Its All Coming Together

I feel as if my 4x5 portrait work is coming together nicely. Today before work I made up some more prints to hand out to the people of Klong Toey. One of the images I was working on was a close up head shot of a young boxer named Gaew, I had one of my screaming moments when I saw the print in the fixer.

I now feel things are on the right track with my 4x5 available light portrait work. I have overcome my fear of using the large format equipment in the field to make portraits. This last trip I was able to overcome much of the technical problems I faced, now the camera, lens, film choice, metering, f-stops and shutter speed selection seem clearer to me.

This coming trip I should be able to concentrate almost totally on my subject. The technical stuff starts to fade into the background, now I need to read, understand my subject and make photos that speak to that understanding. I need to reach within myself and my subject and draw out the emotional content I want the photograph to have. I need to make photographs that pay tribute in an honest way to my subject, photographs that speak a truth. maybe not the whole truth, but at least a partial truth of who that person is.

I fly Sunday to Thai with 600 sheets of 4x5 Tri-x and 60 sheets of 4x5 Portra film. I feel excited about the challenge that awaits me.

Ain't Photography Grand!