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I'll never forget the first time I visited a darkroom and watched a photograph emerge from beneath a bath of developer. The process is so peaceful, its rhythms a mantra. Agitate the chemicals and wait...agitate and wait.

And then there's large-format photography,
Those ancient, cumbersome boxes.

With a negative the size of a hand and a process as optically pure as stargazing, the Earth simply can't be rendered any fairer, and all by means of her own matierals. Creaky wooden boxes and their traps of glass, with nothing to detract from the purity of mountain peaks painted onto film by the organic wash of their own, luminous, reflected light.

No mirrors, no pixels.

Maybe it's just the bliss of ignorance, but there are few things in life that give me more joy than photography. Had I gone to school for it like I have music, I might have realized by now the complete aesthetic obscelescence of taking pretty pictures of softly-lit waterfalls or realized that thousands of photographers knew so much more than I did.

But under the guise of the amature, I suppose I can subscribe to a different school, one that is as much about coming away with pictures as fishing is about coming away with fish.

Within the landscape, moments worthy of capture linger generously, allowing a picture to be lived before it must be packed away on film. Those are the great moments: being content with standing in the same spot for minutes upon minutes, just looking and going through a set of deliberate motions like a once-a-week smoker, enjoying the permissability of an open-minded and hospitable Nature who allows her digits to be contemplated one by one.