I saw this purely as a Hipstamatic image. The “view finder” in the Hipstamatic App is barely approximate. But that’s the point. I had to make three or four exposures to get the edges just right. The banister going up the steps is so close to the edge of the frame. And I blame Henri Cartier-Bresson for that.

The tight composition is a holdover from my days as a shooter. In the early 1970s I discovered HCB. All his photographs had a black border around them. A bit of research and I discovered he (well, his lab boy) filed out the 35mm negative carrier, so it had the unexposed film near the sprocket holes visible, therefore, printing the black frame around the negative. More research informed me that HCB’s photographs are 100 percent of the negative.

I dedicated myself to have the discipline of the frame so that I too, could have that cool black border around my prints.* That black border states that I compose in the camera so I do not decompose in the darkroom. I have transferred that practice to my digital work in DSLR and Hipstamatic. I compose in the camera so I do not decompose in Lightroom.

*Alan Ross, my dearest friend, hates the black border and almost tolerates me.

The textures found in Como are as pleasing as fine food upon one’s palate. Como is gift I get to open time and again with every visit.

I bought my first 4×5 camera in 1980. A beauty. I still have it. A Zone VI 4×5 Field Camera with a 210mm Schneider f/5.6 “normal” lens. I took it up to Como, Colorado for the first time in 1980. I could not figure out how to work it. I have since figured it out. So…

In 1981 I went up to Como, a sort of ghost town off Highway 285. Como paralyzed me because there is so much to photograph. I didn’t know where to start. I left my 4×5 in my darkroom in Denver and took my 35mm cameras and Kodachrome film to Como. This is the first image I made in Como, and it is the photograph that encouraged me to bring my 4×5 there and learn how to use it.

Here is “Shutters, Como, Colorado.”

The porch light at the Crooked Window house in Como is a bit crooked itself.

Such odd things are clumped together in this mountain town. The residents, as they are tossing stuff around outside, I must imagine, are making wonderful compositions serendipitously. When I want to find peace, I go to Como. The late afternoon light is wonderful to bask in when one is committing art.

I love this house in Como. I have been photographing it since 1981. There is so much to see in Como. What I cannot see is Como, Colorado was named after Lake Como in Italy. I have been to Lake Como. There are no similarities.

The Canon G10 camera is a wonderful little machine. Easy to tote and use. It only stops down to f/8, so, there’s that. But the glass is sharp, and it is digital and works just right for images like this.

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.

Everywhere you turn, Como has something to offer if one has something to say.