Dan's Cameras Part Five - Bigger is Better (Copy)
It started simply enough. The College of Architecture needed a half-time photographer for the rest of my fifth year to maintain the darkrooms, do some occasional shooting and printing now and then, and set up audio visual equipment in the lobby for guest presenters. Given that it paid more than my job at Mish Mish, it came with health benefits (Brandon and Kit were on the way), and it was getting paid to do photography, I jumped at the chance and applied. I got the job.The first few months were rather routine, especially given that I was also working on my thesis project. But towards the end of the academic year the college asked me if I’d be willing to teach photography during the summer - a basic class in the technical aspects of photography and the darkroom. Now if you really want to learn something, teach it. Getting to the point where you’re comfortable enough with a subject to stand in front of a couple dozen people as “the expert” takes a lot of work and, in photography, that means paying close attention to everything you do and why, so that everything becomes instinctual. It was great, because not only did I have to formalize my understanding of the technical aspects of photography and the darkroom, I had to organize it in a systemic fashion in a way I should share that knowledge with others. And I wasn’t content to teach just technical material, so I also wound up preparing lectures about great photographers that others should know about. By the end of the summer the college made me full time and I was doing everything I could to learn my new profession.
Taking the position at the College of Architecture also gave me access to some great equipment. One of the photographic treasures that the College had was a Hasselblad 500c.
That thing was built like a brick. It had a mirror in it that, at nearly six times the size of a 35mm camera’s mirror, made a massive “WHUMP!” when the shutter was pushed. It was an amazing machine with Zeiss optics.
I was forced to use it when a professor of industrial design asked me to photograph some work for a design convention to take place the following spring. I first shot things in 35mm and realized that, when greatly enlarged, 35mm images look like . . . well, crap! The photographs he wanted included people using the products and getting the people to look good was impossible. I was using my F3 and good Nikon optics, as well as low ISO film, so the resolution was as good as we could get it - we were just pushing the limits of quality 35mm images. I was running into the fact that one can only enlarge negatives so much before you reach a critical loss of image quality. So I suggested that we try using the Hasselblad (not that I had ever shot it before, but he didn’t know that!). Not only did I have to learn how to operate the camera (and come to learn that the essential components of all cameras are the same), I had to learn how to roll 120 film onto developing reels and to develop 120 film.
When I made my first enlargements from those shots I was stunned! When it comes to prints from analog film, size matters (the same for digital - pixels matter, thought it’s not simply more pixels = better). We photographed several times that fall - a bath tub for the handicap, moveable shelving for the elderly, a wheel chair and a range of other products - and printed everything fifteen inches square. I got to go to the convention to hang the exhibit, man the booth, and spend my free time shooting the streets of DC. Our “neighbors” at the conference (though they had a 4-booth intersection with a middle table) was this small computer company called Apple that had just released the Macintosh. It was a designer’s dream location.
That first fall as a photographer opened up other doors as well gear wise. Face it if 6cm by 6cm beat the 24mm by 36 mm of 35mm film camera negatives, think what you could get out of a 4” x 5” negative. And the school had the answer for that too - a Sinar P.
The Sinar P was a monster of a camera designed for hard-core commercial and architectural work. The professional photographer I helped when at HOK Architects used a Sinar P so I knew basically how it worked. It was also an incredibly intimidating machine and, given that 4x5 sheet film is so difficult to work with, nobody ever asked to use it or asked me to photograph it. So it took me a while to get around to using it.
I continued my photographic self education (I’ve never taken a photography class - well, the one class I did take I actually learned how to do silk screening) and finally came across the books that would change everything I knew about how to make high quality images and prints. It was the Ansel Adams technical series, namely The Negative and The Print. Seriously studying those two books revolutionized my control over film exposure and developing as well as printmaking. It started giving me the degree of control necessary to make fine art prints (and the negatives that can produce such prints). As I’ve said many times, until you make a print yourself where a rock looks “hard,” water looks “wet” or a dark, open window in a building looks as if you could put your finger through the print (Zone 1) it’s hard to understand what a fine print is. Once I started down that path there was no way I was going to avoid shooting large format.
