Jorge Gasteazoro
A chemist by trade I always
loved photography and like many of my generation I was enthralled by Adams's
photographs. I started with 35 mm and quickly realized this was not the format
for me, so I directly jumped to 4x5.
Thinking that if the zone system was good enough for Adams, it should be good
enough for me for many years I had a love/hate relationship with B&W photography
and the zone system, when it worked, it worked wonderfully, and when it did not,
back to the darkroom for some more testing! As a chemist I am comfortable in the
lab, and could not understand what I was doing wrong and why sometimes the
system failed me.
Of course, through out all these years and countless sheets of film for testing
the second edition of the BTZS sat on my shelve, since I thought it was way too
complicated. It was not until I had moved back to Mexico and had nothing to read
that I gave the book a serious chance and I sat down to read it carefully. By
now I am sure most of you know how this story ends. I felt like such a fool for
not giving the BTZS a fair chance. I started doing all by hand (yep I even had
the work book that came with the book) and now I am a full "member" of the BTZS
using the plotter and the ExpoDev for all my exposures.
My photography interests lie mainly with landscape and alternative printing. All
the photographs presented were done with the BTZS exposure method, some by
"hand" some with the ExpoDev.
In short, Thank you Phil! for liberating me from the drudgery of film testing
and allowing me to concentrate on the important thing, the making of art.
