New Mexico on Large Format: A Photo Essay by Nathan McCreery

Today, we’re featuring a stunning large format photo essay from film photographer Nathan McCreery. Scroll below to view the images and read more from Nathan about his journey with large format film photography…

Analog cameras and films used: Toyo 45A (Find at KEH Camera or on eBay) | Kodak Tri-X 400 (Find on Amazon), Kodak TMax 100 (Find on Amazon), Kodak TMax 400 (Find on Amazon)

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New Mexico on Large Format

By Nathan McCreery

I have wandered the American Outback now for many years. Whether the deserts of the Southwest, seashores of the North Coast, or rugged mountain areas of the American West, from the Mexican border in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona to the Canadian Rockies. I have walked it, backpacked it, or driven it; but I have traveled it. Almost always with a large format camera and lenses, and all the other claptrap photographers seem to accumulate, in a pack.

My photographic journey began in 1976, or thereabouts. As an art student, in a graphic design course of study, I was required to take a photography course that included not just making pictures with a camera, but also processing the film and printing the film. When I saw the first image appear, as if by magic, on a piece of paper under the dim glow of an amber colored safelight I was hooked. No longer would I work as a board (bored) illustrator, I would make photographs!

During the ensuing years, I have made literally hundreds of thousands of portraits, many wedding photographs, and photographed anything you could imagine from small set product images to large set studio and automotive, to forensic and even medical and scientific photography. If I could get it in front of my camera, I would photograph it.

The biggest love of my life, photographically, has been the grandeur and delicate beauty of the American West, particularly the deserts of the American Southwest, the Rocky Mountains, and the Sierra Nevada Mountains from the Mexican Frontier into the rugged Canadian Rockies. Even up into Alaska. It has been a fun journey filled with jaw dropping moments of magnificence and power to scenes so beautiful and delicate that you could easily weep over their beauty.

Here I present for you a brief portion of my portfolio of images from my home state of New Mexico. I hope you enjoy them as much as I delighted in creating them.

For the gear heads among us, I use, almost exclusively, a Toyo 45A camera, a variety of lenses ranging from 300mm to 47mm, several different filters including a red, light red, orange, yellow, a strong green filter, and a dark blue one. Also, of course, a polarizer and numerous other gadgets.

My primary meter is a Pentax 1 degree spot sensor and a carbon fiber tripod fitted with a Velbon Magnesium Three way head and a Linhof Quick Release camera attachment.

I began my photographic journey using Tri-X film. Later, I switched to Kodak T-Max 100 film, which I exposed at an ASA of 50, and, most lately, T-Max 400 with is exposed at ASA 200. All of my film is processed D-76 diluted to 1:1 with water using a Jobo CPP-2 processor with a Jobo 3010 film processing tank.

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