Douglas Kirkland on Photography: Shooting with an 8x10 Camera

Photographer Douglas Kirkland uses a large-format film camera to shoot portraits.In the Douglas Kirkland on Photography series, well-known photographer Douglas Kirkland explores a variety of real-world photographic scenarios, sharing technique insights and critiquing the results. This installment is a love letter to the large-format Deardorff view camera, which shoots a negative measuring eight by ten inches. Douglas begins by showcasing a dozen startling and luminescent portraits from his years working in large-format photography, featuring subjects ranging from celebrities such as Nicole Kidman to Australian Aborigines. Next, Douglas tours the 8x10 large-format camera, showing how to achieve effects such as shallow depth of field and describing the printing potential that such a large negative permits. He then demonstrates a variety of lighting, posing, and styling techniques while photographing both indoors and outdoors at the Kirkland studio in Los Angeles, California. The course concludes with a critique of the resulting photographs. Douglas also shows how he resized and cropped the image to fit a print campaign.