Things are still a bit crazy, but hopefully I will get back to regularly scheduled programming this week.
That aside, as soon as I saw this I had to borrow it from Hippolyte Bayard's bilingual blog.
No one ever really gives the truth about why those of us who insist on lugging around do so - oh we'll give you all the stuff about the big negative, beautiful tone, the monitor sized ground glass, Stephen Shore will talk about it slowing down his vision, Joel Sternfeld about how people respond positively to the big wooden camera etc etc, but here's the real reason...
Plonk down your tripod anywhere with a beautiful wooden Deardorf on the top and you have to beat the ladies off with a stick...
And I really must get myself one of those natty striped blazers this summer :-)
(Photo - Emily V. Clarkson, Focusing
"Last Friday at tho Society of Amateur Photographers the slides of the Buffalo Camera Club and the Detroit Lantera Slide Club were shown, together with the. work of a few members of tho society, including excellent figure studies by Miss Miss Emily V. Clarkson". New York Times, Feb 28th 1892)
2 comments:
Drat! That never happens to me when I use the 4x5 in public. Instead, I get the hoverers. They stand close to me silently and I vaguely sense them when I'm under the dark cloth. As soon as I reemerge, the questions start. Then, when I let them take a look at the ground glass, they all remark on how the image is upside down. You don't say!
View cams as chick magnets? I used to occasionally go out with a View Cam group, as an adoptee of sorts, and while a LOT of guys did come up and ask the same 3-4 questions, only a few women ever did.
OTOH, a female friend ALWAYS gets hit on while using her 4x5.
--- Luis
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