Large Format: Technology of the Soul

[Don Boyd]

After having purchased my first dslr recently, and being reluctant to pick it up and play with it, I have been trying to understand my disinterest and why my connection to my 4x5 seems so much stronger. Then I came across this piece by Thomas Moore from his book Soul Mates and it seems to bring me closer to answering my question:

Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind. Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul. It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means "distant connections" - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul. We are being urged from everyside to become efficient rather than intimate.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not suggesting that there aren't those that work soul-fully with digital equipment. I just think it is hard for me. It is my time-full struggle through the process of conceiving the image, finding the lens, filter, film, format, orientation that might convey what I cannot communicate in some other way, that somehow moves me to a deeper connection with myself; that aids my own process of self discovery and feeds my hungry heart so much.

I would be interested in hearing from others who have added or even transitioned entirely to electronic media about how it has worked for you.

[Bill_1856]

It got me out of the darkroom -- God Bless Digital!

[Joe Smigiel]

I went the other way and took up wetplate collodion, abandoning digital.

Wetplate literally is ethereal, and thus soulful by nature.

Thanks for the post.

Joe

[darr]

I do not know if this applies, but I had a dislike for 35mm cameras. It just was not enough real estate for me so to speak. I acquired a Nikon D200 about two years ago and this has made me rethink using a 35mm. The ease of shooting with an 18-200 zoom and not having to process the film has found a warm fuzzy spot within my soul. I shoot for the fun of it and upload the images to Lightroom. It has become visual exercising for me. :)

[John Kasaian]

Good post!
I think the abstraction of looking at the world upside down and backwards in order to come up with a picture right side up and realistically oriented definately speaks to the soul.

Incredibly complex images coming from the simplest of equipment and technology (such as a contact print) certainly says something in a way that more elaborate and sophisticated (and modern) technologies can't. Drawing and painting perhaps even more so, but Large Format is definately close up there in the soul department.

[PViapiano]

About eight years ago, I reconnected to photography after a long hiatus via a digital SLR, but three years ago I found myself looking for a used medium format camera. I had become extremely proficient with PS but something was missing for me.

Film reconnected me to my soul, my visual creativity, became more of a hand worked craft, something I felt I could apprentice to and grow with. The Mamiya RZ soon had a companion, my Ebony 45s. Shooting with both of these cameras is a dream and fun beyond belief. Although I carried the Mamiya everywhere, I found myself wishing I had a smaller camera in more discrete situations. I thought I'd never go for a 35mm, always figured that's what digital was for, but I was so wrong. My 1964 Leica M2 rangefinder is one of the most amazing cameras to shoot with, and a marvel to hold.

Soon, scanning negatives and inkjet printing gave way to the darkroom, which I assembled on the cheap (all equipment in excellent shape) from craigslist. Hand made silver prints have now become an obsession, just ask my wife. The challenge of making prints by hand and having complete control of the process from camera to print is an enormous task and will keep me happy for many years.

[jetcode]

I have had the opposite effect, I feel far more liberated with a DSLR than I do with a LF system and the lust for LF detail is slowly dissipating.

[Daniel Grenier]

....Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind. Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul. It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means "distant connections" - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul. We are being urged from everyside to become efficient rather than intimate......

Beautifully said. This guy read my mind and expressed what I can't efficiently articulate due to lacking eloquence.

To me, the current high-technologies found in photography cause an inevitable disconnect between the art and the artist. This disconnect I don't find in the rudimentary photography I practice (and purchase). That is, a basic LF camera and straight contact prints. Photography unplugged, if you will. Reminds me of my past Gibson Les Paul days and massive amplifiers which I sold only to return to the more soul-felt accoustic sound of an Ovation-made guitar.

[Richard M. Coda]

I went to Hackberry, AZ last weekend. On old Rt. 66, way out in the middle of nowhere. We stopped twice. Once in Truxton and again in Hackberry. Image count for the few hours we were there... two 4x5s (1 BW, 1 color), three 8x10s (BW) and ONE digital.

[Ron Marshall]

For me it is a trade-off between speed and convenience with 35mm/digital and greater enlargement potential and movements with LF: If I need speed then 35mm, otherwise I invest the time to hopefully produce something I will be satisied with in LF.

