New Mexico photographer Nathan McCreery works the Western desert with his medium and large-format cameras, classic technique, Tri-X or T-Max and an eye as sharp as a Clovis Point.

See more at www.nimbusart.com

(All photographs Copyright Nathan McCreery, All Rights Reserved, No Reproduction Permitted Whatsoever.)

Nathan McCreery talks about his work, BELOW:

PICTURED ABOVE: Nathan McCreery at work in the field.

All of my black and white photographs are hand printed.  I hand process all of my own black and white film and print them in a traditional darkroom.  While I have seen some very fine digitally produced photographs, my strong preference is for all my black-and-white photographs to be hand printed; my DNA should be on the photograph.

I use two cameras, primarily, in my work. A 4x5 all-metal view/field camera and a Hasselblad 500 CM.  Using this type of camera forces me to stop and really look at what it is that I am portraying.  Whether it is the human form, a detail from nature or  the "grand landscape" the process of getting the camera out, setting up a tripod, attaching the lens, determining my exposure etc. forces the photographic process to be very deliberate.  There's nothing spontaneous about using a view camera.  You'll never see someone running around Disneyworld with a view camera dangling from their neck.  Using large cameras forces you to take a deliberate look at the material you're portraying.  One of the downfalls of digital photography is that shooters (I didn't say photographers) shoot everything that moves and then edit back down to  what they want and fix the errors in P-Shop.  Post processing is what they call it; sloppy is what I call it.  In my view that is antithetical to the artistic process.  I would rather see a photographer go out and make three or four images in a day that are thought out than make 400 and hope something works.  One of the exercises I use with students is to have them pretend that they only have one exposure left, or that each exposure will cost them $10.00, so this photograph had better be important.  It really changes their working method.

For me the photographic process is very much on purpose.  It is centered around a search for the beautiful and the eloquent; usually in the landscape.  There is enough that is ugly, dysfunctional and banal in society.  Why would I want to add to that?  Art should lift the human spirit and remind us of what we should be, and how things should be and how we could be; we already have enough of how they are.  Is that escapism?  Maybe.  I prefer to think of it as idealism; an ideally portrayed landscape or child's smile will remind us of who we should be and how things should be and perhaps take us to a place we would rather be.  (In that regard I have placed a large and permanent display in a local hospital. There have been numerous patients and family members tell me that the photographs brought peace and comfort to them when things weren't going well.)

Art should make us better.

I am a full time photographer doing both fine art and commercial but the two aren't mutually exclusive.  What that means is that I spend 75% of my time marketing and managing to enable me to be able to do the other 25% which is to create art.  Maybe if I were a better manager I could change the ratio!