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The Photography of David Smith

David pursues the noble quest to capture life in the wild drawing from the approach of large format photographer Ansell Adams fused with the fantasy of the life of nature itself .  In this quest, David places in most of his nature photos an elemental force that is often hard to find but when found, changes the nature and voice of the photo.

His career in photography began in 8th grade when a science teacher taught him to develop film in a darkroom.  This skill continued through high school with the use of a 4X5 Speed Graphic camera given to him by his grandfather for large format photography.  Shortly after high school, David worked part time as a photographer for a newspaper and taking pictures of models and tourists in Hawaiian Luaus.

Since that time, his skills have continued to develop in the field and the darkroom with the addition of digital editing.  His current method is to take a large format photo with negative film then scan the film with an extremely high resolution scanner.  He then follows by editing the print for mood and contrast.  A professional large format printer is then used to get the best museum quality print of his work that will last generations.

This fusion of the old film method with the newer digital editing method assures the highest resolution possible in photography while also capturing of the desirable mood for the most impressive spellbinding photograph.  The resolution using this method surpasses digital photography even using the highest resolution cameras made today.  Since negative film is used, the mood captured is different than that which is possible with a digital camera in that this analog approach does not loose the nuances of the tones that are lost by using digital cameras.

 More to come on the photography of David Smith soon....