[Bruce Watson]

For me it is a trade-off between speed and convenience with 35mm/digital and greater enlargement potential and movements with LF...

For me as well. Unfortunately I found that if I had both available that I ended up using the smaller format more simply because it was more convenient. But the end results always frustrated me. Lacking the self control that many here seem to have, my solution was to mothball the 35mm (I couldn't even give it away to any of my family or friends -- not digital and all). I tell everyone (and myself) that the only camera I have is the 5x4.

So I don't make as many photographs as I used to. But the photographs I do make are much more satisfying.

And it's gotten me out of photographer duties at my niece's wedding! As I told her mother: I don't have the equipment for people photography ;-)

[Brian Ellis]

I've been using a digital camera more and more lately because of its many advantages. But I've always recognized that I don't enjoy the "process" of making a photograph with a digital camera nearly as much as I do LF without being able to satisfactorily explain the reason to myself. I think Mr. Moore has nailed it. But I don't think it's a question of "digital vs film," modern 35mm cameras involve massive amounts of technology. To me it's just "LF vs everything else."

[Kirk Gittings]

Don,
As you know I have moved largely to digital for my commercial work but continue with the 4x5 for all my personal work. At 58 this year, after using view cameras exclusively for 30 years, It is very invigorating and freeing to do the commercial work largely with a DSLR. I am more productive, more profitable and more importantly I enjoy the work more and am more creative. There is no penalty (film costs etc.) for trying new things. I am more enthused about commercial work than I have been in many years and it shows in my work.

AS per my personal work.....there is still nothing like the satisfaction of being able, after all that effort, to be there and just get that great image from my minds eye on 4x5 and have all that rich tonality and tactile detail for a fine print.

Its like the difference between a fine orderve (a great image on digital) and the best steak (4x5) you ever ate (Smith and Wollensky, Chicago oh my god.....).

[jetcode]

I enjoy both formats. Given enough time with a great subject I prefer LF but for something more spontaneous and playful or documentary in nature I'll use the DSLR

[Ron Marshall]

For me as well. Unfortunately I found that if I had both available that I ended up using the smaller format more simply because it was more convenient. But the end results always frustrated me. Lacking the self control that many here seem to have, my solution was to mothball the 35mm (I couldn't even give it away to any of my family or friends -- not digital and all). I tell everyone (and myself) that the only camera I have is the 5x4.

So I don't make as many photographs as I used to. But the photographs I do make are much more satisfying.

And it's gotten me out of photographer duties at my niece's wedding! As I told her mother: I don't have the equipment for people photography ;-)

The compromise I have adopted is a Mamiya 7, faster than LF, compact and good image quality.

I tend to use it more like LF than 35mm: on a tripod, with much contemplation of composition.

But, whenever I think I will have enough time, LF is what I choose.

[Don Boyd]

I vaguely recall hearing more than a decade ago about a small town in Canada that was about to receive cable television for the first time. Because the town was situated in a valley, they had no TV reception previously. Knowing this, some brain researchers tested some of the town's children both before and at some point after the cable installation. To no ones' surprise, the researchers discovered that the children's brains had rewired themselves. That's as much as I can recall. But, to me it suggests that electronic media influences (strongly I suspect) how our brains develop.

"Nature deficit disorder", a term coined by one therapist to describe the impact of urban-only life experiences and the consequent disregard for the "natural" world, seems to be to some significant degree a consequence of living in a "wired world." I share a house with my 15 year old niece and she even sleeps with the TV on. As someone who has spent some time in silent meditation, or "noble silence", I suggested that maybe she would find silence stimulating in some unusal ways. Her response was that she would go crazy without music or noise. (Sorry folks, I'm not in a parenting role here.)

