LomoAmigo Jonathan Chiang and the Belair Camera

Singaporean landscape photographer Jonathan Chiang is back in the digital pages of the Lomography magazine to share more of his distinct snaps. He had a quick chat with us about his experience with the Lomography Belair camera and the Lomography Color Negative 400 ISO 120 film.

How have you been? Any new projects you are keen to share?

I went on a New Zealand road trip with a bunch of other photographer friends back in December last year, and I'm quite stoked at the nice haul of beautiful landscape pictures that I've managed to capture in that famously scenic country! You can check out the collection on my website. I've also made a bunch of shots there with a wide-angle attachment on my iPhone, and you can check those out as well on my Facebook page.

How is the experience of shooting film?

As I usually shoot film using a 4x5 large format camera, I'm quite familiar with the rigors and the process of shooting and developing film. I do my own C-41 and E-6 processing at home with the Tetenal kit, as sending large format slides here for processing is an incredibly expensive affair, since there is only one processing lab that does E-6 processing these days.

Although I shoot digital most of the time, film for me is a contemplative and therapeutic affair, as I know I have control over the whole process. Also, nothing beats the feeling of peering through a loupe at a sheet of 4x5 slide film over a lightbox. It's almost as if you are looking through a portal to that scene.

Please share a bit more about your shoot with the Belair.

The Belair, unlike a traditional technical 4x5 camera, is not meant to be a very precise tool to accurately render the scene you are photographing. Initially, I was thrown off my usual pace as there were a lot of compromises to be made - the viewfinder is not as precise as a ground glass and subjects close to the camera may encounter parallax and focus was distance-scale-only. But such a camera also allows one to be creative in their framing and shooting style. Also, you can't find much lightweight 6x12 wide-angle cameras around, so the Belair makes for a great travel companion too.

For more of Jonathan's content, follow his work on his website.

2018-03-14 crissyrobles の記事