articles/Landscape/transitionstolargeformat-page2

Transitions To Large Format - part 2 of 1 2

by Paul Gallagher Published 01/10/2006

Since I finished at Art College in Southport I maintained contact with a close friend who was my lecturer. During one of my visits to see him I showed him one of my prints where I had attempted to capture close detail of rock formations in the foreground of the frame and a distant beach. Although I had the lens stopped down to its smallest aperture I had failed significantly to achieve the required depth of field and I was not at all happy. My friend said, "Well you won't get that with a medium format camera without movements". This returned me to the same point I had reached when I had decided to hang up my Olympus.

But I did not simply rush out and sell my Mamiya to buy a view camera. It was not just the considerable cost of the lenses, camera and processing equipment that held me back. I had a system. I was comfortable with my equipment and I knew I was in control. After some consideration I spoke with a friend of mine who is a professional photographer who recommended cameramaker, Mike Walker, from the Wirral. Having plucked up the courage to buy all the large format trappings such as camera, lenses, film holders, focusing cloth, focusing loupe and processing tanks, I was on the final part of a photographic journey.

It is often reported that some people find viewing a scene that is inverted on a ground glass difficult. For me this was not the case as I thought it would be. I headed to Scotland with all my film holders loaded and a head full of basic camera movements that would enable me to gain optimum depth of field and pin-sharp focus. My first impression of the inverted image was one of a graphic accuracy, that I welcomed. All horizons were held with spirit levels, attached to the body of the camera, and because I was using the same filters and film, it was a gradual process of becoming familiar with the controls whilst having my head beneath a black cloth!

During this time I did, of course, make all the stupid mistakes - such as pulling out the dark slide with the shutter open, spending an age focusing so that the ground glass and loupe misted up, and exposing the same sheet of film twice! But this soon passed and I achieved the same level of confidence that I had with my Mamiya RB. I remember vividly the first time I applied a little lens tilt and watched the foreground of the frame 'snap' into focus just as described in the books I had read. It is a very sobering thing to see your first well processed negative scanned and on a screen. There really is a difference and for me it is the quality and definition that I had always aimed for. I have now made many a trip with the camera and it is a pleasure to work and control the image exactly as you intend it to look in the final print. I have now reached a point were I feel I am portraying what I visualised in the field and when I look at the final photographic print, it looks as it did to me when I took it. Very real, very sharp.

See more at www.paulgallagher.co.uk

• Transitions To Large Format page 1
  
• Transitions To Large Format page 2
  

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