Fortunately that Fall a former professional photographer with a MFA in photography from RIT entered the College of Architecture master’s program. We quickly formed a friendship, had lots of conversations about photography and architecture, and he’d point me in a constructive direction whenever I’d get stuck on something photographic. Most of all, he willingly let me borrow some of his equipment.
While I wanted to start shooting large format, I was nervous about shooting with the Sinar P. First off, one of the components was damaged (a gear drive) and the College didn’t have the photography budget to fix it (well, it did, but then I wouldn’t have had funds for anything else! Everything on a Sinar P is EXPENSIVE!). Second, I didn’t want to display my first feeble efforts with a 4x5 in the college (the difference between a Pro and an amateur [or a hack] is that a pro only shows you the good images, you never see the bad images that all pros make - so it only looks like they know what they’re doing) and the P was just too large to take out in the field. So Steve loaned me his Toyo 4x5 field camera.
He also gave me some old, very out of date film so I could practice loading and unloading film holders in the light, and then in the dark before I attempted the real thing. He taught me how to clean film holders - a rather tedious and boring job that, if not done well, can damn the best images with dust spots and hairs. This was, of course, all pre-computer days where fixing such flaws is a mouse click away. The extra film allowed me to also practice tray processing sheets of film - which of course had to be done in total darkness. Again, perfect repetition each and every time was critical for consistency in development and hopefully the fear of having a film edge scratch the emulsion layer of another sheet would keep one’s attention focused during the processing time.
Anyway, I got out with the 4x5 and started shooting. Often I’d go out with my friend Ryan, who grew up in the Blacksburg area so he knew some good places to go. I worked through The Negative shooting 4x5s with the Toyo and then eventually through The Print working with the negatives produced from the Toyo. I also calibrated my 35mm gear and process and also greatly improved the quality of negatives and prints coming from my cameras as well.
One day Steve came over to my desk and said, “Hey Dan, guess what I found?” “What?” “A box of 8x10 Ektachrome 64 that’s almost about to expire. Want to shoot with my Deardorff?” By then I’d gotten pretty comfortable shooting 4x5 and was ready to step up to real large format film. Imagine a sheet of film 8” x 10”. Imagine a color slide that large! The Blue Ridge Mountains in the fall, 8x10, who could say no. So I borrowed the Deardorff.
Now, it cost the same to process a sheet of 8x10 Ektachrome as it did a 36 exposure roll of Ektachrome - about $5.00 a pop. So every time I pressed the shutter on that thing, it was going to cost me $5.00. If I’d had to pay for the film, it would have been $10.00 a press of the cable release (when I shot 4x5 black and white negatives, I’d make a duplicate [just in case of dust or a scratch] and it would cost me about $1.00 a shot when I processed it myself).
Well, I took the Deardorff on a drive up to Mountain Lake Hotel (back when it still had a lake), photographed a nice church on the way, and the buildings at the Hotel with beautiful fall foliage around. I had to assume that the shutters and apertures were accurate - who could afford to calibrate things - and relied on my newly acquired skills regarding exposure. Transparency film was incredibly unforgiving - you were lucky to have 1/2 a stop exposure leeway. More than a bit under or over exposed and the image simply looked wrong and, being transparency film, there was nothing you could do about it. Fortunately, everything was spot on. The folks at the processing lab flipped out when they laid the images out on the light table!
It was really a wonderful time of learning, exploring and playing. I was learning the craft of photography and thoroughly enjoying the process of making images. I was fortunate to have a job that gave me access to tools, resources to learn, opportunities to photograph and to teach and the time to grow. It was the time when I developed my approach to photography and developed the level of quality I expected my work to meet.