I don't intend this to be a rant about modern times - I'm probably preaching to the choir in this forum - but am attempting to understand how low-and-slow image making serves as my personal antidote to the background noise of my contemporary world. Maybe it will improve my image making, and my life. I'm also questioning, and expressing my own fear about the digitalization of life. Lest you think I'm anti-technology I want to acknowledge that one of my meditation teachers thinks that historic meditation teaching practices and models need revision and scientifically supported strategies to meet changing conditions and human attributes. And it has certainly made our communicating this way possible. But, I do believe that we are responsible for our choices and that the more consciousness and attention we bring to whatever we are doing, the more "soul" will show up. To the degree that the wired-world aids that I'm all for it, to the degree that it begins to homogenize our way of seeing, thinking, feeling and being, I'm quite concerned.

I really do have more questions than answers, and am posting so that I can learn from the rest of you. Using large format for less than 5 years, I knew from the beginning that I wouldn't be able to tolerate the chemicals used in the traditional darkroom, so I have digitized my film from the beginning and, though I struggle with it mightily, am gaining some familiarity with Photoshop and my Epson printer. I too suffer from the contradictions allowed by technology.

[jetcode]

The compromise I have adopted is a Mamiya 7, faster than LF, compact and good image quality.

I tend to use it more like LF than 35mm: on a tripod, with much contemplation of composition.

But, whenever I think I will have enough time, LF is what I choose.

Since purchasing a decent scanner I've been going through my catalog of images and the sharpest cleanest images are derived from an old Fuji 6x45 rangefinder, a Mamiya 645 and a Pentax 35mm. My LF work from that era is not sharp and I attribute that to poor technique, failing eyesight, and the loupe I was using.

[Daniel Grenier]

....I would be interested in hearing from others who have added or even transitioned entirely to electronic media about how it has worked for you.

Don. This reminds me of a certain publisher's blog where he discussed a two-day outing to photograph a certain area. This person has transitioned entirely to digital a long time ago so all shots were digital captures. Out of this shoot, he had a 12-image "portfolio" in mind. To me, the troubling thing with this endeavour was that he had shot well over 800 images that weekend ! That is a whopping amount of images and is akin to going rabbit hunting with a sub-machine gun. Spray the hell out of everything and surely you're bound to hit "something". I don't know about you but knowing this makes the resulting portfolio much less appealing as a result (to me, that is).

[audioexcels]

I've been using a digital camera more and more lately because of its many advantages. But I've always recognized that I don't enjoy the "process" of making a photograph with a digital camera nearly as much as I do LF without being able to satisfactorily explain the reason to myself. I think Mr. Moore has nailed it. But I don't think it's a question of "digital vs film," modern 35mm cameras involve massive amounts of technology. To me it's just "LF vs everything else."

Well...some lenses for 35mm, folding MF cams, and etc. others have some movement potential;).

There's a place and time for everything, though I struggle a lot seeing that I can easily get a nicely exposed film based 35mm-MF image requiring no PS vs. having to deal with processing RAW files that can take a bit of time and still not get me the end results I was hoping for.

Digital can be an entire art in itself given it all becomes post process work and trying to find a proper workflow that can both give a print that met the eye when taken as well as doing more creative stuff without burning too much of the file to still be able to get a nice sized print with it.

[jetcode]

Don. This reminds me of a certain publisher's blog where he discussed a two-day outing to photograph a certain area. This person has transitioned entirely to digital a long time ago so all shots were digital captures. Out of this shoot, he had a 12-image "portfolio" in mind. To me, the troubling thing with this endeavour was that he had shot well over 800 images that weekend ! That is a whopping amount of images and is akin to going rabbit hunting with a sub-machine gun. Spray the hell out of everything and surely you're bound to hit "something". I don't know about you but knowing this makes the resulting portfolio much less appealing as a result (to me, that is).

Why? When I studied with Galen Rowell for a weekend he mentioned that he had shot over 1 million images and out of the 1000 top sellers had 15-20 favorites. He was as pro as they come. Most certainly taking the time to dial in an image is worth it but have you ever been in a situation where you would like to have 30-50 images of a particularly arresting subject only to have the time for 1 or 2?

[Don Boyd]

Daniel, I see your point. With an infinite number of monkeys at computers, we will have written everything ever written. And, that influences the value of it for the reader or, in our case, the viewer.

