Why I shoot Large Format

[Cletus]

I'm starting this whole thing over again. I just deleted about 1,000 words of preamble (it's my bad habit) and decided that if anyone was actually gonna read this, I should try to be a little less long winded. So here goes....

I live in downtown Dallas and there's this nice little block-long city park right next to my building. Today there was some kind of festival going on (I noticed this on my way to 7-Eleven, which is katty corner from my building) and there were a LOT of people out! Even more than usual for this kind of thing. There were also an inordinately large number of people milling about with big impressive looking professional DSLRs with fast lenses mounted. Clearly (if the gear was any clue) every one of them a sly and stealthy pro "street shooter", cashing in on the many opportunities for candid people photography, decisive moments, juxtapositions and so forth...and of course, anther golden opportunity to show off all your expensive, high end equipment. I even saw a guy with a big 300/2 type thing mounted (what???) and one of those belt systems packing a couple more big lenses and probably a "backup" body or two, from the look of this doof. All that stuff had to weigh sitxy pounds and I can't imagine he got a single "capture" that wasn't blurry for being too close to focus. But I'm getting off track again and we've all seen this guy before anyway...

My point is, there was indeed a day in the not too distant past when I would have been right in there with them, doing the exact same thing, albeit with a much more civilized and less conspicuous M6 and 50 'Cron (loaded with Tri-X). In fact, for the first...oh, 15 years or so of my photography 'career' I really wanted to be the modern day version of HCB, or Garry Winogrand (or name just about any other mid-century Magnum Photog who did that kind of work). All of my gear acquisitions were directed toward this goal until finally the Leica kit ended all the GAS and I could finally get to work! And none of it was ever very fulfilling. The street shooting I mean. I rarely ever printed anything I liked and I always hated processing and dealing with hundreds and hundreds of frames of 35mm negatives after a shoot or a trip. Digital is much worse in this regard, IMO. It seems easier and you don't have to deal with the chemicals, but...I see these guys in the park with their high end cameras and gear and think about what that must be like. I don't do digital, but I've dabbled a few times, and the prospect of having to "postprocess" 1,500 files after a day of shooting appeals to me not at all! It was bad enough with 35mm negatives, but at least that was something tangible and seemed to have some physical value. To me a digital file, is just...nothing really.

Whenever I looked through my ubiquitous Box-O-Prints, everything I saw in there was the same kind of static, stationary subjects I shoot LF with now. It took me awhile to make the transition and my first big camera was a Hasselblad, which kept me busy for a year or two until finally the standard Cambo 4x5, where I actually learned the value of the large format negative. Or better, the value of the large format way of making photographs.

I wonder how many others here have followed a similar progression. I think for the first years I spent with a camera, learning the technical fundamentals and enjoying playing with the gear, before I even recognized the existence of large format photography, was a completely necessary step in my development as a photographer. With all that, it wasn't until I really got going with large format that I actually became a photographer and the years that came before was just a learning phase, prior to the beginning of the real work. Learning and growing as a photographer will continue for the rest of my life - I would've grown bored and quit a long time ago otherwise - but I do feel like the time I spent walking the streets and the markets trying to be a street shooter was really just my education phase, getting me ready for what I do now every day.

[Teodor Oprean]

I feel the same way as you do, both about small format film and about digital. Yes, it's a necessary stage in the learning process to handle and use those smaller format cameras, but eventually the journey has to lead to the real roots of photography. I use all of my cameras as if they were large format cameras: always on a solid tripod and always slowing down deliberately to think about the composition before making any exposures. I realized after becoming comfortable with 35mm, medium format and digital that my style of photography is intrinsically tripod-bound and involves carrying lots of equipment, so it just makes sense to use a camera that produces as large a negative as possible.

[Leigh]

For me... quality.

- Leigh

[dave clayton]

Me i was very disheartened with digital workflow and the lack of a quantifiable image or the lack of anything to hold or look at at the end of a days shooting.I'd rather be able to have that control and the sheer quality that 5x4 film gives me, and the ability to adjust process to suit the images and astatic required is almost as flexible as digital with the developers and film stock that are available with LF
what ive noticed is the amount of shots i walk away from where as with digital i would have a had a go and taken a few shots. I find the sheer cost of the film some form of initial quality control, and when you do decide to make an image the amount of time you take is double what i would have taken on digital.

[Brian Ellis]

I use LF (to the extent I do, which isn't nearly as often as it used to be) only because I enjoy the whole large format process - from loading the film to drying the negatives and everything in between. To me enjoyment of the process is the only logical reason for using LF these days. If one doesn'treally enjoy it there are other ways of achieving essentially the same results that are easier, cheaper, faster, and in some cases better (IMHO of course). But I just get a lot of pleasure out of photographing with a LF camera, a pleasure I never got with medium format film and that I don't get with my high-end digital camera.

[David Lobato]

I like a challenge to try hard, and when success has more meaning and more gratification. It is hard work to learn and practice LF photography, but the rewards are proportionally better for me. The extra effort usually shows in the photos I have on sheet film. And when there is significant cost every time you pull a dark slide and press the cable release you have to be more selective about what's/who's in front of the camera.

[Preston]

There is an almost undefinable sense of relaxation I experience when I'm out with my LF camera that I don't have when using digital or 645. I can, in a way, separate myself from most all of the world while under the darkcloth; seeing the image on the groundglass. I can still hear the birds, flowing water, the wind, and feel the chill of the early morning.

