But unlike the meticulous Adams, with his lifelong emphasis on ultra-precise technique and pre-visualization, Butcher takes a different, more casual approach, at least in the field. He’s more like a man out for a lark who just happens to be toting a really big camera... which he says he often uses almost like a point and shoot.
The view camera as a point and shoot? This man clearly has an unsual take on things. He explains:
“When I’m in the open sun I don’t use a light meter. Why would I? The Sun is a constant, about 93 million miles away. So I shoot at f45 and either ½ or 1 second, usually with an orange filter. This way I can concentrate on what I’m seeing—it’s better than an automatic camera! (Better? “No batteries required,” he adds.)
He’s interested in breaking down the barriers to good work. “The less you have to think, the better photographer you can become,” Butcher adds, during an afternoon I spent with he and his wife Niki at Acadia National Park in Maine (I was there on assignment from a leading photography magazine, in late June 2007). “People always ask me, ‘What is the best time of day to shoot?’: my answer is always, ‘When you’re breathing!’” he says with a smile.
The Venice, Florida-based photographer runs a flourishing B&W retail business from two Sunshine State galleries: he sells prints, publishes books and calendars and teaches. (www.clydebutcher.com)
Butcher, however, has no time for the super serious techno-focused approach to B&W. For example, at the mere mention of characteristic curves, he says, ”The only curve I like is on a woman. I sort of understand curves, but I don’t care. If it’s not a good picture, who cares what the curve is? A good picture will overcome any curve.” (Characteristic curves, the province of hard-core Zone System devotees, are S-curve graphs representing the negative density resulting from each exposure level.)
He uses only (his own) standard film development times, eschewing contrast-altering plus and minus development times.
“Simplify everything,” he emphasizes.
His approach in the field is more like a time-pressed commercial photographer than that of Adams or Edward Weston, he says. The last pre-visualized photo he made was in 1983. He planned the image (of sea oats, sand, ocean and sun) and spent a week looking for the location, and another week waiting for the image and light to be just right. All that time paid off; he claims he’s built at least one house with the profits from that shot, but wonders how many more great shots might have resulted if he’d just let two weeks worth of images come to him.
Butcher believes photography should be fun, and, really big camera in hand, he sets out to have fun. He figures any angst can come in post production. (Butcher mostly prints in the darkroom. However, he is adept with Adobe Photoshop, as students at his Photoshop workshop at Cone Editions Press in Vermont, home of Piezography inkjet B&W printing, learned in June 2007. His Photoshop approach is, not surprisingly, all about keeping things as simple as possible.)
Adams and Weston only had #2 and #3 paper, so they had to make their negatives fit that range…hence the Zone system, Butcher explains. With variable contrast paper (and, of course, Photoshop), the game has changed. “I say ‘let’s be hacks in the field,’” he chuckles, “and have fun... just look for the good light... and fake it in the darkroom. Light is always interesting...follow the light.”
11/9/07--Eric Rudolph
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