One day this past winter at the Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, I stood behind my 4x5 waiting for the light and the one shot that never came. Next to me, several photographers with lenses seemingly longer than my arm, were firing away like machine gunners. I am assuming that they got many images that they could sell, enjoy or use in some way. While I admit to some level of frustration at leaving without an image, I still experienced satisfaction at the process of rejecting potential images and just having been there. I also see my periods of "no shots, shots, no shots . . ." as a continuum, so that photographing isn't about that one day at the Bosque, but a series of days, weeks or longer.

The more I think about this whole issue of "soul, technology, digital, film, analogue, etc." the clearer I get about the difference between outcome or product versus process. I don't think that film or digital is the question, and while my experience suggests that large format demands more attention - I have never forgotten to pull the slider on my dslr - each potentially lends itself to our deepest expression. I think it is more about the spirit of play and, as Joseph Campbell said, following our bliss. And I think that this is where we are in trouble in the 21st Century. So much seems to be done solely for its outcome, and few things are done for the reward of conscious doing. I suspect that few of you folks that shoot for a living aren't playing when you are working, and there are not many of you who get paid for your photographic play, right Kirk? For the rest of us who support our bliss with non-photographic day jobs, the time we invest in large format is play, something that has no other outcome than our enjoyment and joy. And, it sounds like some of you on this forum have found ways of doing that using digital gear.

For me, the process is the outcome, at least the most important one. Behind my belief in the importance of living my process is the trust that I will make my best images as a result. The conundrum is how to let go of the outcome, but still want the best images. Others, whose livelihoods depend on their photographic skills and product quantity have other goals. We like to think that we can see the outcome of our process in our product. I'm not convinced that that is always true. I am convinced that in my case, with my now oh so brief experience using a dslr, I spend more time musing (thinking, reflecting, wondering) about a potential image with my 4x5. (And I sure miss a lot of images while musing.) I guess my goal is to be able to reap the advantages of the digital system, while being able to hold on to what I get from the reflective process. What I don't yet know is if I can do that, if it is a matter of discipline or other skills I do not yet possess (wow, is it easy to pull the trigger on the Pentax!, and at no additional cost!!)

Sorry, a bit of a ramble here.

[stehei]

My 2 cents on this interesting thread,
I switched 8*10 half a year ago, after 4 years of working digital,
I still work digital for commercial work, and because LF
has its disadvantages for some shoots, where action, dynamics
etc are needed.
8*10, nevertheless scares the hell out of me,
AND has given me the greatest thrill since I started taking pictures
some 15 years ago. As a portrait photographer the luminocity
of the an 8*10 portrait just can't be beat. The tonal scale, the
3d effect, I've never experienced it with smaller formats.
I still struggle with the camera, the tripod, the dimensions that
are added (perspective control, sharpness control) but I've
set my goal, I want to master this camera. Not because its the
alfa or the omega, but because the thing most equal to meeting
somebody is looking at a large print from an 8*10 negative.

[Kirk Gittings]

Don, At the risk of being a cornball here........

I consider making art to be a gift from God (or creator or however one conceptualizes it) and I take that gift very seriously. For me it is never play even though I really enjoy both the process and the product.

It is a genuine plus usually that people are willing to pay me to do this work (though that compromises the work sometimes and then I mentally have to just play along, and do the best I can for them and bide my time for real work that satisfies me). i can't imagine doing anything else now. I have been working for myself for so long that I am basically unemployable in the usual sense.

[ASRafferty]

What a wonderful discussion. I was in graduate school with Tom at Syracuse, and I just dropped him a note with a link, in case he'd like to come take a look. If you'd like to learn more about him and his work:

http://www.careofthesoul.net/

You can write to him from the website too, if you wish.

I was also delighted to see the mention of Joseph Campbell, whose work (whose being) was one of the cornerstones of the study of art, culture, and religion in that department in those days.

If you'd like to see more about "the theology of play," you might look for the work of David Miller, who was our teacher there, and wrote extensively on the meaning of play and meaning "at play."

So, thanks to all of you from an innocent bystander who can do no more than recognize the language when she hears it, but who nonetheless deeply appreciates this discussion from her own perspective.

