1994 | Bandon, Oregon*
I walked with Lee Talner on the long flat beach near Bandon, endless at low tide. He was working with a hand camera, and I had my view camera on my traditional all-terrain Ries tripod.
My own habit is to go lightly, leaving the camera parked at rest, and then nose about. I work out a vantage point in advance and make a mark on the beach, or upend a pebble in the desert. Then I come back and plant my tripod right on that spot. I have been pretty good at picking out spots.
Lee, a radiologist, was expert in sorting out the ambiguities in X-ray films into working diagnoses to help his patients along, and he developed a good eye for the creative possibilities in his own photographs while faithfully collecting my work. We walked on the damp and delicious spread of sand, enjoying the soft footing and the thin pooling of stranded samples of the sea.
I remember that Lee asked, “I don’t know if I could use a view camera – with the image upside down on the groundglass, how do you learn to relate to it?”
I felt challenged to offer an example (Lee was taking a student’s role in my annual seven-day workshop). So I took another step or two, then set my tripod down right here* and made a small adjustment. I invited him to take a look under the cloth, knowing he would see a nice little landscape with a sun in the mackerel ‘sky’ above, a textured mountain ridge, and a nifty foreground shadow at the ‘bottom’. Lee ducked in, took a peek, and came out with a big grin, shaking his head.
It’s true that we became even better friends that day.
* Run your mouse over the picture to compare the two views.
** Touch-screen users can touch the picture to swap, then touch the white border to revert.