How the Photographs were Taken

Panel 1

The photographs that make up this panel were taken in the period between 1984 and 1989.

Almost all of the photographs shown on this Panel were taken on a Japanese Wista Field 54 Camera which I bought in 1985. I attached a pair of spirit levels which enabled me to check that the camera was always correctly levelled. It is broadly similar in design to many 19^th century cameras made in Britain and other countries, in that it is made of wood and brass, and enables the lens as well as the screen to be tilted and moved in various ways. The camera was made essentially by machine, to a very high degree of precision. The ground glass screen has vertical and horizontal lines at 1cm intervals as a further check on the levelling of the camera. I also had a cloth about 1 metre square that was red on one side, and black on the other. I placed the cloth over my head as well as the camera when inspecting the upside down image on the ground glass screen. The red side of the cloth drew attention to other people who might otherwise have bumped into it! To begin with, composing an upside image is a little difficult, but with practice I found that it became easier. Furthermore, I found that if the composition of the image on the screen looked well upside down, it invariably looked good on the final print.

The choice of lenses is extremely important, but in those days I used mainly one lens, a wide angle one of 90mm focal length with which almost all the photographs shown in this panel were taken. It served me very well. The close up studies of carvings in Exeter Cathedral were taken on a 35mm Nikormat camera for which I had several fixed focal length lenses.

In all cases the camera was firmly mounted on a strong tripod. The exposure varied from about 10 seconds to 5 minutes according to the brightness of the scene, and the anticipated method of development of the negative. The darkest and brightest parts of the scene were measured using a Pentax Digital Spotmeter. In general, the value of the darkest shadow detail that I wished to record was used to calculate the exposure, and the range of stops within the image was used to decide on the duration of development, and in some cases the type of developer I used. All the architectural photographs were deliberately taken by natural light, as I found that this gave the most pleasing effect.