Large Format and Contemplative Photography

Some of the responses to yesteday’s post on the probable fate of my large format gear raise some issues that I think are worth discussing.  In particular, Ed wrote:

There is more to large format than just pushing the button and shooting, especially if you use movements. There is a contemplative way of working that is impossible with digital because you cannot see squat through the viewfinder, so you just have to keep pushing the shutter and hoping.

This might be true for some folks.  But because I worked with large format for more than a decade, I don’t engage in photography by wandering around looking at things through the camera.  With a large format camera, it’s often the case that I make all of the important decisions before even setting the camera up, and I find that with the EOS-5d, that’s still the case.  The viewfinder is used to check composition (as is the groundglass), not to find it. 

I make a lot of exposures with the 5d, often bracketing exposure.  Typically, I make two exposures – one at the exposure suggested by the in camera meter, and then another one at the exposure I calculate to be optimal based on the histogram from the first.  That means that I typically have two exposures per setup – not dissimilar to my LF practice of shooting an in-camera dup negative.  But that’s vastly different from making 30 exposures, each with minor variations in composition, and hoping I hit one that was good.

In other words, my practice is that I see a photograph I want to make, I set up the camera and make the photograph, and then I’m off to find the next photo.  The time and economic costs of an exposure with the 5d are lower, and so I tend to take more risks with the 5d, but I don’t find using the 5d to be a less contemplative experience than using the 4×5.  If anything, the 5d is more contemplative, simply because there’s less physical hardship involved in carting the stuff around.  I’m not unaware of the spiritual aspects of physical labor, but frankly schlepping a pack full of heavy stuff around never really served any positive photographic purpose for me.

So why do I end up with more exposures with the 5d than I did with the 4×5?  There are a number of reasons.  One is that the 5d is faster.  I’m pretty fast with the Linhof TK45s, but it’s still not as fast as the 5d with a zoom lens.  There’s also the fact that the EOS-5d pack is smaller and lighter than the TK45s pack, so that I cover more ground  in less time.  Finally, there’s just less futzing around with the 5d – no readyloads to label, no separate meter to tuck into the right vest pocket, no extended metering and exposure calculation.

 On a similar tack, Kurt wrote:

As Ed alluded to, comparing your digital output to possible LF output is really an apples to oranges comparison. I’d be willing to bet that if you gave the medium the slow, contemplative time it demands, not only would you shoot much less than digital (making the money a non-issue), but your “winners” or “keepers” ratio would go exponentially up.

When I first started using a large format camera (in 1993) I bought this business about the ‘slow, contemplative process’ of large format hook, line, and sinker.  To my eternal embarassment, I once hung a show where the artist statement even referenced it.  But somewhere along the way, I realized it was a huge bolus of crud, more a marketing thing than anything having to do with the reality of making photographs.

Spending 20 minutes with your head under a darkcloth, gazing lovingly at the ground glass, fiddling with your focusing loupe, adjusting and readjusting camera movements, etc. does not magically imbue your photographs with greater creativity, higher image quality, more artistic merit, or greater economic value.  There’s no special magic to photographs made after 20 minutes of camera adjusting as opposed to those made after 20 seconds of camera adjusting assuming you are competent at adjusting the camera. 

To put it another way, if it’s taking you more than two minutes from the time you decide to make a photograph to the time you have your 4×5 camera on the tripod, movements adjusted, focused, aperture set, shutter speed selected, shutter cocked, and film in the camera with the darkslide pulled, I think you need to practice until you achieve competence with your camera.  Anything longer than two minutes is not a contemplative experience, it’s bumbling because you don’t know what you’re doing.   (those of you who are tempted to tell me 2 minutes is unrealistic might want to consider that John Sexton, that luminary of Large Format/Fine Art photography, told me at a workshop that when he teaches students to use a LF camera, he won’t let them expose film until they’ve proven to him that they can go from pack to exposure in less than 60 seconds.)

Lots of large format photographers like to go on and on about how slow it all is, how ritualized it all is, how difficult it is and thus how contemplative it is compared to every other kind of camera.  But here’s the dirty secret of large format photography – using a view camera is just not that hard.

So when I see a large format photographer spend 15 minutes with his head under the dark cloth, focusing and adjusting movements and so on, I don’t think to myself “Wow, that photographer must be having one blissed out contemplative experience!”  Instead I think “Wow, that photographer really needs to learn how to use his camera.”

The bottom line, here, is this: the camera that produces the most contemplative experience is not the camera that’s hardest to use, nor the camera that’s slowest to work, nor even the camera that is fastest to use or easiest to work.  Using a large format camera does not magically transform your photography into a contemplative experience.  The camera that produces the most contemplative process flow for a photographer is the camera that comes closest to a seamless, perfect fit with the photographer.  For some folks, that’s going to be an 8″x10″ Toyo 810m II; for others, it’s going to be a Leica M8. 

And that’s ok.