Perhaps it was the romance of a large wooden camera holding a negative that was 8×10 inches. Maybe it was that iconic photograph of Ansel Adams, atop his old station wagon, calculating the luminance values of shimmering white show against the inky dark granite face of Half Dome in Yosemite. Whatever moved me, it moved me fundamentally; I was determined to have a large format camera made of wood and glass with a canvas bellows, and so I did.
I spent 30 years dragging 30 pounds of gear pretty much everywhere and somehow I managed to capture some acceptable images along the way.
Recently I discovered a new, unique and amazing photographic tool. It was a camera that took tiny pictures. Damn! One could make a photograph while talking to someone! Amazing! I also discovered that acceptable tiny photographs could be edited inside the wee camera / phone using a special app, anyplace, anytime. It was like knitting!
I’ll never abandon the film / chemical process; It’s simply too sublime. I’ll also never forget that one of those 8×10 inch negatives is equivalent to a 900+ megapixel file. But I’ve made some photographs with this tiny camera that please me and I’d like to share with you some of my early attempts at making photographs with a phone.
Larry Janss
December, 2016
