Does large format inhibit your creativity?

LF facilitates creativity, as does any format, when it's the right

tool for the job. That's why I shoot some subjects in 8x10", some in

medium format, and some in 35mm. Sometimes I photograph with the

camera at hand, as I'm sure we all do, and I'm frustrated by the fact

that I don't have the big camera with movements and a large sheet of

film.

<p>

I suppose it would be inhibiting, if it doesn't feel intuitive to you,

and if it doesn't, then maybe it's just not for you, and there's no

crime in not using large format. I feel that way about 645, and to

some degree, 8x10" comes much more naturally to me than 4x5", though

it would seem that many of the technical issues are identical.

Avedon shot a hell of a lot with his Rollei TLR, is anybody stuck

on that fact as opposed to the work he did with Deardorff? Scavullo

worked for others but made their vision his vision, lyrical,

spontaneous, and fun, is this diminished by the fact that the work may

have been on 35mm?

<p>

The greatest shots from Photojournalism were caught, the

photographer in many instances had only a second to focus, compose,

and take the shot, some of the results are timeless, yet some folks

are found of saying they don't take shots they make 'em.

<p>

Some shots from photojournalism are masterpieces despite the fact

that there wasn't time to set up, check exposure, and scrutinize the

composition. sometimes, regardless of what you shoot, it's good to go

out with nothing in particular planned and shoot what you find, trust

your reflexes, and instincts, and go with the flow.

<p>

I understand folks talking about the reasoned and contemplative

approach to LF, but the best of photojournalism where the photographer

had no time other than to react and take the shot, has elements that

ought to be brought to the party too.

<p>

You can look at it and adjust it for an hour, or you might have

only the time to bring the camera up to your eyes and fire the

shutter, it's been done great, both ways, and so the ingredients of

both ways are valid.

I remember a few years back, every time I went into the

supermarket and went to the counter, every magazine I saw had a

close-up or head shot of somebody shot with a ringlight, a lot of the

commercials on TV at that same time looked as if they were shot with a

ringlight.

<p>

It was great the first time somebody shot the effect on a

portrait, but after a period of time, everybody was doing it and it

became sickening. I was mad because so many people were doing it, I

just put my ringlight away.

<p>

Charlie Parker was dynamite, after awhile everybody tried to

sound like him and/or imitate him. Anything done well, is going to be

admired, emulated and/or copied, after enough people do this for a

certain length of time, it will become passe.

<p>

Then you gotta try something else.

For me, it does not. Of my last few rolls of 35mm (black and white),

I've finished with about 2-3 pictures per roll worthy of an 8x10. Of

my last 8 sheets of 4x5, I've enlarged 5-6 to 8x10. So for me, and

the static subject matter I have shot lately, LF does seem to

contribute to better images.

This may be a slightly technical response, but I have dealt with the

lack of ability to quickly and easily check out and explore different

camera angles and compositions with my 4x5 by using a black cardboard

composing card with a string with lengths designating the viewing

distance for my three lenses. I then can leave my camera in its pack

and thoroughly work a scene, object, or composition from up, down and

sideways. Having gotten a few workable ideas I will then take out my

cumbersom camera set up. I also have switched to the Horseman folding

binocular viewer, which has made my viewing much more spontaneous and

intuitive. This is how I have dealt with the lack of mobility of the

4x5 and tried to foster more fluid creativity. You don't have to be

looking through the camera to "see", experiment and explore.

<p>

Scott

I use the same approach Scott is describing and that has helped me a lot. I know some would call it crutches, but a

simplified small black plastic sheet that fits inside my pocket with a rectangular hole in the middle replaces

avantageously the viewer of the camera and allows quick and easy composition and search for the best angle.

Putting the scene in a two dimentional frame helps keep the graphical and not be distracted by other elements in the

composition. When I think I have found the right setting, I simply reproduce and refine the image on my ground

glass. Sometimes I then decide that it's not worth pursuing, but most of the time, it's ready to be put in the box.

To Jonatan Brewer,

<p>

Thank you for your kind coments but in response to:

<p>

"WOW!...Eidetic! One things for sure Walter, nobody'll ever

accuse you of having a slim vocabulary!" I would like to point out

that at 310 lb there is absolutely nothing slim about any part of

me. (Maybe?)

