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I joined Perrin Adams on the Great Big Photography World podcast for Episode #298, "The Patience of Panoramic Film." We talked about shooting panoramic slide film in Washington for thirty years and how that turned into Washington Wide.
We start with Ken Duncan and America Wide. When I was his assistant, he wanted to photograph the Statue of Liberty at a specific time, and it was closed. He told me to figure it out. That took calls to the Navy, two states, and the Coast Guard, and we got in. I've carried that lesson ever since: if you want the shot, go after it and don't put obstacles in your own way.
From there we get into the gear. I shoot Velvia 50 on a Hasselblad XPan II and a Noblex swing-lens camera, all on a tripod. The one person I trust to repair them is in his eighties and lives in Texas, so I've learned to improvise. When a small brass battery contact went missing from the Noblex, a piece of aluminum foil kept it running.
We also talk about what it took to get from slides to a printed book. The CMYK proofs were frustrating at first, and I learned the out-of-gamut warnings in Photoshop were more conservative than the files needed. I laid out about 85 small prints on the floor and sequenced the book by color, starting with blues and moving through greens and yellows into reds.
I also say why I'll eventually move to digital, and why I'll shoot film as long as I can.
Washington Wide is a 172-page hardcover with a foreword by Randy Lewis, and it ships now. Order at washingtonwide.com.