Hello Everyone,

I've joined here to get into large format (of course). I've been into photography for some 35 years or so. It all started as a kid when my Dad let me use his Yashica-C and Kodak Retinette. I learned darkroom work in high school and had a part-time job in college making photos for my school's alumni magazine. When digital came on the scene, I went that way, and today I operate a small business (just me) making photos for home builders, remodelers, and some commercial real estate agents.

My primary passion outside of work is landscape and nature photography. I love big, sweeping landscape images, especially in black and white.

My re-entry into film happened in 2015 when (God bless her!) my wife took me to an exhibition of Vivian Maier's work at the University of Kentucky's Fine Art Gallery. I was blown away; the next day I found a Yashica TLR on Craigslist for $50 and started back into black and white film photography. Since then, I have experimented a lot with 35mm and medium format. Of course I started developing my own film again, and for the past several years I scanned the negatives to make prints. Just recently I was fortunate to be gifted an old Beseler enlarger, so I have started printing in the darkroom as well.

I find myself preferring the depth and feel of an image created with medium format, not mention the resolution. And looking at artists' work in large format, I see even more attractive aspects, so here I am. If I understand it correctly, after 30 days in the forum I will be able to see the classifieds, and maybe by that time I will have figured out which camera and lenses will be right for me (probably 4x5 to get started).

Thanks for reading and I look forward to learning from everyone here!

Ed
Lexington, KY USA