 I'm back in the woods and it feels good, real good. My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. I wanted to be a landscape photographer. But with a family to feed and bills to pay, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. It was time to follow my passion. Come along on my journey to become the best black in my photography I can be. Whether it be film or digital, I will be sharing what I learned through my successes and my failures and hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is bright in the edge. I'm out poking around the woods. Restrictions have been eased a little bit where I live. They're still encouraging folks to not travel too far. I'm still in my own county. I anticipate not leaving the county for a little while anyway. But I'm out in the woods with my camera just looking for something to photograph. Just feels good to be out in the woods. Today, the film I'm shooting is T-Max 100. I got a couple of rolls left of that. I kind of like to get through. I think in the future I'll be moving over to Delta 100. But today we're doing T-Max 100. Not sure what I'm gonna find out here. I've actually never been in this area much. So it's kind of nice that it's gonna get out and explore. There's still a lot of places, even in my county, that I really haven't looked at much. So today, I'm somewhere where I haven't been. I'm on this viewing deck. Got some nice clouds moving across the trees and across the canyon here. So there might be a potential for a nice atmospheric shot. If I can get a clear enough view through these trees, shoot that hillside another across the way there. I like to shoot some of those clouds kind of moving over the trees or the forest. Not sure I can get a clear enough view to make that shot. We'll see what we can do. Yeah, I'm having a hard time getting a clean view of what I want to photograph. I don't know if this is gonna work or not. Probably go ahead and make a frame somewhere in here. Oh, there's my first frame. So I found kind of a detailed shot of this fern. Some water on it. A lot of criss-crossing lines. It's kind of a nice pattern shot. Just kind of caught my attention as I was coming down the trail. There's a lot of new growth out here, a lot of spring growth. It's kind of nice to get some detailed shots, take advantage of that. I've made it known on a few of my videos that I'd love to have a large format camera and pardon me, really would love to have a large format camera for 4x5 or landscape photography. The practical part of me says I should be filling out my medium format kit before I start going up another format. If I'm spreading my gear pretty thin and having three different formats, I'm not sure that's going to accomplish making better photographs. I'll have a bigger film but if I don't have as many focal lengths to choose from, I don't need a lot. There are a few missing from my bag right now. So I could either start spending money on large format with one and then have one or two lenses or I could have a wider array of focal lengths to pick from in my medium format kit. It looks like I'm at the end of the road here. It's just too thick to push back this. I was hoping for a little game trail along the creek. Maybe I should, I might try the other side. I don't know if it's any better. Maybe I'll go back down and just take a shot. There's a nice moss covered rocks in this creek and see if I can utilize some of that. But I'm at the end of the road right here. So this trail, this push whacking has become fruitless. So I'm going to head back to the direction. With this competition, I'm going to take the frame anyway. There's a lot of work just to get over here. So I'm going to go ahead and take the picture. I'm not one of those photographers that has to have a waterfall on every stream. I actually kind of think waterfalls are a bit cliche and I still photograph them. Sometimes it's just nice to have a scene. That's kind of what this is. It's just a little bit busy for my taste. But I'm going to, I worked too hard to get over here. So I'm going to take a picture. Worked really hard on this creek. I couldn't find anything that I could photograph. I made a few images. Nothing to, I think it's really knocked my socks off. Sometimes you just take the easy shot. Because it's really the only shot. It just feels good to be outside. It just feels good to be out in the woods. I'm all wet and hiking through the brush, from the bushwhacking. That's all right. What a beautiful spring day. It might just be that I haven't been out that much. I'm appreciating it more. I got to get away from the creek so I can talk. I did a free shot pano with this creek scene. It's the same creek I was on upstream a little bit. I came downstream and found another section that I kind of liked. Well here's a waterfall for you. I actually kind of like the two different motions the river going this way and the waterfall dropping into it. It kind of creates two different directions of motion. So there should be some interest coming down. And then I think having that water kind of blurred in the foreground going horizontal to the frame might be kind of an interesting competition. And we'll see. So I found my way into this empty campground and I was drawn to these dogwood. It's been raining so the blooms are starting to kind of come apart. But just the end of the dogwood season looks like the blooms are probably not gonna be here much longer. I thought that might be a nice black and white subject matter. Just wish I wasn't having to shoot up so much. But there is a nice tonal difference between the white and the green. White blooms tend to do pretty well in black and white. One of the things that draws me to the 645 medium format cameras is it's not a whole lot different than shooting 35 millimeter as far as using it in the field. The lenses aren't a whole lot bigger. The camera's not too bad. I mean comparatively speaking it's on par with some of the professional DSLRs. And I'm so used to working that way that with the ability to change the lenses quickly and move fluently through the landscape. Sometimes it might take that for granted. If I move up to large format, I'm gonna have to slow down even more. I'm not really sure I want to slow down anymore. It's not really about working slow and the amount of shots you get per roll is awesome. And it's just much more affordable. I'm gonna have to think long and hard before I decide to pull the trigger on going large format or adding that to my gear. There's no sense adding something that I'm not gonna use that much. A lot of my photography heroes when I was younger used 35 millimeter and they also shot landscapes. Gatelin Morale comes to mind. Art Wolf. They've done some wonderful work in 35 millimeter. I like the idea of having a little more potential for image quality with the a little bit bigger negative. Oh, it's quite a big negative actually. It doesn't even compare to large format. But what I get with medium format is the ability to switch between focal lengths much quicker. And there's just a lot more focal lengths I can use. A lot of cameras are limited on how wide they can go just on bellow length, how long they can go. The bellows may be long enough. And when you either go super wide or just moderate telephoto on large format, it adds a lot more complexity to the shooting. This having this time off kind of at home is maybe think a little bit. I just did a gear video and was saying I was kind of thinking about wanting large format. But now that I'm out shooting with my medium format, I'm wondering if that's not really something I need. Just really something that I think I should have because I shoot landscape and nature. But the way I shoot, I don't know if it's absolutely necessary. Well, I've got about a frame or two left on the roll. Haven't really seen much that strikes my fancy. I might look for a detailed shot on the way back to the car. But I think I'm gonna end today's video right here. Thanks for coming along. Thanks for joining me on this outing. I haven't been out for a while. It's been nice to get out. So until next time, thanks for coming along for the ride.