Broken Glass and Gears

Como, Colorado 2014

I love my Zone VI 4×5 Field Camera. Fred Picker did almost everything right, except to sell Zone VI Studios and all of its inventory to Calumet. He did pocket several million dollars, so it wasn’t all bad.

Using a view camera, any film camera, infers intent within the seer. Film is precious. Digital is a bunch of zeros and ones. When you score with digital, you’re Number 1. When you miss with digital, well, you know!!!

When I am under the dark cloth, I enter my world. By myself. And everything else is outside looking in. Including my dog who is usually curled up underneath my Zone VI wooden tripod.

What excitement flushed through my veins when I saw the broken piece of glass balanced on the edge of the tooth of that gear. And… by-the-way, I approach each subject with my cameras that are on tripods or handheld, my 35mm cameras, Hasselblad, Zone VI 4×5, and Sinar F 4×5 and 8×10, like I would as a photojournalist on the street. I never manipulate the composition. If a blade of grass is interfering in the frame, I move the tripod, I don’t pull the blade of grass from its roots. My work, my photographs, are found and captured, never contrived.