Panoramic Photography

For the last two years, I’ve been using a panoramic camera. I felt that I wanted a new challenge. The Hasselblad X-Pan gave me exactly the opportunity to look for other ways of expressing myself. It has been far from easy to learn how to use it because of its extra wide format and the shorter height in the negative. I also had to get used to the range finder focusing and to the slower lens. The overall approach has been a great learning experience. The sharpness of the lens and the beauty of the negative itself impress me. In some instances, my approach has remained similar to regular 35mm. Including people, my great source of inspiration in my entire photographic career, has never been in doubt. In other cases, the approach has been quieter. I stepped back and included unrelated fragments of life into the same framing. Sometimes the results have been very surprising. The format of the camera has given voice to mundane moments in our life that would have gone unnoticed if I had walked around with my SLR camera and a 28mm lens. Sometimes I feel that a moment before my very eyes can be only taken with the panoramic. Some other times I feel that it can be shared with the 35mmm camera. It all depended on how I felt about it at the time.

But the versatility of the camera has opened up new windows of opportunities. I’ve enjoyed doing interiors, still life, even landscapes with it. In these instances, I feel that I’m trying to develop a new visual language. The work is slowly brewing. It will take a while before I’ll get a full understanding of the scope of these new bodies of work. For the first year, I only made contacts and small prints. The images here represent the first collection of photographs that I’m mildly pleased with. I will need more time to determine which ones will really stay with me.

It’s my hope to get some feedback from all of you who visit my web page.

Ernesto Bazan