How has your approach to photography changed over the years?

[kennethcooke]

How has your approach to photography changed over the years?

As I mentioned in "Why take photographs" my photographic journey started about 45 years ago. My parents bought me a Yashica rangefinder camera which I used to take out onto the hills to record trips and capture landscape images. For my 18th birthday they bought me an Asahi Pentax SV with a 50mm 1.8 lens and with this I continued in the same mode as previously but started to use Kodachrome II 12asa and at this time I started to do my own B&W processing. Eventually I gave up processing and concentrated on my passion for climbing and mountain photography using colour reversal only and introducing Agfa CT18 50asa for European Alpine work and Kodachrome II 25asa for the UK.

Since then I have had various cameras, mainly Nikon, including a Nikon F- F2- F3hp and latterly an FM2n. I have never, however fully utilised them as system cameras as I have not bought additional lenses. In the 80's I bought, and experimented with a Leica IIIf which very much appealed because of it's compactness and build quality but soon reverted back to an SLR, briefly trying an Leica R3-MOT with a 50mm Summicron R. I have had Leitz Pradovit projectors for years and was always blown away by the lens qualities of the Colourplan lenses.

Last year I was seriously considering giving up photography altogether when I decided to trade in my underused FM2n for a Leica rangefinder camera. Doing this has re ignited my interest caused me to diversify my photographic approach. This year, as a for-instance I have started to do my own B&W processing again and I am drawn to different genres of the art of photography, interestingly, solely B&W. In the future I would very much like to explore art nude as a genre. I did some "art nude" and fashion shoots in the late 70's but quite frankly they were a little smutty and really did not show the respect the models deserved.

As far as publishing is concerned, I have shown my work in the past, mainly Cibachrome prints and colour slide lectures, but I have no desire to do this in the future albeit, I am always happy to share results with those I work with in print form.

I now have a couple of rangefinder bodies and 3 lenses so it could be argued that at the tender age of 61 I now have what might be classed as a system and along with some Kodachrome in the fridge for when the fancy takes me and B&W film stock the future looks very promising.

[Trevor Crone]

When I was about 10 my father gave me a Kodak Brownie 127 (I think that was the model) and I took b&w pictures of holiday events. The film and prints were D&P and I just loved looking back at the moments I had captured. Then I lost interest in photography. It wasn't until the mid 1970's that I returned to photography when I bought an SLR (Praktica LTL with 35mm Zeiss Flektagon lens) to photograph my young children.

My interest in photography was growing but other then photographing the kids I didn't really turn the camera to anything else. I then went to see the seminal LAND exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This was 1976 and I still have the exhibition catalogue. This just blew me away, b&w photographs by the greats, Ansel Adams, Edward and Brett Weston, Minor White, Wynn Bullock, H.Cartier-Bresson, Bill Brandt, Paul Strand, Harry Callahan, Alfred Stieglitz, the list just goes on. I knew then that I just wanted to produce b&w photographs.

I've tried colour, even did some part-time Cibachrome printing for a couple of magazines. But it wasn't for me.

I had a long love affair with b&w IR photography but eventually I tired of it along with 35mm and fixed lens cameras which were becoming increasingly limiting for my type of photography; I could not get the quality that I had witnessed at the Land exhibition so I moved into medium format. I bought a Pentax 67, a brute of a camera. This went some way in giving me the quality I was after but it was the limiting factor of having a fixed lens system that drove me to go with view cameras. Image management at the taking stage is very important to me.

I purchased my first view camera in 1994, called a Photox 6789 because it could handle formats from 6x6 to 6x9cm. I still have this little cherry wood camera but it just sits in the cupboard gathering dust.

I went with a Horseman VH 6x9cm technical camera for a number of years, although excellent was limited in the use of wide angle lenses which my vision was heading towards. I love the wider view, it gives me a greater sense of space and place which is how I see the world.

1999 I PX'ed the VH for an Ebony SW23 which handles the wide angle lens with ease. I felt suddenly free to photograph what I wanted to capture on film. A year later I took the leap to 4x5 I bought myself an Ebony SW45 the 23's big brother. This is my work horse camera today.

Last year, 2008 I decide it was my last chance to go larger, so I got myself an Ebony SLW810. I've always loved contact prints; ever since I first laid eyes on Weston's 8x10's back in 1976, the desire to get on board has always been there. I'm just a little bit regretful it has taken me so long. The 8x10 frame is a wonderful window on the world, almost life size.

Cameras are tools but they are tools that give us the freedom to express ourselves, to help us see and frame what we see in the form of the photograph.

I have to work on a series of images I cannot work on the single image. I have several projects and portfolios on the go.

[brianrbird]

I too started with a kodak brownie 127, then in the late 60's I had a couple of Pentax's befor losing interest. then started again in the late 90's with A kodak
APS compact that got me into photography again. Now I'm a confirmed fan of the rangefinder system. Yes I try to stick to theams, Night, City, Seashore.
I'm going down to London on Easter Sunday, I Want to do some night shots
Along Chelsea Embankment, Waterloo Bridge, & South Bank. These are areas I never tire of. It was interesting looking at one of the first night scenes I took, which was from Tower bridge during the compleation of The 'Gerkin', & then looking at ones since. Can definately see a change in my style.

[Rob Archer]

I got into photography via two parallel routes. I was keen trainspotter when I was a kid, and travelled around looking at trains. My dad gave me his old camera (a Kodak Stirling 620) and encouraged me to record what I saw. He also taught me to develop a film an to make contact prints. As I got a part-time job and a bit more money I travelled more and 'upgraded' to a Practika MTL3 which was a lot easier to use and I could take more pictures on a film. I also painted a bit and often took photographs as a kind of 'notebook' for subjects to return to with paints, and to record details for finishing off paintings at home.

I left school and got a job and, having worn out the Practika ( and finding difficulty getting 620 film for the Kodak) I invested in an Olympus OM2n, which was then a 'cutting edge' camera. I started getting interested in the possibilities of photography for it's own sake and started reading photo mags and books. By this time I was using mainly colour slide film and processing and printing myself was a distant memory.

About 1990 I was given a Paterson Home Darkroom kit for Christmas and, having blacked out the bathroom with bin bags, I developed my first films for many years. The moment the first print came up in the dev tray I was hooked again!

A few years ago I moved with the times and made a brief foray into d***** photography, but didn't enjoy either the processes involved or the results, so I'm now totally film again!

From my early approach as seeing photography as simply a means of recordng things for other purposes I now think through what I'm doing. I try to ask myself 'why am I taking this image?', and 'what do I want to say to the viewer of the final print?'

I still get that same buzz when a good print starts to appear in the dev as whan I was a 7year-old kid in the cupboard with my dad!

Rob

[Victor Krag]

I've moved toward bigger negatives, heavier equipment and everything that entails. Also shooting a much higher percentage of tripod required exposures. My visual approach and intent has not changed much since I first took it up.