I've been in large format since 1993. Self taught with books and lots of trial and error and failure. At first I was going to be an important arteeest. That was no fun and too much work, and I have the attention span of a gnat. Plus I live so far in the middle of nowhere that it was silly to think I could ever run with the big dogs. And I'm a republican, so there's that. No such thing as a conservative person who is artistic. Just ask Imogen.
But, all that said, 26 years later, I've assembled a very large body of work, mostly unseen, for a while some was put on my own web pages, but that's about the extent of it. When I die my kids will have a large mess to clean up. Thousands (quite literally) of LF negatives, mostly 8X10.
But over the course of time, what I learned that I enjoy the most is just playing with the stuff. ALL of the stuff. I probably have 300 viable large format lenses and I'd venture maybe 25 - ish cameras. Yesterday I bought a Stigmatic and a Protar VII for the 4X5 outfit. I'll have fun playing with both of those, and in the course of that pleasure, likely fix their problems associated with being 90 years old and also add to the pile of negatives. But the fall-out is, I'm not a rich man. I'm just a wage earner nearing retirement. And the way my hobby pays it's way is, I buy things, I fix them, I make them better than they got to me, I preserve them for another generation, and often, I sell them. For a profit if possible. Yes, I'm a capitalist. My deal with my wife is, the hobby pays it's own way. It doesn't come out of our regular paycheck.
All in all, I've had a good time doing all this. But some people look upon me with a scowl. Selling stuff for a profit, even if you fixed it, is taboo. Evil.
The For Sale section here used to be part of the fun. That was squashed successfully. Bravo to you purists who judge me for enjoying my hobby my way instead of yours.
Bookmarks