Close to Home

Digital photography is, from a technical viewpoint, the most efficient way of creating images. The gear nowadays delivers a lot of functionality. You can do digital photography in almost any weather conditions. Using a digital camera, however, can easily result in a lot of images on a hard drive of your computer and also a lot of culling and editing time at home.

A few years ago I decided to slow down my photography and invest more time in the process of creating a photograph out and about on location and then editing all those images at home in Capture One. In short, I decided to explore analog film photography. I started with a 35mm SLR, then I used a medium-format TLR, and now for this project I solely use a 4x5 large-format camera.

Large format photography has its limitations, especially weather conditions can have a big influence on the result. When the wind is blowing a gale, large-format photography is really difficult to execute. Rain, snow, etc., is also a challenge. All the large-format gear is not water-resistant. To create enough depth of field in a large-format image, higher f-stops are needed. This leads to slower shutter speeds and can introduce unwanted blur. However, creating images with the use of sheet film makes the process more engaging and tangible. I do not have a darkroom. I develop all my black and white film at home. After developing the negatives, I scan the negatives at home and edit the pictures if needed with Capture One and Affinity Photo.

“Close to Home” is one of my ongoing projects. This project focuses on creating black and white large-format photographs of my home village, Eijsden-Margraten. Eijsden-Margraten in the Netherlands is geographically the largest municipality in the Netherlands. It is a conglomerate of several small and large villages in a rural setting. My goal is to create a collection of large format photographs that perhaps sometime in the future will end up in a photobook and or exhibition. At this moment I do not know how this project (collection of photographs) will develop. We will see.

Please contact me if your are interested in information about large format photography, my project “Close to home” and or prints of this growing collection.

All content and photographs are (c) Copyright Ruud Maas. All Rights Reserved.