Happy New Year 2022

   With the dawn of a New Year, it’s time to stare down the devil, confess my sins and see what 2022 holds !! 

   During a 6 week car trip to Texas with my wife, I began having impure thoughts. “Just Relax” to quote my wife, I’ve been happily married for 47+ years. However, I’m conflicted between the limitations of large film photography and the possibilities afforded to the smaller, computer aided camera. For me, that’s akin to being unfaithful in marriage. To completely understand this self-inflicted trauma one must peek behind the curtain. My name has become synonymous with Large Film photography, due in large part to a 40 year passion for wet process film photography and a large social media following.  To the point where, older well-known film photographers would contact me, sometimes to pass on equipment or supplies they no longer need as they either retire or move in the dreaded direction of…..digital capture, there, I said it ! There’s an inner struggle going on I’ve only shared recently with close friends. I’m superstitious enough to know if I verbalize these thoughts the direction the pendulum is trending. These perceived impure thoughts have plagued me for sometime and are only getting louder.

  Back in late 2018, along with JB and his wife Susan Harlin from Texas, both terrific Ultra Large Format (ULF) photographers, i.e. any film larger than 80 sq. inches. We hatched an idea to organize a gathering of serious minded photographers. The idea would become known as the Photo Arts Xchange, each photographer’s work had to be mounted and came with an expectation of sharing that work in public for an Xchange of thoughts and ideas about conception and content. The Xchange was open to all photographers using any camera, film, digital or cell phone. There would be NO tech talk, something all photographers, particularly male photographers are very comfortable talking up. This Xchange was to help photographers verbalize their inner motives and reasons WHY rather How, they made a particular image. I steadfastly embraced this approach, even though I knew it would be uncomfortable expressing those reasons to a crowd. Nevertheless fully understanding growth comes from venturing outside one’s comfort zone. The event was an enormous success, if not for Covid it would be an annual event. As an FYI, this year’s event in Rocky Hill, CT is scheduled for Oct. 7 & 8, 2022. The event is open to all visual artists generating work with some form of a camera, details are in the previous URL link of Photo Arts Xchange.

   I can trace the origin of thoughts back to a time, place and name a photographer who unknowingly began the process of knocking down these self-imposed walls. Springsteen has a great lyric in his song titled Trapped…”I’ll teach my eyes to see beyond these walls in front of me, and someday I’ll walk out of here again.” The very first day of the Photo Arts Xhange in 2019, immediately following lunch a great photographer and good friend from Massachusetts began showing his work. His work was both B&W and Color, mostly all digital capture. As the room quietly examined Paul Hetzel’s work up close one at a time, I stood back and looked at the work as a whole from afar. A thought crept into my head, “you’re a film snoop Steve”, for once, I realized I was looking solely at the visual content of his imagery. This was terrific imagery, whether those thoughts would have materialized had the work been mediocre doesn’t matter. The thought was rumbling around in my head and I chose to embrace the revelation as growth in the pursuit of a greater appreciation of visual artists and their vision ! A YouTube video of Paul’s work from that presentation back in 2019 is linked here: Below, I’ll share a real world example of the challenges of large film photography contrasted by the possibilities and ease of the latest technology. 

   My wife and I are driving around the outskirts of Austin, TX, she enjoying the vast differences of the TX landscape, me, looking for imagery to return to when the light is more favorable. We drive by this huge dead tree seen in the cell phone shot. Not far down the road the wife says, “you know I really like that dead tree, could you make a photograph of it?” Naturally, I say, “the light is awful” this of course falls on deaf ears and I soon realize I should return to make a cell phone shot of the dead tree, after all my wife has always supported my passion for photography, I can easily make the same effort for her interests. After making the cell phone shot, we begin the drive back to my son’s house and I think to myself, I’m going to come back and setup the film camera and make a big negative in better light. In my mind I start sketching out the approach with the larger camera and tripod, fortunately, the wire fence had large square openings, easy to stick a wide-angle lens through the opening, should be fairly easy to make a large negative of the same dead tree. 

   When I returned the next morning and began setting up the tripod, it turns out the lower portion of the fence doesn’t have the large 4-5″ openings, rather the openings are less than 2″ apart. That obstacle would be impossible to overcome, the tripod legs simply would not allow the camera any flexibility to move closer. I would soon realize the lens cannot get close enough to the large opening in the fence, as seen in the color cell phone shot. In an effort to still capture the image on film, I decided with the wide-angle lens necessary to capture the entire tree I would shoot the lens wide-open. The hope would be that the wire would be sufficiently out of focus so as not to be seen. However, as seen in the photo B&W below, there is a loss of density where the wire was immediately in-front of the lens, as indicated by the Red arrows, even at the widest opening of the lens @ f 5.6. Below is the resulting print from the negative as close to the fence as possible, shot @ the widest lens opening of f5.6. The negative is simply unusable, regardless of any corrective PhotoShop tools. Consider the opening B&W shot of the dead tree was captured by way of a Sony a6600 camera with a 25 mega pixel sensor. I simply stuck the lens through the large opening in the fence, more than adequate for a sharp 8×10 print, just not printed by way of the Silver Gelatin wet process that I have loved and embraced for 40+ years.

   The take-away, Mrs Sherman is quite happy with Mr. Sherman, while he is betwixt and between.