Something interesting happened today… I did something different, sort of. As anyone who follows my Instagram may know, I enjoy shooting street photography. Typically, I shoot with my Fujifilm system. Its small, quick and lets me get my shot and be on my way. However, I forwent my Fuji cameras today for another, much larger one. My toyo 4x5. It is small in comparison to many other 4x5’s, but really for street photos its MASSSIVE. Slow, overt, cumbersome, difficult, heavy, limited shots, et cetera. All things that are really the opposite of what I want in my street set up. I pulled it off however, that is, I think I did. I somehow managed to fuck up my film while developing it and basically lost my entire days work. It sucks. I really felt like I had some keepers in the batch that I shot.
SO why bother writing about images that may have been good? I am an introverted individual, my street photography with a digital camera involves me being sneaky, capturing what I see and then running off. There have been many times where I have seen pictures, but failed to make them simply because of my timid-ness towards so overtly photographing people on the street. I know, frankly its embarrassing, and one might imagine how I felt taking a 4x5 camera on a tripod and walking around Fresno with it. I spent the first half hour just wondering around with my camera swung over my shoulder on the tripod. It took me that long before I realized that I was not actually making images or really doing anything other than killing my back. I stopped, put the camera down and just stood there. I was thinking that I could either go back to my car and think of a project that didn’t really matter or I could at least try and make images of my surroundings. I chose to make images, I first was of a building (not very special but I had to start someway), my second was a slower speed shot of a group of trees (it was windy and I was hoping to gather the motion of the trees with the stillness of the buildings around them), my third was of an alleyway that had two men walking down it, the light was cutting across the ally splitting it up, I had tried to compose it so each man was in the light or dark side. I just kept going, and I spent the next 4 hours looking and carefully picking my shots until I had used up all my film holders. I can take a total of 24 shots before needing to reload. 4 hours for 24 pictures, that’s a long time, but a necessary requirement for shooting this way. I had to be more choosing with my pictures. While I really will never know for sure whether the pictures were as good as they felt, I do feel that I got something more out of this shooting day then I have out of others in recent times. The 4x5 slows you down, forces you to be present in the moment, and in the case of street photography it causes you to see more. It does something else if you are like me too, it breaks your ability to be covert, and in doing so allows you to take the photos that you would otherwise shy away from. This may have been my first time, but it will certainly not be my last shooting 4x5 street photography.