Large Format Channels on YouTube

[r.e.]

Australian Matt Weddis does portraits, headshots, product and corporate photography. In August, he decided to take up large format. So far, he's made five videos about the experience. From his first foray with his Chamonix 45F-2 and Ilford FP4 Plus: “I’ve got a lot of experience with film. I shot about five sheets of film in the studio of 4x5. I’ve shot about three rolls of 35 mil. So, I guess, based on that, I can probably be a YouTube expert by now”. Added to the post #1 list.

[r.e.]

I've added David Hancock from Colorado to the list in post #1 under Camera Makers. Originating as a Kickstarter campaign, he makes 4x5, 5x7, 8x10 and 4x10 pinhole cameras under the brand name 5119 Cameras. Over the last few days, he's added several videos to his YouTube channel covering assembly of the cameras and operation. It appears that sales will be handled through an Etsy store.

[r.e.]

I've added Analogue Andy/Andrew O'Neill to the list in post #1. From British Columbia, Andrew has been a member of this forum for 18 years. Most of his photography is large format, and he plans to add to the five videos that he's offered over the last month. His video showing photographs that he's made about Japan's coal mines is the subject of a current thread on the forum: Abandoned Japan Coal Mine Video

[Andrew O'Neill]

I've added Analogue Andy/Andrew O'Neill to the list in post #1. From British Columbia, Andrew has been a member of this forum for 18 years. Most of his photography is large format, and he plans to add to the five videos that he's offered over the last month. His video showing photographs that he's made about Japan's coal mines is the subject of a current thread on the forum: Abandoned Japan Coal Mine Video

Thank you so much for doing that! I'm planning a shoot with the 8x10 tomorrow (hopefully forecast is correct!), and making a video of it. Cheers!

[r.e.]

I learned today that Magnum photographer Alec Soth has a YouTube channel, which I've added to the list of U.S. channels in post #1. In his videos, which he started making last January, Soth talks about books of photography, and sometimes about the relationship between images and text. His latest video, below, is an introduction to his own new book, A Pound of Pictures, which will be released by U.K. publisher MACK in January:

[r.e.]

New addition to post #1: 유별남, South Korea.

This gentleman is making a series called Walking with a Large Format Camera, for which he uses a Graflex Crown Graphic and a handheld 6x12. The walks are on South Korea's largest island, Jeju Island, part of which is a World Heritage Site due to volcanic features. However, that's not why he does the walks. His family is from Jeju, and the walks are about an uprising on Jeju just before the Korean War. Earlier this month, he posted a video that includes an English explanation of the series. In the phrase "Jeju 4.3 Massacre", 4.3 refers to April 3, 1948. As I understand it, a "bitgae" was a teenage boy who was posted as a lookout during the uprising. In 2003, after decades of suppressing the very existence of the uprising, the South Korean President apologised to Jeju Islanders:

I was born in Jeju Island, but have not lived in Jeju since my family moved to the mainland when I was young. I lived in Busan, speaking the Busan dialect, and also in Seoul, using the Seoul dialect. I lived as a person on the mainland. What’s fortunate was that I spent every vacation at my grandpa’s home in Jeju when I was young. To me, Jeju Island was something to boast to others that it was my hometown, but with only fragments of memories.

During a summer vacation in middle school, I discovered a piece of paper with the words ‘Jeju 4.3 Massacre,’ while rolling a huge mandarin on the floor of my grandpa’s house. I took it to my grandpa and asked, “What is this?” Then, Grandpa caned me a lot and I ran away from the house. When I was fuming, shedding tears of resentment, Grandma came over to fetch me. Grandma repeatedly asked me to not talk about it ever again, and gave me chilled cucumber salad.

My parents were born during the Jeju 4.3 Massacre. I have no idea how they went through such chaos under those kinds of circumstances, but I guess I was able to exist since they made it through the turbulent times. I have never been told about the Jeju massacre from my parents. They may have nothing to say since they were also too young to remember those days, anyway. So we lived pretending to know nothing, but at some point I started to question. Why we have many relatives in Japan, why we also have relatives in North Korea, why Grandpa has such severe conflicts with some other relatives, what the guilt-by-association system is....