<p>

Have fun ... Walter

Many thanks to you all for your answers, so many replies, there was I

wondering if I would get any response!

<p>

Many of you mention the lack of spontaneity with LF but I feel in

many ways this is a separate issue and not necessarily a hinderance

to creativity.

<p>

Perhaps it would help if I said a little about my views on creativity

and gave an example. For me creativity is about striving to be

original, challenging, exciting, taking risks, experimenting, making

a very personal statement.

<p>

As an example, my personal favourite photographic image of the last

50 years is a photograph (or more correctly a series of photographs)

that to my mind transcends mere photography and has a sense of time

and place never achieved before. Why has it taken someone other than

a photographer to show the photographic world the very meaning of

creativity. The image can be viewed at

http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hockney/pearblsm.jpg.html

<p>

Takes my breath away every time!

<p>

Thanks for the lists of photographers using LF in a creative way,

unfortunately not too many contemporary examples. Perhaps some of you

could provide links etc. to your favourite creative contemporary LF

photographers.

<p>

Thanks again to you all.

<p>

Keith

Right, now we see what you mean! "Creativity" is just like "Art" in the sense that there are as many meanings as

you ask people to tell you how they see it. I believe photo montage was a way to make something interesting out of

photos that were not. It's another step in creativity. Guys started to pick up images here and there and with a pair

of cissors, created their own story. Maybe because the creatives were not the ones who took the images, they

picked from just anything, and of course, most images are small format. With the advent of digital and the first

Silicon Graphics Unix stations, the tools provided for that kind of work unlished a new burst of creativity and we

have seen many examples in the early nineties. There was hardly an advert image that did not use some sort of

photo montage and some studios were specialized in that kind of work. The style was used and abused until it was

replaced by other concepts. Still, when it is used well, it can be a powerful way to tell a story and has great impact

and the example you pointed above is amazing.

<p>

Some large format photographers are making exciting artwork. I would point this link to Bruce Barnbaum website:

<p>

http://www.barnbaum.com/Gallery/SuperNatural.htm

I own many different formats and types of cameras. While my mainstay

is 4x5 and the subject matter I enjoy the most is the landscape, there

are times when I get in "moods" and have to go out with a 35

rangefinder or a TLR or even my 4x5 super D and work in a different way

and with other subject matter. I try to learn from the techniques

required of each and apply what I discover to my overall photographic

technique. I don't remember who first said this, but "When all you

have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". I also believe that

learning to see is the real challenge and whatever tools one has, if

mastered, can be used to capture their vision.

Oops, sorry! That's not the page I had in mind and Bruce might not be happy that I suggested that his pics are

photomontage! Still, his prints are full of creativity!

Who was it then? Caponigro? Mulligan? Someone help! I'm making a fool of myself!

Found it! http://www.johnpaulcaponigro.com

<p>

By the way, check Steve Mulligan's website. There is no need to use a pair of cissors to make amazing creative

images! But the technique is there! Pure beauty:

<p>

http://www.mulliganphotography.com/

Just to say the Hockney artwork was merely an example. I have no

great passion for photo montage in general.

Walter, your language and humour are in good nick, but your

logic could do with a little touching up. I don't remember anyone

saying that "'Art' is beyond their capabilities", just that nature

photography wasn't necessarily their favourite arena for creating

it. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

<p>

Our town gallery has just had an exhibition of 'contemporary

Japanese photography'. It was interesting to me because the

spartan labelling and my own ignorance of the Japanese

photographic world meant that I viewed the images completely

out of context, uninfluenced by any knowledge of the

photographers' reputation or technique. The conclusion I drew

was that there are some very creative people out there, and

whether they use large format or not is almost completely

irrelevant.

<p>

(Incidentally, if any Danish readers see this, the exhbition is

called "Illusions" and will be going to two or three Danish

galleries over the next year. Worth catching.)

It all comes down to the power of the image. Detail or focus by

itself does little to empower an image it can only enhance (or

detract) from what is already there. I take umbrage at the idea that

35mm shooters are "shotgunning". That is a pretty naive statement.

