We Have Choices Today. I Choose the Analog. The Tangible.

Like vinyl records versus digital CDs. Tube versus solid-state guitar amplifiers. Home-cooked meals versus microwaved. Hand-written (or typed) greeting cards versus emails. Film versus digital photography. Traditional photographic prints versus NFTs. I'm in the tangible art business!~Kenneth Wajda I make film portraits using 20th-century techniques and cameras and print in a traditional darkroom. For those...

Photography is Wonderful

There is one thing I am sure about, that photography is special, magical, wonderful. It allows us to keep loved ones with us forever. It stops time. It's a time travel machine. It's something that for most of humankind, didn't exist. (It's only 182 years old, this photographic medium. Before 1839, no one had ever...

Honored to Have Made His Portrait for the Family

Sadly, Mr. Momano passed away this past Sunday. Graflex RB Super D, a 4x5 SLR I met him only once when I was out using my new-to-me (though made in the mid-1900s) Graflex RB Super D, a hand-holdable 4x5 SLR camera with a 190mm f5.6 Kodak Ektar lens. (This is the same camera that Dorothea...

Seeking Denver/Boulder and Front Range Authors for a Gallery Portrait Series

AUTHORS/WRITERSI'm working on a series of large-format black and white film portraits of authors for a fall 2021 gallery show. If you are one or know one, would you please message me. I'm looking for published authors, both young and established.You can see some of my 4x5 portrait work of people in other professions made...

Productive Photographically in These Pandemic Times

This pandemic has certainly caused a major disruption in the lives of photographers. I've heard many say that it has stifled all creativity, there's just nothing to shoot. Sure, there were the photo essays on the pandemic, and people social distancing, masking up, etc. But after that, what's left? What's wrong with me? I've had...

Why Do You Make a Photograph?

I have an either/or question: Why do you make a photograph? Is it to make a photograph that people will like? Hit the heart button on Instagram? The Like Thumbs Up on Facebook? Is that your delivery medium? Is it to make a photograph that needs to exist in the world? That hangs on a...

Gifted Art Film Portraits

[www.gofundme.com/f/buy-4x5-film-to-gift-art-portraits-of-people - You can help this project with a contribution to buy more film.] "I PHOTOGRAPH THEIR LIGHT, AND THERE'S NOTHING MORE SPECIAL!" As I hold up the old wooden camera by its thin leather handle, a camera that feels like a step out of time, a throwback to the early days of photography, their...

Four Photos, Just Four Photos

Four. (4). Just 1+1+1+1. I've been going out with the Graflex Speed Graphic and Ebony 4x5 with the purpose of making photographs. But not some unknown number of photographs, four photographs. Just four. Can you imagine going out and shooting only four photographs? Just four exposures? I only bring two film holders. Yesterday, (I'm only...