[Don Boyd]

Kirk, I see play as a sacred act, more along the lines of what I think ASRaferty seems to be referring to in her note, or what this brief description of Diane Ackerman's book, Deep Play, is alluding to:

In a meandering meditation, poet and naturalist Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses, etc.) employs the term "deep play" to refer to a combination of what others sometimes call "flow" or "the zone" and what anthropologists call "sacred play." Her subject can be understood as intensity, or even ecstasy, those moments of heightened experience when the mind and senses are working at full capacity.

Our problem in part is that play has come to mean a form of frivolity, licentiousness or even hedonism, not the serious soul and heart satisfying experience of deep engagement. I think that the negative seriousness of play is a product of the Industrial Revolution, when we started to artifically measure performance. I know that you have a keen interest and academic background in Archaelogy. I read somewhere recently that some cultural anthropologists believe that hunters and gatherers worked on average 3 days a week. Without TV, books, bars and the internet, what did they do with the rest of their time? I believe that the petroglyphs and pictographs that you and I both admire so much are the result in part of their authors' ability to play from the deepest part of their spirit. What if all of our photographic efforts came from that same place as those of the rock artists? Would we discover fire for the second time?

[Maris Rusis]

Making photographs and looking intensely at photographs is what I have done on a daily basis for the last couple of decades. But there are still too many pictures for the time available and I have to be selective.

A powerful filtering principle is the idea that I won't care to put a photograph through my mind that the putative photographer didn't care to put through their mind first. Out go all the intervalometer shots, all the motor drive shots, all the "shoot first look later" shots, all the "made in the lab by someone else" shots, all the Diana/Holga/Lomo/pinhole/zone plate shots. What's left?

Well, there is that type of photography where the photographer gathers and contemplates a real optical image on a ground glass. And then personally thinks through and does all the steps to make the final photograph, start to finish, by their own hand. Only in large format work is this particular quality most likely to be found and celebrated.

[AF-ULF]

From the Atlantic Monthly, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2008. The full article is on line at the Atlantic Monthly web site. The following discussion caught my attention, and seems to fit in to this discussion:

“Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once again flow from his mind to the page.

But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”
“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media scholar Friedrich A. Kittler, Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”

[claudiocambon]

I like to think of all cameras as tools, and I still think in terms of format and negative shape, rather than in digital vs. film. It so has it that 35mm is my least favorite shape, so, while I shoot all my work commercially digitally with a 5D, my own work is all still film based on 4x5", 6x7 and 6x6cm, depending on how I want to see things. In other words, I recognize the immense convenience of digital, but unless my preferred negative shapes are taken into consideration by the digital industry some day (how about a camera with a sensor big enough that lets you change negative shape in camera?!), I will keep shooting film for as long as possible.


To me photography has always derived strength form its immediacy, and, when digital adds to that immediacy, I welcome it. What is harder is how much more quickly everything else moves. Being able to slow down enough to receive the world, to hear what it has to say, be it in digital or on film, is still the greatest luxury I can afford myself.

Machines are invented to spare us work, but on the other hand we have to race to keep up with them; slowing down, though, is the only way for me to make good pictures.

[Mark Sawyer]

I like to think of all cameras as tools...

Cameras are just tools. So are our eyes, and our minds, perhaps our souls...

It's important to me that my cameras have a history of their own, and have made photographs unknown to me before they came to me, and will keep producing photographs after I'm gone. They are tools, and artifacts, and conduits and reminders, and sources of joy and frustration. And one in particular is an old friend.

Don is right in there being something of the soul in the way we work, at least for some of us. It's an arcane ritual we go through making an image, but we meet it with growing familiarity and skill, and it must give us something back. Look at the effort, thought, resources, feelings, and all else we pour into it. In so many ways it's the most simple and basic form of photography, yet in so many ways, the most challenging, and seen by so many as the most "elite", even though it boils down to just a box, a lens, and a piece of film.

I have a dslr, hell, I even teach students how to use them. But if there's an image in my mind that means something to me, I go fetch the view camera, without a second thought.


Daniel, I see your point. With an infinite number of monkeys at computers, we will have written everything ever written...

If you believe in evolution, that's already happened...