Make of this as you will! Interesting results at the very least.

“For a long time I thought that photographs showed the viewer what the world looked like. It wasn’t until college that I learned that a photograph could tell a story. While studying photography at Massachusetts College of Art I began a series of self portraits that now span 25 years. I was 18 years old when I began to take them. These self portraits helped me better understand who I was and what I hoped to become. I still continue to make these self-portraits, but in a new setting: in 2005 I married an Icelander and moved to a farm in the eastern part of Iceland.

In Iceland, the landscape and the weather are infinitely changing. Age and decay create a surreal world of rituals that may appear unappealing or in some cases, grotesque. The rituals of farming and hunting are slow, deliberate, and labor intensive. Fishing, hunting, planting and gathering are considered pastimes for many people in the developed world. The pace of farming is slow, dictated by nature, economy and sheer will. Farming, to me, can be seen as a physical manifestation of a human’s determination. A farmer’s efforts are uncertain; such a life choice seems noble.

The affects of a cross-cultural life inspires the characters that I create. Here in Iceland—a culture embedded with ancient sagas, myths of elves that live inside rocks and so on—I hear many voices that come to life.

My adult experiences have informed my sensibility and allowed me to expose the hidden world of the stories nurtured within my mind. As a woman, I interpret these cultural stories in a primal and sensual way. To embody what is sometimes ordinary, sometimes purely feminine and sometimes supernatural is to seek a way to make private images public.

I use a 4X5 view camera to create my images. From beneath my dark cloth, I compose the edges of a story that reveals my inclusion in a place. My photographs are the language that connects me to truths deep within myself. In that split second when the lens-shutter clicks, fantasy and reality become one.”

—Agnieszka Sosnowska

From Lensculture…

Spotted on Reddit, a rare Gowlandflex 4×5 twin lens reflex camera that was brought into Peace Cameras in Raleigh, North Carolina in the USA by it’s own. The image above, showing it towering over a what looks like a Hasselblad 500c, gives you a sense of perspective of the size of the thing.

More info about this and other Gowland cameras can be found at petergowland.com.

Gowlandflex with it’s current owner

Thanks kindly to napalmjerry at Reddit for sharing these images.

Lines of Love

My first nudes with large format cameras were very slow affairs.  Painting my friends bodies with a light grey body paint all over and only a couple of poses of them together. Limited by only a few sheets of film I was cautious. I found the pose when I asked them to hold each other in their favourite cuddling position. I became interested in the line between the two bodies. “Lines of Love” was the first image that I felt was resolved enough to publish. Taken with studio lights in the back room of my house in Mount Victoria. The concept needs further exploration, and is something I will get back too.

Flannel Flowers

It wasn’t long before I found a model who was willing to work with me in the landscape. Naked landscapes has become one of my favourite genres. I like to explore our relationship with nature. The connection we have with it. I believe it provides us with spiritual peace. Mother Nature or as Lovelock eloquently put it when he viewed the earth from his orbiting capsule Gaia. 

I have been lucky enough to befriend an older male model, and we have worked together for years. Figuring out technique and form. How to integrate the figure into the landscape. It has been this continual practice that has taught me how to sculpt the figure into pleasing and meaningful form. The male figure is so difficult to pose. Working this way has taught me valuable lessons in technique.

Lakeside sculpture

On some days my technique is simple. The model and I wander the bush looking for interesting shapes and forms. Something I can add the figure into. Once I frame up the shot, with my camera I show the model the shot on the ground glass, and I describe the dominating forms I wish the model to play to with their body.  We will try many poses until I find that magical connection between the figure and the landscape, between the two forms. I try to get them into poses that are supported rather than free standing. This helps with the long exposures and keeping them still. Sometimes a little tiding up of the figures’ form is needed before they are asked to stop breathing and hold still for the photo. I count them into the shot. And let them know when the exposure is complete. I only take one shot at each location and move on looking for something else to work with.

Stone

I try to make the figure look as majestically beautiful as I can. I bend and stretch them to pull wrinkles out, to hide rolls and other bits we really don’t want to be looking at. Now after working with a wide variety of figures I find great joy in finding the beauty in all sorts of people.

