A Lifelong Pursuit of the Image
Photography has been the constant thread running through my life for over thirty years. Not just as a hobby or a side interest — as a way of seeing. It shapes how I move through the world, how I notice light falling across a surface, how I consider the relationship between a subject and the space it inhabits. This site is the home of that practice, a place where the work lives, and where I hope to share not just photographs, but the philosophy and process behind them.
The Tools of the Craft
Every photographer eventually develops a relationship with their equipment — not a fetishistic one, but a practical and intimate one. You learn what a camera wants, what it rewards, what it refuses. Over the decades I have worked across film and digital, large and small, analog and hybrid. Each format and system I use today exists in my workflow for a reason. None of them are redundant. All of them are necessary.
Leica M11-P — The Art of Restraint
The Leica M11-P is the most personal camera I own. There is no autofocus, no motor drive, no buffer flush delay between you and the moment. It forces you to slow down, to pre-focus, to be where you need to be before the picture happens. The 60-megapixel full-frame sensor delivers extraordinary resolving power, and the files carry a tonal quality that I find genuinely difficult to replicate with other systems. I reach for the M11-P when I am working in available light, photographing people, or moving through a space quietly. Its compact profile means it disappears into an environment in a way that larger cameras never can. It is a camera that demands craft, and rewards it.
Large Format — 4×5 and 8×10
Nothing recalibrates your approach to photography like working with sheet film. With a 4×5 or 8×10 view camera, every frame is a deliberate act. You compose on a ground glass under a dark cloth, set your exposure manually, load a film holder, and make one picture at a time. There is no chimping, no continuous shooting, no safety net. And the results are transformative. The sheer surface area of an 8×10 negative renders detail with an almost otherworldly depth and dimensionality. These are the cameras I use for still life, landscape, and any work destined for platinum/palladium or silver gelatin contact prints. Large format photography is slow photography, and that slowness is its entire point.
Pentax 67 — The Medium Format Workhorse
The Pentax 67 is a medium format 6×7 camera that handles more like a 35mm SLR than a traditional rollfilm system. The image area is significantly larger than 35mm, the lenses are exceptional, and the system has a directness and physicality that I love. There is a reason it became one of the defining cameras of twentieth-century portrait and editorial photography, and working with it today feels no less vital. For portraits, environmental work, and shooting on location with film, the Pentax 67 is often my first choice. It bridges the intentionality of large format with the relative agility of a handheld camera.
Hasselblad 500CM — Swedish Precision
The Hasselblad 500CM is a medium format system built to a standard of mechanical precision that has rarely been equaled. The modular design — interchangeable film backs, viewfinders, and an extensive lens lineup — makes it one of the most adaptable cameras ever manufactured. I use it primarily with square-format composition in mind, and the Carl Zeiss lenses that pair with the system produce images with a rendering quality that is immediately recognizable. The 500CM rewards patience and rewards preparation. It is a camera that does not rush, and neither do I when I pick it up.
Fujifilm GFX 100S — Medium Format Digital
The GFX 100S brings 102 megapixels in a medium format digital sensor into a body that is genuinely fieldable. The large sensor produces files with a tonal gradation and dynamic range that sits closer to the character of film than any 35mm-format digital camera. When I need the resolution and format advantages of medium format without the constraints of working with film, the GFX 100S delivers. It has become a critical bridge in my workflow — particularly for work intended for large-format fine art printing — and it pairs with an exceptional lineup of Fujifilm GF lenses.
Nikon Z8 — Speed and Versatility
The Nikon Z8 is the camera I reach for when the subject does not cooperate with a slow workflow. With high-speed autofocus, an extraordinary burst rate, and a 45-megapixel sensor that produces technically excellent files, it handles assignments, events, wildlife, and any situation where capture rate matters. It is also an exceptional video platform. The Z8 is not in my kit as an afterthought — it is there precisely because some photographs require a camera that can keep pace with the world rather than asking the world to slow down.
The Philosophy Behind the Kit
These cameras are not collected for their own sake. They represent a considered set of choices across format, medium, and intent. When I arrive at a subject, the first question I ask is not what settings do I use but which camera belongs here. The answer changes everything: how long I will spend, how close I will get, how the final image will feel, and how I will ultimately present it.
For those interested in exploring medium format photography more deeply — the history, the technique, the equipment — I also run mediumformatphotography.com, a resource dedicated entirely to that world. Whether you are deciding between a Hasselblad and a Mamiya, learning to develop 120 film, or researching the differences between 645, 6×6, and 6×7 formats, that site is where I have gathered decades of accumulated knowledge. The two sites are companion projects — this one is the work, and that one is the conversation around it.
What You’ll Find Here
This site will grow as a portfolio of finished work, a record of ongoing projects, and occasionally a window into process and print. I develop my own film, and the work here reflects that commitment to the physical object. A photograph, for me, is not fully realized on a screen. It lives in the print.
Thank you for visiting. I hope you find something here worth staying for.
— Ken