In this day and age anyone can pick up their phone or digital camera and snap away to their hearts content. Before that we used 35mm that gave about 24 exposures, making each shot count just that little bit more and holiday snaps literally being a ‘snapshot’ of the whole thing.
But before even that you most likely went to a shop to get your photograph taken, probably with a loved one or your family, by a professional photographer. They would probably have used a large format camera with a negative measuring 8x10 inches and a form of silver gelatin contact print.
Photographer Joe Freeman has kept this tradition alive, even though it might not be keeping him alive from carrying his large amount of gear over rocky terrain and cold weather. The short film ‘Through the Ground Glass’ shows Joe scouting out a spot in a cave in Eastern Washington to perform his art before heading home to hand develop and print the final image.
You can buy the print from the film here for a reduced price ‘as a way to allow the viewer to expand their experience of the footage into something real and tangible’.