With black and white film I like to work with a light orange filter. I have the same one that also screws onto the front of my spot meter, so there is no worrying about filter factors. The orange filter hides blemishes, such as pimples and red marks. It lightens the skin and darkens the greens. It just adds a lovely touch of contrast to the mix.  They were standard in a portrait photographers kit.

Son

One of my favourite genres with my ‘Naked Landscapes’ is a tiny figure almost hidden in the majesty of Mother Nature. I like the figure to feel like it belongs there. As if they are recharging themselves through their connection with nature.  I like them to be discovered by the viewer. Many of these need to be viewed at their printed size to fully comprehend the joy of discovery. Print size is a very important issue for us fine art large format photographers. Many of us take images that are designed to be viewed at a large scale, images that often struggle in smaller prints or on the web.

Figures and stone is another beautiful combination. Again I look for patterns and shapes that can be reinforced and added to with the human form. Copying curves and round boulders with the figure. With this genre I can get closer and fill the frame with the figure. This allows me to concentrate on their form.

Arches

Lately I have been working more with the light within overhangs, using the dark blackness of them to contrast the soft figures in the foreground. Cave light some affectionately know it by. That gentle soft light within an overhang or under a veranda on sunny day, or even better on a wet day.  Personally I love soft light, I love the way it curves around the figure with a gentleness and a softness that helps give a lovely three dimensional feel to the figures.  I fell in love with soft light while working with slide films such as Velvia in the landscape. Regardless of the film it is still my favourite light.

I have only been lucky enough a few times to work with a model in the mist, rain and sleet.  Unfortunately the cold that usually accompanies these beautiful conditions isn’t too the best for the poor model.

Working with the figure has taught me to collaborate with the model and the landscape.  This collaboration reinforces our connection. I have stopped trying to previsulaize my work before the shoot. Preferring to turn up, and see what happens. What landscapes appeal to me on the day or which poses suit our mood.

Leonard Metcalf has been infatuated with large format photography since George Schwartz showed him one at City Art Institute in 1986. Fifteen years of wandering the Blue Mountains with various 4 × 5 cameras not only gave him a solid portfolio of wilderness images it lead him to his current passion of teaching & mentoring photographers in workshops and tours.

More of his work can be seen at his website. Leonard is the founder of Len’s School and more of his writing can be read at a blog Visions for the Real World.

So the Lomographic Society has deemed the 12th April to be the official “Film Photography Day”!

We hope all our readers will, on this special occasion, put their digital cameras away, grow a beard (women too) and bring out those old, dusty, unused film cameras from the cupboard, for old times’ sake, and get involved in the celebrations! I shall be doing exactly that. Or alternatively, firing up the Instagram app and using some of those authentic analogue-style filters.

More info…

Visit alexbond.com.au for a very useful post from Alex Bond on using your Sekonic light meter with the zone system.

Read more…

If you have been around photography for very long a couple quick observations come to mind.  First, things just sound complicated and in reality they really are not.  Math is involved so that puts a certain distribution of people in the tank all on its own!  My goal in this article is to show beginning black and white film photographers a way then can produce good quality black and white negatives when printing in the darkroom.  Entire books have been written on some of these concepts so keep in mind that I am trying to distill over 100 years of knowledge into a simple, easy to apply set of tips.  If you send your film out for development then you are left at the mercy of your lab.

Read the rest at Analog Film Photography

The Platinum palladium print uses platinum which is the most stable metal on earth, and with its rich gradation expression, it is understood as the most beautiful print among various printing techniques. Photographer Nobuyuki Kobayashi applies platinum print on Washi paper (Hosokawa paper) which is handmade using the Japanese traditional technique. With the stability of the platinum and the durability of Hosokawa paper, it is said that the print could be stored for more than 1000 years.

This is a beautiful video and well worth spending the time watching. Highly recommended.

Japan Camera Hunter has a series of blog posts on introducing large format photography. For those new to large format photography, it’s a great introductory guide and highly recommended reading.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The Swiss-French photographer shoots exclusively in analogue, and regularly works with some of contemporary architecture’s most famous names – including Peter Zumthor, Zaha Hadid and Daniel Libeskind.

“I’ve never done anything professionally with digital,” Binet told Dezeen. “If something is a bit strange, a bit rough, you work with that.”

Read more at De Zeen