hy so many types of systems? I can understand the resulting quality of 4x5, but why both medium format and 35mm? Is it a technical aspect or is it just that you love to use all these specific cameras?/Erik
Erik,
This is a complicated answer, as for, there are many reasons why I bring so much gear.
I don't where to begin, and I do not want to make this a long post, by chance I might just ramble on and bore people.
35mm: I like to bring the 35mm format so that I can work quickly. My systems are designed with this much in mind. Often times I also photogrpah from the hip, looking at the action on the street, but not necessarily through my view finder. Not always, but sometimes. This system allows me to photogrpah fluidly, and without much thought--sometimes the photos show this lack of thought, but other times, there is that serendipidious moment, where it all comes together.
I feel I can often times capture a fleeting moment, that can be difficult to capture with medium or large format.
Also, my method of working is to go to a place and photograph from sunrise to sunset, and well into the night. So, I primarily work with the 35mm cameras at sunrise and late into the night.
Medium Format: I work with this system, for several reasons. I think it is a wonderful system, that is between 35mm and 4x5. I need to slow down and think more than compared to a 35mm, but I can also be a little bit more fluid than a 4x5. A great deal of my work is also going inside people's homes and photogrpahing them or their houses. In some cases their house are in such horrible conditions that they want there living spaces to be documented, however, they feel so ashamed and so disgraced they do want to be photographed.
The medium format does an incredible job picking up details that a 35mm cannot, and since I like to use slight wide angle lenses, I am able to photograph, pick up the details, work rather quickly, and leave.
Another thing I need to consider, some people are very welcoming, allowing me to come into their lives, photograph them as long as I want, and often times inviting me for dinner. Other people, will allow me to photograph them for a few seconds, or their places for a few minutes, but they don't want me hanging around them, invading their lives, for a long period of time. I don't want to ware out my welcome, or make anyone feel uncomfortable. So when I am allowed to photogrpah someone in their home or their home, I sort of assess the situation, moving through room to room, photographing what I am allowed to photograph, and go from their. The medium format allows me to capture more detail, higher resolution than a 35mm, but still being able to work quickly and not being to intrusive.
4x5: I love large format. This brings us back to the nature of photography of Eugene Atget, Jackson, Nadar, Emerson, to name a few; To be able to even attempt to work in large format, gives me that sense of adventure, of thinking about setting out on an expedition, pretending that I am carrying glass plates, preparing them right before I photograph, and having to develop them on loaction. This idea, this feeling, grounds me in the long history that photography has, that all of these people prior to me, made certain discoveries of logistic in trying to figure out the mundane, like what to pack, to exposure, to lighting, framing, and the discovery of the accidental. It makes me feel like that I am apart of this history continuing this documentation, for people to hoepfully, see what life was like in the 20th and 21st centuries. To continue to follow in the tradition of making plates (Black and White and Color Negatives in this case) and being apart of that long tradition.
Set aside from the historical aspects, their are few technical disadvantages that I have. I have one lens, which is an equivalent to 40mm in a 35mm camera system, which is very difficult to use especially if you want to document a wider array of people in their environment without being scrunched together, and forced to pose in awkward positions. It is also difficult to sometimes use this camera for interiors, inorder to really to define and establish the space, they way I can with the medium format or the 35mm camera. It is possible if I want a very narrow and specific view of something.
the second technical difficulty is that it takes a little bit of time to set up, frame, figure out my letting, remembering to change my settings on the camera, and remember to correctly expose the film, using the film holders, removing. It is so easy to make mistake, or forget to do soemthing, like close down your aperature.
But there is also a sense of magic with this camera, the sense of what you see comared to what you record, that one moment where soemone accidently walks into the space of the frame to add another intriguing layer to your image, or the one person frozen in the frame, while the others are moving so rapidly that they become mere ghosts, and to see this after you process the film, make your contact, to your prooof print, to the exhibition print, is exhilarting! And to think that some of it is everything that you learned how to do through experience, yet there still lies a little bit of unpredictability, a little bit of magic, and I need this in my life to balance the desparity I see in the everyday living of life either as a witness or throught the news--I am too old to believe in fairy tales, this is the next best thing!
I also am able to soemtimes gain access to certain people, who usually do not want to be photogrpahed, until they see the 4x5. It is also more magical to them. And for those families who have graciously welcomed me into their lives, I am often times able to go back to them, and ask them to photograph them agian, knowing they will have the patience to sit through and watch my clusminess at work.
I hope this sort of answers your question or fills that void of they why!
All the best
Sisyphus