To me, using my 4x5 is about being connected with all the good things going on around me, and not being in a hurry.

--P

[Cletus]

Lots of commonality here - much of which I completely agree with - and another idea also occurred to me, or maybe just finally 'gelled' if that's a better word. As a photographer, you're supposed to use the right tool for the job, as is with many other things.

A Large Format Camera is just a tool and could almost even be called an obsolete one these days, or at least with film loaded in it, (rather than a modern 2x3 with a Phase One back mounted). But there's so much more to the process and the practice of LF Photography, aside from just the camera we use. The image quality inherant in a big film negative is indisputable, but it's also true that digital has given the idea of image quality a whole new meaning. New paradigm even. So it's not just quality that keeps me (us?) in it. I personally love the look and feel and overall 'sensual' quality of film and of the handmade prints I make from the negatives. That's a kind of quality that can't even be be compared to digital, because it's in a whole 'nother ballpark altogether, IMO. Handmade vs. Machine made, analog vs. digital, and on and on... But even that isn't the main reason I keep at it - it's definitely one of the biggies - but still not the defining...essence. The reason why I keep doing LF.

I think if I had to give only one reason, though there are many, I would have to say what many of you have already said - it's the slowing down and thinking. Looking. Looking at the light, a the details, learning to see. It's the stopping to consider whether something is even worth making a picture of, rather than just firing away at anything even vaguely photogenic (which is an exaggeration, but still true at last) It's deciding that when something is worth making picture, it means getting the big camera out, and for some, even hiking some distance with it, setting up the tripod, going through all the methodical, time consuming and sometimes cumbersome, motions required to make a picture. It's contemplating and composing on the Groundglass. (Focusing a view camera can hardly even be explained to a contemporary digiphog) and then finally exposing one or two pieces of film. Not 137 'captures' and see later if you got something passable in "Post". That's not what it means to be a Photographer, that's what it means to be a Camera Enthusiast! Pardon me if you happen to be one of the exceptions in that case....

I could go on and on (and often do) but these notions are, to me, the important things that constitute "process" and it's process that is missing, I believe, from common popular photography these days. - Except for the hard working and thoughtful pro, who's applying much practice and experience to make quality digital photographs for his living. I'm talking about artists and amateurs here, which is what I am and will always be relative to photography.

I hope you agree. It's ideas like these that will keep this art alive and kicking and growing for many years to come. Now, it's time for me to get going. I'm on the road today and for next couple weeks, headed for New Mexico and Utah to go make some pictures! Best Light to you all.

[Rick A]

I use LF to re-kindle my interest in photography. I've shot film for half a century and was feeling like there was nothing left for me to shoot. Seeing things through the ground glass, then having to deliberate on composition and exposure, causes me to be more involved and challenges me to "see" better. Of course, the image quality is far superior to any other format I use, even 6x9 which I've been shooting for years.

[Bogdan Karasek]

I found it interesting reading as to the different ways we came together with LF. In my case, it came to me. I was in highschool, and a friend ran the school darkroom. I loved, and still do, hands on doing things. And my friend showed me how I could make pictures. I was hooked. Borrowed my father's Agfa Karat 12 and started developing and printing. Three weeks into this, my friend leaves the school because they were moving..... anyway, the Principal hands me the keys to the darkroom and tells me that that makes me the school photographer and supply the school paper and the yearbook with photos of all school events, and i had standing permission to leave class whenever duty called (except at exams). Once missed a week. Anyway, I was sixteen and I walk right into LF, a 4x5 Pacemaker Crown Graphic, Xenar 135/4.7, 6 double sided film holders (all fits inside a Yankee tank), and an Omega D2v enlarger. So, I used LF to record all the athletic events, football, hockey, soccer, basketball, men's/woman's, bantam, junior, senior.... I was busy. Had to do a game with 12 sheets of 4x5 film. 60 minutes of a game with 12 sheets. So, I had to stop and think about what I was doing. I bade my time.

And I think that that is true for every body who comes to LF. You realize that there is a lot riding on that sheet of film. As somebody mentioned, you have to stop and look, "what am I trying to accomplish and what is the best way to accomplish that". I also found that there is a change in thinking, work practice, as you change formats in LF, from the square 6x6 to 4x5, then from 4x5 > 8x10. I try and imagine working 20x24... must be awesome. And thinkng about it brought me to thinking about shape and size of the space inside the image; and i discovered that the 6x6 image could be composed on the ground glass, a first outline of what I will refine in the darkroom. Now I have modified several spare backs to get 4x4", 5x5", and 8x8". I find even going from a 8x10 image on a ground glass to a 8x8" space, requires that I change my way of thinking. I no longer observe the "golden mean" but rather a like a "go" board.... shapes and shadows forming.... in a space that does not favour one side or the other. There is no portrait or landscape mode. It's all square. I found that I had to change my way of looking, organizing in a new space, composing differently.... and it leads to experimentation, with soft or cutting edge lenses, contacts printed on AZO and developped in Amidol.... Anyway, I am discovering a whole new way of seeing.

I still use a Pacemaker Crown 4x5 Xenar 135/4.7..... and the red focusing light works and a Omega D2cv in the darkroom.

I'll stop rambling now....

Regards,
Bogdan