While I was getting answers to those questions one by one, the true nature of something that could not be discussed for a long time was slowly revealed. I had to do something, anything. I took my camera, searching for stories of seventy years ago here and there. The ‘site’ is more important than anything else in documentary photographs, but there was nowhere left. Even if I took pictures of the graves and monuments for the pain, the damaged districts (though the whole of Jeju Island may be the damaged districts), or the faces of the survivors (though all of the Jeju residents may be the survivors) in black and white photographs, they were not the ‘site’ anyway. It just felt obstinate even to express that I hear the cry in the past from the wind and feel the sorrow from the sound of the waves. Time and agony lengthened and deepened as such.

Then I found a way to walk into the scenery of the past myself. That is how the work for Bitgae began. A Bitgae who kept watch all day long must have started a day with alarm, on a hill or at a corner of a road, holding a horn in one hand and a boiled potato in the other hand.... The boy’s time, which began with anxiety, must have turned into boredom and annoyance. Or sometimes he must have looked around the surroundings with curiosity, wondering at the scene in front of him. I wanted to look at the scenery in front of me with such emotion by becoming a Bitgae myself. No, that was the only way for me.

Wikipedia:
Jeju Island
Jeju Uprising

[r.e.]

New addition to post #1: 유별남, South Korea.

This is a video by KBS1, South Korea's public television network, about an exhibit of some of his photographs from Jeju Island:

[r.e.]

I came across Ari Jaaksi's channel when he posted a Christmas video about making photographs with his Graflex in the middle of a snowstorm in Tampere, Finland. Jaaksi shoots several formats, and it was unclear whether he should be on this list. However, he's won me over with his latest video below. He's a character, and this video is sure to elicit a good laugh. Jaaksi also makes the music for his videos, which he has on Spotify and Apple Music.

A pinhole photography perspective to global culinary oddities — clickbait

[r.e.]

Guy Bellingham is a UK portrait photographer and Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS). He apparently builds some of his own large format cameras, and he also works with vintage lenses and the tintype process. So far, he has three videos on his YouTube channel, which he's using to present narrative work. He calls two of the videos "ultra large format video". He says that they were shot with a camera of his own design (presumably an existing motion picture camera modified) and an 1850 Hermagis petzval lens. The third is a promotional video for his tintype portrait work. I've added him to the list in post #1.

This is Bellingham's latest video, Smile by Charlie Chaplin, in which he accompanies an accordionist on a handsaw. Needless to say, his "ultra large format" videos don't fit YouTube's 16:9 aspect ratio:

[r.e.]

Curious about Bellingham's channel, I did a little searching. The woman in his "Ultra Large Format" videos is Kesha Pullum. She's a member of Bash Street Theatre, a Cornwall theatre company that was founded 30 years ago in the street performer tradition. Her uncle is one of the two founders of the company.

Bellingham has written blog posts about his video camera and 450mm f/4.5 Wallet and Hermagis petzval lens. I suspect that there are filmmakers in the UK who will be interested in his invitation to hire the camera and him as operator. Understandably absent from his blog posts, I'd like to see technical information about the camera.

Last September, the BBC made a short video about Bellingham's tintype photographs: Photographer's images 'like ghosts coming out the mist'.

A West Country filmmaker and painter named Lucky Everett has made a 4:30m video about him called Wet Plates and Tintypes - Guy Bellingham. Not surprised to learn that he has a background in circus and theatre performance. How many photographers know how to play a handsaw?




The U.K. newspaper The Guardian says this about Bellingham's background in an article about last month's Photo North Festival in Manchester:

Having studied art and photography at college, Guy Bellingham trained in circus arts and embarked on an international career in fire and pyrotechnic performance. Using his understanding of theatrics, light and performance, he returned to photography with a new approach. He produced a series of tintype portraits of performers, gaining him a prestigious fellowship to the Royal Photographic Society. Guy continues to experiment with new hybrid techniques, specialising in digital and wet plate photography

People interested in tintype may find it useful to watch a detailed 23 minute video about Bellingham's lenses and tintype process that I've posted in the Wet Plate forum. It's from the YouTube channel Harv Video/Audio Stuff: Video on Guy Bellingham's Process for Making Tintype Photographs.