"Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China
Sadly real life has kept me sometimes reading and less often making a post. That all said I'm not using a camera to make photographs very often these days .. I've been more involved with non-obscure photography... good to see this place is still around and familiar names are still here. it surprises me there aren't 10,000 more users, and 30,000 more lurkers seeing so many people have subscribed to Lina Bessonova's yuutube and instantgram channels. Seems she is single handedly keeping large format photography alive...
I can’t get through the Bessanova videos I’ve tried to watch because the audio is so terrible.
Update: I see on her own videos, the audio is fine. It’s the interviews with her done by other people that have poor audio.
Thanks John, here is her website https://www.linabessonova.photography/
Maybe LFPF becomes a place to link to outside experts
Tin Can
To me the golden era of this forum is over. In 2007-2014 it was vibrant and very active with a lot of different posters. If a question was asked, yes, many regulars answered quickly (like me, my work has me right on a computer at all times), but others would also engage. You'd get people answering that had decades of experience, so you could learn how things were done in the 1950s-1980s. But you also had energetic new people like Frank Petrino, Eddie Gunks, Ed Ross, and Jim Galli that posted amazing LF work, AND hosted get togethers and showed their work on multiple sites. They didn't just live on the forum to play expert, they actually DID photography, in the world, and invited others.
Between the old and new blood, it hooked me, and I became a very active LF shooter, did workshops, travelled the world buying equipment, and sold many things to other photographers here. Even started writing some articles for magazines.
Then....it started to die off. Many of the very active members disappeared. The sales section became null and void, usually just a few selling small ticket items. The members that were here were either lurkers just waiting to buy a brass lens that appeared to flip it, or "Super Members", that would answer each and every post, every day, every time, dominating the discourse. Many threads became about camping, or beets, bears, Battlestar Galactica. If a newbie joins and posts a question, it is now ALWAYS answered by the same 5 members.
That's the key idicator....it's not about the numbers of members, it's about how many are responders and their frequency. This site is no longer a forum, it's a platform for just a few members. I was one of the frequent responders once, I recognize the irony. But I was always here posting about the photography, and not answering if I didn't know the answer. Today, a few answer for everyone else, every time, every post, sometimes a dozen replies a day by the same person. So I only check in once every few months.
Like the Collodion.com site I've written about and tried to help keeping open, it's also become dead as a doornail. So some of the problem with forums is no one want's to be identified, remembered, and to have relationships. They want a quick, inane question, "what LENS...should I buy?" and get a flurry of anoymous answers. They do that on Facebook.
Last edited by goamules; 18-Jan-2021 at 16:09.
Garrett
flickr galleries
Gee, Garrett, I wasn't on the forum in the golden years, but for me it is without reserve the best one going for my photographic concerns. Yes, there are very familiar names, and yes, like most forums, the conversation goes, in my view, more often than necessary off into contentions that were better handled in private messages (PMs) than in diversion of an original poster's (OP's) question. But I have received plenty of responses from fairly quiet members or persons whose name is entirely new to me, and the advice I have received is invaluable. I have on a number of occasions pursued specific questions in PMs and usually received very responsive and helpful additional info. Also, I find the general level of work presented here better than other fora I have come across -- plenty I'm not interested in, but I find a few images each week that I admire in one respect or another.
Philip Ulanowsky
Sine scientia ars nihil est. (Without science/knowledge, art is nothing.)
www.imagesinsilver.art
https://www.flickr.com/photos/156933346@N07/
John,
I was unaware of Lina until your comment
For the last hour been on her site, I won't go on any unsocial media
https://www.linabessonova.photography/
is her big enlarger a Calumet 10 X 10?
Tin Can
Bookmarks