Good 35mm shooters ally themselves with their sub-conscious eye -

that which can track objects in motion and place them in a context

that expresses the image powerfully. Kertesz, Cartier-Bresson all

did this brilliantly. Just because most of the framing and ideas come

along too fast to be fully conscious does not mean they are lesser

than large format images.

<p>

This idea of 35mm as a reduction of large format technique is

misguided. My work in large format has given me a new respect for

the power and potential of 35mm shooting. The two formats have their

respective strengths. If you use either format in a rigid

formalistic way you can get stuck in the format's weaknesses. For

large format it can a pointless search for utmost clarity and tone at

the expense of the power of the image, for 35mm it can be the attempt

to counter its intrinsic graphic power with unreal levels of

saturation a kind of tarted-up attempt at verisimilitude. But a lot

of good photographers avoid these pitfalls. Essentially, if you find

yourself inhibited by the format find another way of using it that

works for you.

No, I don't think LF inhibits my creativity. I don't think any

equipment can inhibit my creativity. I only have me and

my brain to blame. Too bad. I'd like to blame something else.

<p>

-- Charlie Strack (charlie_strack@sti.com), January 11, 2002.

<p>

Like a good photograph, clarity so often comes with brevity. Thank

you, Charlie, for perhaps the most profoundly insightful answer of

all!

Keith

regardless of what my personal experience is(I find it a very

creative medium) I would advise you to look up the Polaroid site

and in particular look at the winners of their international

competition, some of the work is small or medium format but a

very large chunk of it is 4"x5" work, I bet you will get surprised a

few times of how creative the large format can be.

I've taught large format photography for many years along my

personal practice of the large format way, I must say that my

students always approached large format as a fussy camera, as

you seem to suggest, a camera which you wouldn't use for fun ;

almost invariably they grew to love and use after attending the

courses

greetings

I reread several of the posts to this question (to which the answer

is, simply, NO) and I think several of you have fallen in a very

common trap. Creativity=novelty. Creativity is the other guy doing

something YOU didn't think of, and by extension doing something that

the popular authority (whomever that is at any societal juncture)

hasn't yet endorsed. The only criterion for creativity is novelty.

Once the novelty factor is zero, so goes the creativity. What large

format lacks, by its intrinsic nature, is spontaneity. If you define

creativity as the product of spontaneity, then large format will

hinder creativity. But creativity is not spontaneity, only an element

of it, and a non-essential one at that. Somebody recently made a

reference in another thread to the handheld use of LF cameras. There's

creativity at work.

I think, respectfully, Walter has got it backward. Iconologizing

the photograph does nothing to elucidate creativity; in fact it does

the opposite. The forum members who hike in nature and make pictures,

professing to not know wit (or care less) about "Art", ARE [the]

artists. That their effort doesn't look like what(or even gets to)

hangs on the wall in New Yawk, or LA, or Paree, or heaven forbid,

Sydney, makes no difference whatsoever to their capacity to have

produced art.

Those that simply conspire in studios, galleries, directorial

think-tanks, showings and various and sundry self-effacements are the

dilettantes, because they have constrained their efforts to the

business of photography, not the artistry of it. The paradox of art is

that an artist cannot say whether or not he produces art. Its not his

call. Art is the popular place that his body of work takes if the

rest of us deem it so.

The huge irony in this art-form (whatever) is that the finest

examples of photographic art are never seen - they sit buried amongst

the millions upon millions of photographs taken year after year by

ordinary people, never to surface to bask in the light of popular

adoration.

Jonathon Brewer... You mentioned how important speed can be in

photojournalism, and that is true. But consider the important images

that were immortalised on a 4x5 Graphic... The flag raising on Iwo

Jima... The burning of the Hindenberg... Ruby shooting Oswald... <p>

LF is a great tool in experienced hands -Dave

I feel like "large format" is taking a bad rap of late. Large format

is a tool that lends itself to a certain type of image that some would

brand dull. Springtime last I was out and about with the Deardorff

8X10 and in a hilly district I would herd a large group of wild horses

each time I dropped into another canyon. Not the type that always

follows rules, I set up a shot ahead of time, focus at infinity, sheet

film in place, and at the top of the next rise, there they were. So I

jump up on top of the pick-up with the Deardorff at waist level, and

literally shoot from the hip.

