that this archaic process has a magical quality that, say, the camera on your phone fundamentally lacks. I do believe that it is conducive to a different way of looking at the world. It is less reflexive and more reflective. It is less about “what” and more about “how”. But the proof's in the pictures: if I do my job well, this care will be evident in the results.