I could make this easier. I choose not to.
A large-format film photographer working the way it was done a century ago — by hand, on foot, one sheet at a time.
There are faster ways to make a picture. I know them all. I've chosen the slowest one on purpose.
I work with a Chamonix Alpinist — an 8×10 view camera of wood and brass, the same basic design photographers used a hundred years ago. It weighs me down on every hike. It has no screen, no autofocus, no second chance. To see what the lens sees, I duck under a dark cloth and study the world projected upside down and backwards on a sheet of ground glass. I compose everything inverted. And then I wait.
Sometimes I wait hours — for the light to turn, for the wind to settle, for the one moment the photograph has been promising me.
It strips away everything casual. By the time I release the shutter — one click, no going back — I've already lived with the picture in my mind. What you see isn't a moment I happened to catch. It's a moment I committed to.
This is a slow, costly, disappearing way of working, and fewer people choose it every year. I keep choosing it because nothing else makes me look this hard, or care this much.
Every print that finds a wall keeps another sheet in the holder — and keeps this way of seeing alive.