<p>

Great fun! But the picture sucks like the military service! I simply

had the wrong tool for the job that happened to present itself. The

Nikon FE-2 with some Velvia and the 300f4 AF would have gotten the job

done splendidly.

<p>

Part of creativity is choosing the right tool for the task.

To Paul Coppin,

<p>

"Creativity is the other guy doing something YOU didn't think of."

<p>

With all due respect sir I think it is YOU that has it backwards.

<p>

Surely Creativity is YOU doing something the other guy didn't

think of.

<p>

Walter Glover

Creativity I understand literally as the act of creation, in human

terms the expression of an individual (or collective) self, of some

personal impulse. Since we all are unique individuals, each of us is

capable of expressing something unique, although many do not choose

to do so.

<p>

Documenting the subject is not creative, except accidentally or

unless mere choice of subject is regarded as expressive of self.

Duplication of another photographer's work, well known or otherwise,

is not creative except again in the very weak sense as expression of

preference, although we can have our teachers, mentors, and "schools"

and still be creative. Nor is creativity the imaging of the odd,

bizarre, sensational, or titilating, despite the fact this is what I

for one mostly see passing for art photography in the book stores

these days.

<p>

To respond to the question at the head of this thread, creativity in

photography is obviously not a function of format. Each format, or

medium, has its own particular range of possibilities, of

potentialities and limitations. As I understand and practice the LF

format/medium, we have great potentials in fine grain (hence contact

printing or enlargement), control over the geometry of the image,

gradation of tone esp. in b/w. We can also interact with, or play

off, the tradition of LF photography--at least those of us who

recognize that tradition and choose to place ourselves within it.

<p>

Mastery of the LF craft is so essential to full expression of the

creative impulse that I don't think it can be separated from

creativity. Creativity for me necessarily includes full

understanding and control of the tools, processes, technique--the

craft.

<p>

Creativity isn't originality in the sense your or my image has never

been exampled previously in the history of photography. For most of

us, this is an unobtainable ideal and one I'm not sure is worth

pursuing. Besides, lots of us have similar backgrounds, educations,

experiences, equipment, circumstances, so often our images, no matter

how "original" we are, will turn out looking somehat similar--unique

in detail but categorically similar. Personally, that doesn't bother

me at all. But even if we're going down similar paths, we can still

be creative by making our images expressive of a unique personal

impulse.

I fear Walter took my comments too personally. My premise is that the

'label' of being creative is not something the artist can give

himself, and it may not have any bearing on the 'act' of creativity

that went into the work. [some of]Those photographers whom we deem to

be creative, may be so by virtue of being in the right place at the

right time. Their 'creative' skill is fostering serendipity; their

technical skill is capturing the image adequately. I can say that I

am (or attempting to be) acting creatively, but I cannot say that I am

creative. That's for others to decide. There is a tremendous lot of

fluff promoted as creativity in the arts, that in my opinion, is

primarily peer self-agrandisement. This is a tough topic, semantic

quicksand, like the 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' thing,

because it is not empirical.

Dave....I agree with you 100%, but while we're at it, don't

forget 'Weegie', the cigar smoking powerhouse most famous for his

shots of gangland 'rubouts'.

<p>

I wasn't talking about speed, or quickness only, but that under

certain circustances all that the photographer had time to do was rely

on his/her experience, insticts, and yet still come up with something

magical.

I am pretty sure the photo of Jack Ruby shooting Oswald was not

made with a Press camera but with either a medium format TLR

or a 35mm camera. There was a story about this photo in a

magazine recently and the photographer recalled missing the

photograph of JFK being assasinated because he was in the

middle of reloading his camera as the limo went by and he

recalled lookingup and seeing the rifle sticking out of the Book

Depository window and see ing the gun jerk as it was being

fired for the third time. (please let's not get into conspiracy

theories here or bother e-mailing me to say Oswald didn't shoot

Kennedy. I am just relaying what the photographer recounted in

the article. I wasn't there and I am willing to bet a dollar, neither

were you.)