Four by five photography and the large image produced by that wonderful camera system has been been the guiding thread in my photo career. Most of my professional colleagues have used a 4×5, and I started with one in 1977. My files now contain 70,000 4×5’s from all fifty states and from about sixty countries. As early as eight years ago, I saw the writing on the wall and realized that to stay competitive, or even survive as a professional landscape photographer that I would have to start scanning my transparencies.

At that time I purchased an Imacon scanner–a fantastic machine that we have used everyday since. I was immediately impressed with the beauty of the scans we were getting from the Imacon, and this revelation made me much more open to the whole digital revolution.

In the meantime, we have scanned thousands of my 4×5’s, and the first big advantage was that many of my signature images were “worn out” from being published so many times. Though this was immensely sad to me, I considered it a cost of doing business. Being able to scan and clean up these nearly destroyed photographs was a great innovation, and a real sea change in the way we thought about our images. Even with all this digital work going on, I still kept my feet firmly planted in the past, continuing to drag a 4×5 all over America and the world, and having prints produced for my gallery that came from the original transparencies and not digital scans.

The scans came in handy to two major business areas, however. First, we were able to provide multiple copies of images to many stock agencies very easily, and we were also able to use our own scans to produce books we published ourselves.

Also, about five years ago, I noticed that my knees and feet were starting to feel the effects of carrying a 50 pound or larger backpack around for the last thirty years. Several of my colleagues started to succumb to serious knee problems, some requiring surgery, for the same reasons. I was also worried about hernia problems from constantly loading and unloading my heavy pack.

As smaller digital cameras began to approach the quality of medium format cameras, I began to think about a 35mm digital, especially for long hikes and overseas work. About ten months ago, I bought a Fuji 12 megapixel body to use with my Nikon lenses. Although I originally started out shooting 35mm with my 4×5, my clients always preferred the large format work, and I stopped using a 35mm about 25 years ago. Amazingly, I fell in love the digital camera almost immediately. Long hikes became fun again and not torture. I loved coming home from a trip and downloading the images on my computer. Using zooms to get exactly the right composition I wanted was wonderful after decades of being at the mercy of the single focal length 4×5 lenses. With the small Fuji sensor, I was now able to shoot long telephoto images–something that is impossible with a 4×5, and I began to score images that I though were some of the best of my career.

Fortuitously, my digital advisor Duncan Mackie recommended I give Adobe Lightroom a try to organize and edit my digital library. I found out that Lightroom is an amazing and wonderful tool. My first job with the digital camera and Lightroom was my niece’s wedding. I’ve only shot a few weddings in my life, and I don’t have the skills or the mindset for them, but I couldn’t turn down my brother and agreed to try.

The wedding was held outdoors on a bright, sunny, spring day. Add to that the black tuxedos and white dresses, and you have the makings of a photographic nightmare. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to shoot in RAW mode. After the wedding, I downloaded my first digital images into Lightroom and began to use it for the first time. Using the exposure slider and the fill light control, and keeping careful watch on my histograms, I was able in two hours, to produce a great set of 200 correctly exposed wedding images. You can imagine my relief and the revelation for me that digital photography was the real deal.

Since that time, though I still shoot 4×5, I have gone into digital photography whole hog. I purchased a 21 megapixel Canon and a an array of Canon lenses to compliment the Fuji. What an amazing tool! My knees have stopped hurting, and I love learning about the ins and outs of the whole digital process, and I have almost 700 keeper digital images since I began nine months ago.

My digital knowledge also increased as I used the camera constantly in the field and I had to write a new book on landscape photography that required a huge amount of research and field work in digital photography.

The images in this article were were made with a digital camera, Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III

But, more about that next time.

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