Over the last year I’ve been supported by the Alabama State Council for the Arts’ inaugural Gay Burke Memorial Fellowship in Photographic Arts.

The fellowship has allowed, in part, me and Jared Ragland to continue working on our project, Where You Come From Is Gone, which explores the representation of memory and absence through a series of wet-plate collodion tintype photographs documenting sites of Native American habitation and removal across the American South.

I’ve also been designing and building an ultra large format 20x20” field camera, and this blog post will serve as the holding ground for build updates.

I’ve researched a camera build of this scale for years, off and on, and have drawn my initial plan in SketchUp, with the goal of having my friends at Alabama Sawyer cut out the parts on their CNC, for the prototype at least. The prototype is made of plywood but the final build will be made of some cherry that’s been saved by my dad from his dad.

Here’s an overview of the camera as animated in SketchUp. It’s a rough sketch, but you get the point.

After the design was completed, I set out to make the ground glass. Several hours of hand-grinding with 5 micron grit (3300 grit sandpaper equivalent) turned into my first homemade proper ground glass. The best I’ve done before this is sandpaper on plexiglass, so this is a big upgrade.

Soon the prototype build should be done and we can continue our wet plate work at a much larger scale.

Here are some progress photos. I’ll update as things progress.

First pieces, freshly cut at Alabama Sawyer

Lens dry fit. Using a Wollensak Verito Soft Focus ƒ4 18” lens that’s in really terrible shape. But it doesn’t matter too much since this will be used with wet plate work, which is SUPER slow.

Glue up is still in process. Hoping to have a rough build in a couple of weeks. I’ve got the bellows (ordered from CustomBellows.co.uk, because I’d still be fretting over the materials, I’m confident) ready for glue up onto their small frame for mounting in the standards. That’s gonna be a trip.

Chamfering countersinks for the front standard screws

More to come as this project continues.

Finally, years later, I have made myself continue this project. I was delayed for a long time by either space constraints, work or life schedule, or ennui. I have actually mounted the front standard for real, and am attempting to get this thing finished up. I have maybe a month of usage out of the garage and I’m hoping to get things thing together in that time and start shooting in earnest as soon as possible.

Rough in for the front standard mount / guide.

Imperfectly chamfered U channel affixed to internal (moving) rail. The wood bit on the right will slide forward and back for the front standard movement. Fine focus will be achieved with a worm gear (designed for a 3D printer).

Just when I started rolling on the camera again two things happened. I ran out of room again, and I saw the video below.

Photographer Richard Pence built an 11x14 field camera using lots of off-the-shelf parts, the most obvious and brilliant of them being Arca Swiss rails and mounts.

I am flabbergasted by its simplicity and compact design. The camera is really, really cool. And I’m pissed I didn’t think about my build with easy-to-buy stuff on my mind. I found cameras I thought looked nice and actually buildable for someone with limited woodworking skills. So it’s all custom, handmade parts.

My point is, now, thanks to Richard, I am at a crossroads. Do I fall into the sunk cost fallacy and complete the build I’ve started, or do I abandon the pieces I don’t need and attempt to build a 20x20 version of something similar to this new design.

I’ve got some pondering to do.

20x20 Camera Build