Personal Work

For many years now, my camera work has been solely devoted to making images in support of magazine articles and books. So I have not been taking any personal imagery for some time. Still, I though it might be of interest to see some of the personal work I did years ago.

The image to the right comes from a series entitled Cut Papers. This is a PDF file and to open it you must have a PDF Reader on your computer or your cell phone. (See info on PDF below) Each print records a large paper sculpture, often six feet high, that I created and then lit in a studio.

Szabad 8×10 Camera

The photographs were taken with an 8 x 10 view camera, using 8 x 10 Polaroid Color film.

The camera in question is a Szabad, likely built in Stockholm during the 1950’s. I bought big boy used in New York City, from Lens & Repro over on west 33, 17th Avenue. They are no longer in business. This camera is a fine old thing, with some interesting features. For one, it has a 360 degrees revolving back!  Beyond the front standard rise and fall, the lens board has a rise and fall as well to help you center the lens’ image circle, and the camera has a closeup extension bellows.

My lens is a Nikon W 300 5.6. It’s a plasmat that easily covers 8×10, although the lens is quite a brick. Exposures were long, often 5 minutes or so. This caused some unexpected color shifts, but I simply kept the images I liked and discarded the rest. All of this work was done while I was a tenured professor at the College of St. Rose, a small independent in upstate New York

(You can open a PDF file with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader download, which nearly everyone has on their computer. If you wish to view these file on your cell phone you must install a PDF reader app. Its fast, free, and easy to do. And available for both Apple and Android phones)