Last Thursday we’ve had a large format workshop with one of out tutor Yan Preston.
Yan explains what is a large format, how does the camera works and why its been widely used even thought being huge, heavy and considered as a very slow and expensive process of making photographs. Large format is used for the quality and beauty of images and for huge size that photographs could be printed. Yan also introduced some artist who as well as her uses large format in their photography. For example Alec Soth, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Sally Mann-Immediate Family, Alys Tomlison, Awoiska von de Molen, Taryl Simon-American Index, Andreas Gursky-River Rhine. According to Alec Soth the subject become less conscious when photographed by the large format, as the photographer is under cloth, so the subject don’t get to see when the image is taken (You tube, Alec Soth: Portraits – The Ground Glass).
In the second part of the workshop Yan explained how to use large format camera, how to put the film in it and how to set up the exposure. We then went outside and each of us had a chance to take two images. There were a lot of stuff to remember but Yan told us that we can only learn it by use it and that we can learn from our own mistakes!
I really enjoyed and this session and looking forward to see how our images turns out.
Marlena Sierota 