Apart from the image of the month, you won’t often see my large format
work on this blog. The logistics of prepping film for presentation on the
Internet would be crazy difficult while traveling and the Internet does the
work no favors anyway as dumbing it down for the screen leavens everything out
to the same size and luminance, stripping from large format film nearly
everything that makes it distinctive. I’ve a consumer grade Canon SLR that’ll offer
a reasonable visual approximation of the work I’m doing and that’s what you’ll
see here.
It’s my intention to post at least once a week, occasionally more. Some
weeks that won’t be possible, as in the vastness of the Superior basin are
great tracts where modern facilitators like cell phones and Internet connection
are only rumor so if I’m not here I’m there and will be back here presently.
Same goes for those of you who might purchase a print. If I’m on the road it’ll
have to wait but rest assured you’ll take delivery at my earliest opportunity.
I intend to be a shameless shill for the region, the land and the
people who live upon it. In time, there’ll be a list on the sidebar of places
to see, along with where to sleep and eat while traveling to see them. There’ll
also be a separate list of reference materials on the natural and cultural
history of the place, both of which possess a length and breadth that never
ceases to amaze me.
I’ll shill for the place and the people ‘cause while we’d not be here
if it weren’t for those 350 sheets of large format film in my freezer, that’s
just potential art and must wait for future folk to determine what it’s worth.
The people and land of the Superior basin, that’s in the here and now and their
worth is inestimable, as we’ll see.
Gear is of great interest to photo geeks and while I’ve never shared
that passion I could hardly write a photographer’s blog without at least a
passing nod in their direction.
My camera of choice is a Linhof Technica a few years older than I am.
It’s a marvel of German precision engineering and virtually indestructible save
for its leather bellows, which I had replaced a few years back by an elderly
gent who handcrafted a new one. When first considering large format field
photography, I too longed for a beautiful cherry wood model with shiny brass
knurls and a warm wooden sheen dripping with romantic panache. Then a wise old
photographer told me: “All wood warps, eventually”. As I intended to subject my
camera to the occasional swamp in the rain and didn’t look forward to poppin’
for a new one ever, I bought my Linhof used and have proudly lugged its proletarian
bulk around ever since. I figured it would outlast me and now at least in terms
of usefulness it seems not.
I shoot 4x5 color transparencies and that makes me something of a
heretic in those more cloistered corners of fine art photography because traditionally,
B&W was the only choice for serious photographic artists. It was said and
sometimes is still that color obscures subject, that it distracts from
compositional brilliance and is a lazy way to impress the common folk who don’t
know better anyway. Or words to that effect.
I once met two large format shooters on a bridge over a wilderness
river. They were happy to go all geek with me as we’re part of a fairly
exclusive club. When they found out I shoot color they immediately stopped
talking to me, turned their backs and pretended I didn’t exist. I walked on
beside that chromatically nuanced river in the positively verdant forest and
thought: “Dudes. The world is in stinkin’ color.”
Truth is color photography never was a fine art because color dyes on
photographic paper are impermanent. Everyone who’s got a shoebox full of family
photos with faded or shifted color knows that. But now that I can craft a giclée print
that when properly cared for will likely outlast everyone alive, their children
and their children too, it can be said that like sound didn’t actually ruin the
movies, color doesn’t ruin the image either.
And besides, the world is in color.
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