Thursday, February 14, 2008

View Camera Plan

I have divided my learning of the View Camera into 3 stages.

Stage One: Orthocromatic
First i will be using 5x7 Orthocromatic Lith Film, which is a film used for black and white photos and easier to develop in the dark room due to the fact that it is not sensitive to the spectrum of red-orange lights, so I can just take it out of the camera and develop it in the dark room with the amber-colored safe light.

Stage Two: Panochromatic
After the Orthocromatic film, i will move on to Panochromatic film, a black and white film that is sensative to all colors of light, thus craeting a photo with more detail, but more difficult to develop in the darkroom. I will be using a special tank that will hold the sheet film and protect it from the safe light.

Stage Three: COLOR!
This is the most exciting stage. I will be using color film in the view camera. Im not sure which kind yet. I am thinking about investing in some Poloroid 55 film. whopety doo dah!

VIEW CAMERA

So I have finally decided to use this blog for what Its really meant for.
My goal for this semester, amongst many other things, is to learn and master the usage of the View Camera. Why? Well, although the view camera was developed around the same time as the Daguerreotype, its still used today to control not only focus but onvergence of parallel lines. Because of this, the view camera is an ideal tool for architectural photography, because it has a grid on the ground glass, so when youre looking through the camera you can use the parallel lines to line up with whatever to create the perfect photo. I became interested in using the view camera after a photo series i started , and am still working on inspired by nostalgic landscapes. The series is also about the idea of an over abundance of vacancy and emptiness in a world that seems so built-up and over run by people and industries. It seems that people take a place and build it up to better accommodate themselves and then just abandon it. This was the first photo of the series:

Back to the View Camera, I wanted to the horizon line to be a dominant factor in all the photos. Symmetry is also a factor i am thinking about, keeping the photos simple and symmetrical, with no extra content i want to achieve a sort of horizontal flatness of plane, similar to a Rothko painting. The view camera would be perfect for achieving this kind of perfect symmetry.