I have been making photographs with various cameras of one format or another since I was a teenager, I started my first newspaper photographer's job at the Goldstream Gazette, I was using a 35mm Nikon F. In the later years of my newspaper career I shot all my assignments with Nikon digital cameras. I have always enjoyed taking pictures on my time off for my own personal work, and in the early years of my career, I shot loved shooting Kodachrome slide film with my Nikon. My interest in view cameras started more than 30 years years ago when I bought an old view camera at an antique shop in Victoria, B.C. it was rickety old contraption attached to a spindly tripod with a drawstring shutter along with wooden film holders that leaked light like sieve, I didn't use it all that much, but I did get the film holders sealed and cut down some 5 x 7 film and made a few exposures just to see what the pictures looked like, I eventually sold it but kept the lens as it had a beautiful brass uncoated brass lens made by Cooke.
It wasn't until November of 1985 when I walked into my local camera store in Kelowna, B.C. and spied this beautiful wooden modern day view camera on display, the camera was a Tachihara 4 x 5 wood field camera it came with a 150mm Schneider lens, so I ended up buying the camera, little did I know at the time what I had got myself into.
I soon discovered that the view camera was bulky cart around, (especially with film holders and tripod to carry) also the lens had no real depth of field. I quietly put the camera away for a year or so. A year later I decided to tackle the camera once again, I traded in the 150mm lens that came with the camera for a 120 mm lens which was more like a 35mm lens on a 35mm film camera, one of my favorite all-time lenses. After a while, I persevered and became comfortable with using the view camera and learned how to process black and white sheet film plus learning the basics of the zone system. By 1990 or so, I was fully immersed and had felt I could produce images with confidence with my big box camera.
More than thirty years later my artistic vision has matured and I feel comfortable with my technical technique in order to produce pictures from the view camera. When I am out photographing with my camera along a hiking trail, for example, I can get some pretty strange looks from people who may have never seen such a camera, most people are curious and think its really old and some people like to know why I use such a camera, if I had to give a short answer I would have to say because I really enjoy using it and inspires my creativity. I find I have to think more about the picture at hand, especially when I only have a few sheets of film to shoot during an outing. That is not to say that I have lost picture possibilities here and there due to the fact that I did not get the camera set up in time, being on a tripod and all but I am not at all concerned because at the end of the day I always seem to come up with photographs that I am happy with.
When I am out in some of the beautiful national and provincial parks in Western Canada I like to take the time to contemplate my surrounds between taking pictures, and quite often but not always, I have found other picture possibilities in the very area where I am set up. I prefer to frame my subjects full frame if possible with little or no cropping in the final print. I have found that taking pictures with my view camera is challenging at times but also rewarding and has given me great enjoyment which has resulted in many fine photographs over the years, which can be seen at my website www.garynylander.com
The above photo was taken at Boom Lake, Banff National Park, September 2017 showing my Ebony RW45 view camera.
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