Artistic Beginnings, Photography & Light

When my friend recently called to tell me she had retrieved my old view camera out from storage, I was ecstatic! I opened the wobbly case and found it to be encrusted with grit in some of the nooks and crannies. Seeing it sitting on the chair in my home now, it causes a gut reaction as it brings me back to a time when I had to learn to maintain my creativity while learning a complex technical procedure.

4 x 5 Ansco View Camera

I bought the used camera  from a photographer in my home town when I enrolled at Brooks Institute of Photography, and planned to learn everything I could to be able to graduate and then photograph musicians for album covers. I was nineteen, what can I say?

This is a 4 x 5 view camera, (left) the larger style of camera that requires a tripod and a black cloth to be placed over one's head when viewing the image from the back of the camera. The black cloth blocks out the light so you can see the image on which you are focusing.I lugged the camera and a tripod all over Santa Barbara to shoot the required class assignments. 

After the first year, we were permitted to use our SLR cameras for EDL's (every day life),extra curricular assignments. My boyfriend (whom I later married) had a Linhof camera with a Zeiss lens, and most of the other students owned Calumets. I was the kid that stood out with my old army camera. I had earned and saved my money for photography equipment and living expenses, and purchased what I could afford. I ate a lot of pasta in those days.

Inverted image from view camera

Back of camera

The view from the back of the camera is an upside down 4 x 5 inch image (left).

When you're ready to shoot, the film is loaded into ​the back of the camera with a film holder. The film holder (below) holds 2 sheets of film, and you slip the film holder into the spring loaded black bracket on the back of the camera (left). Shooting with this system requires many steps, and a great deal of focus and concentration. Once you get used to it, you just do it without a thought.

Film holder

While slogging away at photography school, my emphasis was on portraiture. I remember the expansive studios and tungsten and strobe lights where we photographed portraits and product shots, but I was more drawn to the natural light from windows and the outdoors. I was the champion film developer in the darkroom and helped out students whose sheet film got surge marks which were visible when when the negatives were printed on photo paper. I learned negative retouching from Kitty West to bring in a little extra cash.

Following graduating from Brooks, I went on to join in a partnership at a portrait studio that I co-owned and managed in Marin County for over twenty years. My experience taught me a huge appreciation for well executed photography and cinematography. It is certain that photography developed my eye for design, and even more so, enhanced my ability to see the nuances of various types of light and its simple truth. It's always been the light, 

Much appreciation to my mom and dad for believing in me and giving me my start.