So my first camera was an old, beat up Cambo 5x7 that I got in Philadelphia when I was 17 and in need of a camera to shoot buildings. I taught myself how to use the camera and I turned my bathroom into a darkroom and did the developing and making of contact prints of my photos. I had a couple of lucky shots, but mostly they turned out dull, blurry and without a lot of compositional integrity. In spite of this, I fell in love with being behind a camera, with the smell of the chemicals and of that instant when you first see a blank sheet of nothingness start to fade into the concrete reality of the moment captured.

I still have that 5X7 and a few years back my uncle gave me his old 4X5 that's in much nicer shape. I've just recently gotten back into shooting large format and I'm wondering why I ever stopped. I am having so much fun trying to translate the pictures I see in my head into something that I can print in the darkroom.

I don't do digital, It's far too complicated and I feel that it lacks the sensory experience I find being behind a film camera. For me the bliss of photography happens at the moment you snap the shutter and it happens in the darkroom, not in the bits and bytes of my hard drive.

I also don't own a microwave or an SUV and I still think that it's better to buy things at the store from a living, breathing person. I still think that sending a hand written letter or card in the mail is infinitely more preferable to email or any other type of electronic, computer related correspondence.