A photojournalist’s Sochi, through a 4x5 view camera
posted Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 1:31 PM EST
When Guy Rhodes covered the Winter Games in Sochi for USA Today Sports a few months ago, he not only brought his typical digital gear for work, but also hauled along a 4x5 large format view camera and 34 sheets of Kodak Tri-X 320 film for a personal project.
That project, essentially, was to “let go” of how easy it is to work with modern digital cameras. In Rhodes’ words:
"There’s nothing like setting up a shot of a competitor on the course at the Winter Olympics, waiting 10 minutes to get a single frame of that competitor blowing by you, then flying halfway around the world a week and a half later to develop the shot and discover that it’s soft. Humbling, eh?”
For what they might lack in terms of technical perfection, they make up for with personality. The results are pretty much what sports photos looked like in the middle of the 20th century, and working with it was a trip back in time, too.
"I instantly felt like Weegee or some other 1940′s press photographer, minus the cigar and fedora,” Rhodes writes. Shooting 4×5 handheld (with a broken focus rangefinder, mind you) is a complete exercise in patience and visualizing the image in your mind long before you trip the shutter."
Check out more Rhodes's work from Sochi (and elsewhere) at his website.