This past week I was in the Aspen, Colorado area attending a workshop at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center.  This is a busy time for me but I recieved a scholarship for the workshop which made it an opportunity that I could not pass up.  I love taking workshops – they are a great way to learn a lot in a very short amount of time.  The last workshop I took was with John Paul Caponigro at his studio in Maine.  That workshop elevated my work to a new level, so I have been trying to figure out how to fit workshops in ever since.  This week’s workshop was called “Medium Format Digital: Untethered” and was taught by Jim Stone, a well published and collected author, photographer and professor of photography at The University of New Mexico.  The concept of the workshop was to take medium format digital cameras out of the studio to see what they can do in the real world.  Dan Cuny from Leaf America brought out a few cases of Leaf Aptus 65 and 75 digital backs, and a Leaf Afi – all of which run from about $14K to $30K.  I’m not really in the market for a system like this but I was eager to work with the state of the art in digital camera equipment.  Dan cut us loose with these 30+ megapixel cameras and here are a few of the images I came up with:

This one really shows of the way the Leaf backs handle color – the files from these cameras are rich with color and detail and are very flexible to work with.  The future of digital photography looks good – I think that cameras of this capability will be a lot more affordable in just a few years.

These cameras are much bigger than what I am accustomed to using lately, and are much better off on a tripod.  I decided to shoot something other than people so that I could slow down and take more time to consider my pictures.  Jim gave one of his great slide show lectures on how many great photographers used their frames to describe space and depth.  I feel like I have been especially aware of this lately in many of the portraits I have been making, but seeing so many of these famous images with Jim’s insightful observations made something click for me.

One thing a large 30 megapixel sensor will do for you is make every technique error painfully obvious.  Any vibration or slight focus error is magnified.  This one was very sharp though, so I made a 30″x40″ print of it:

This one did not fare quite as well in the sharpness department when enlarged (although probably not apparent on the web), but I always like the way the colors play in the twilight:

I was torn between wanting to explore the technical possibilities of these cameras and wanting to find something interesting to photograph.  I had a lot of great conversations with Jim about finding a subject for my personal photography work.  I am still developing my vocabulary in photographs and looking for clues in those rare pictures I make that really speak to me.  I did make one photograph this week like this – it has stories to tell and history behind it.  The irony is that I did not have to go past the front door to get the picture – it was on the refrigerator in the house I was staying.  My friend Claire’s parents were kind enough to put me up for the week and I found their family history on the refrigerator:

Michael and Ann thought I was pretty odd for photographing their refrigerator three mornings in a row but it was worth it to make this image perfect.  It had a great time with Jim Stone and all of the other workshop participants.  We all got to know each other very well over the course of the week from working together and eating the delicous food at the Ranch’s cafe.  I would definitely recommend the Anderson Ranch workshops to anyone.