Blog #26 - Large Format Workshop With Yan Preston

https://www.yanwangpreston.com/

This Valentines Day was one of the busiest of my academic career. From morning workshops and individual tutorials to possibly the most exciting and fascinating workshop to happen all year. Today we got to see a Large Format camera up close and person. The session with only a small group of student (Only 3 of us), Lead by Yan Preston.

I personally have never worked with Large Format cameras, the biggest I have gone is digital medium format. So this was a new experience for me, which I was very excited for. To start the day we were shown some prints that Yan herself had shot with a Large Format Camera, before we were shown the actual camera itself as seen above. 

Next we were given a quick demonstration of how the camera works. How it moves and which parts do what. Then we were shown the film and how to load it into a cartridge, which you would normally do in a dark room but thankfully Yan had pre-loaded cartridges. Then it was time to go out and take our own photos. We all took turns going under the hood, focusing the camera, loading the film and then taking a shot. This was a great learning experience, we were left on our own to figure things out and really get to know the camera.

I hope in the future to work with large Format again but for this project I will be sticking with my digital SLR.