What Is Special About Large Format Portraits

There are many things that are special about pictures taken with a large format camera. Amongst just a few of the advantages are:

1. Huge film area means a huge canvas for light to play on. Huge detail, huge tonal range, tiny grain
2. Full camera movements. Tilt, slide, shift. You choose the plane of focus. You craft the image
3. The ground glass. You see exactly what the film will see. Ability to frame exactly. Ability to judge focus and depth of field exactly
4. Uncompromised lens design.

Actually, the list goes on and on. But for me a lot of the magic happens when you put a real living person in front of that big camera.

What do you see in this image? Softness and sharpness? Smooth tonality? An extra sense of reality? All of that and just a sprinkling of magic.

And this picture you are looking at is the very worst possible presentation of this piece of film. It is scanned on a terrible scanner using a very DIY technique of scanning the film in four slices and sticking them together in Photoshop. The film was even scanned still inside its plastic holder. Despite all of that the magic shines through.

Large format photography is the essence of photography and has been for more than a hundred years. The DSLRs of this world can never match it because they will never have a sensor spanning four inches by five inches. I look forward to creating more magic with this camera over the coming year.

Capturing The Essence

How do you capture a place? Sometimes it is easy. London? Houses of Parliment, London Eye or Tower Bridge. Seattle? Space Needle. Portland?

Hmm....

From a month's visit this was the best I managed. I was trying to get some of the more recogniseable buildings into the frame as well as some of the trees and the stream of cars heading up Burnside Road. To emphasize the road I kept the shutter open until I saw cars travel the whole length of all the visible road. To get the skyline nice I shot this just after sunset when the sky was getting nice and rich and dark blue.