One of the problems that arises when using large format cameras is the difficulty in determining exposure when the bellows are extended beyond normal ‘landscape’ use. By that I mean, when you are shooting anything from say, 10ft away to infinity, your exposure will be whatever your meter indicates.
However, if you decide to shoot something [...]
As I get older I am occasionally reminded that I am in fact, knocking on a bit. The trouble is, I don’t feel any older than I did in my mid thirties.
A similar feeling pervades when I think of my standing as an artist/photographer. Am I well known, or still a small contributor whose work [...]
Have you amassed a large collection of negatives since you began photography? how about transparencies, prints, your camera collection?
What is going to happen to all this stuff when you die?
I have amassed a very large collection of all of the above, plus a collection of other photographers prints, glass negatives, books and ephemera.
I have my [...]
Portraits have the potential to be amongst the strongest photographs we ever produce, but often the results are dull and lifeless.
Just sitting someone in front of a commercial background and firing a studio flash at him or her will produce a picture of a person and strictly speaking will produce a portrait, but will it [...]
Split Grade printing in it’s most basic form is a process whereby two exposures are given, one through a Grade 5 filter and one through a Grade 00 filter. These two exposures can be varied in order to arrive at the correct contrast for almost any negative. I have another, simpler version which i will [...]
As photographers we are primarily concerned with light, but often the most interesting shapes come from the absence of light – the shadows.?We are usually instructed as photographers, that our exposures should be worked out accurately to ensure that we have plenty of shadow detail, but I often find that having a deep shadow, or [...]
I’ve been thinking recently about how I see myself as a photographer/artist and how my students see themselves. They generally downgrade themselves with comments like; ‘I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be shooting this kind of stuff’ ‘Is this ok?’ and ‘I feel like I’ll never be as good as you’.?The trouble with this [...]
I have been out on a number of occasions since writing the last post. Some of the films are processed, but not all. We have had days when I could get to my darkroom and lots of days when I could not. I have had to scan the negatives to show the results here, but [...]
It’s almost a year since I started this blog and one of the first articles I wrote was about shooting in the snow on Ortho film (See ‘High contrast snow scenes’, Feb ‘09). I also wrote another article on achieving higher contrast by altering the film ISO and increasing the development time (see ‘Flexible film’ [...]