© Jack Dykinga

© Jack Dykinga

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Interviewer: Yeah, you really did whip us into the good light, boy.

Dykinga: I didn't know you could live on four hours' sleep for a week on end. Man, I was like ... (chuckles)

Interviewer: Is there a big difference between 4x5 and 35mm?

Dykinga: God, there's a huge difference. There is and there isn't. You can make a lot more out of this than you should. Basically, a hammer is just a tool that you use to get something done. One of the tools allows you to do a lot more things than the other one does. There's no reason why you can't take a perfectly great picture with a 35mm camera. It's just that a 4x5 is uniquely suited to inanimate objects where you have lots of time to compose and really bore into the scene, in terms of composition. This is one of the things I always stress when I'm teaching is that the focusing, the black cloth you put over your head that isolates you from the rest of the world is kind of like a means to an end. It allows you to say goodbye to the outside world and just concentrate [on] what's right in front of you, that's also upside down and backwards, and so you're kind of thrown out of your typical context, and you're able to really concentrate on this shape and form in front of you, and just work as strictly shapes and forms, instead of an actual reproduction of the scene in front of you. You're actually looking at the design of things. And in that regard, it's also another way to slow you down and concentrate. So that, plus all the movements on a 4x5 camera. A 35mm you can focus forward and back, so basically two things. Well, a 4x5 has twenty adjustments, so exactly ten times as many. You can move the lens forward and back, you move the film forward and back, you make the film go up and down. You can make the lens go up and down, sideways, tilt it. All kinds of movement that you can't do with a 35mm.

Interviewer: Each has an impact, I take it.

Dykinga: Each has an impact. Certainly if you had to shoot wildlife with a 4x5, you'd fail miserably — it'd have to be a stuffed animal. And the same thing with people pictures: Anything that's on the move, you want a 35mm. But like I said, for inanimate landscapes, you can't beat a 4x5.

Interviewer: What 4x5 techniques would also be useful to 35 shooters. What tips would you have?

Dykinga: Well, the tips that are applicable for both formats really involve seeing; the seeing of color; the seeing of juxtaposing one color against a complimentary color; the textures, seeing one texture ... When you talk about the composition and the actual creation of a photograph, people with 35 sometimes go too fast, because they can. So if you can get them to slow down and put their camera on a tripod, they kind of start adopting some of the techniques that a 4x5 photographer might use. That's what we did on this trip. Once you do that, then they can slow down and spend more time composing the pictures, instead of just picking up and making snapshots. So in that regard, they're quite similar.

Interviewer: I want to go back. There's something that's not quite clear to me. You did your Pulitzer-winning deal. You had an impact there. The state was gonna cut funding for those guys, and the reverse happened, you got some more money there. What's the difference between that, between havin' the people in the frame, and not havin' 'em.

Dykinga: In terms of cause and effect, there's no difference between having people in the frame and shooting landscape. I guess the easiest way to talk about this, it's like the Endangered Species Act. People always say — "What do we need that for? They're dead, they're dinosaurs, they're not gonna be around." The trouble is that if you only look at people, then you regard all these other things as something less than worthy of living or surviving. Before you know it, you're back to people again, because as they all disappear they're just basically markers for your own destruction. So the habitat and the ecosystem is really dependent on this web of life that begins with the least of things. Or maybe it's the best of things — maybe we're the least of things. But the point is that you can't just look at things in isolation. And people, humans, are really great at doing that. They love to say that we're so great. But, you know, that superiority of humans gets us in a lot of trouble. If the snail darter goes, so goes the humans on the continuum. I don't think you can afford to write anything off. It's the same thing from a journalistic point of view. I think that a picture of just landscape and just life within that frame is just as valid as a crowded scene in New York.

Interviewer: You kind of went from point and shoot with a 35; elbow your way into the crowd; bing, bing, bing on the celebrities; make the deadline? The fast pace of that, versus the pace that you establish doin' a book today. Is that worthy of note?

Dykinga: Oh, yeah. I think when you're working for the newspapers or for media in general, you know, you're kind of limited. If you're working for USA Today, you write a twelve- or eight-inch story, and that's all you can do, that's all you wrote. So it's kind of frustrating to get into really meaty issues. Environment is a quiet issue. It's an issue that, like I said, doesn't have a whole lot of sex appeal — but it's an issue that you can't explain in a twelve-inch story in USA Today, or a two- or three-minute sound bite on television. It's multi-layered, and for one thing, I mean, when I'm photographing I want to photograph for a whole year cycle. So I want to live and get to know the place and see all the seasons and see how it affects things. Books are a much better way to handle those kinds of quiet, more enduring subject matter. The environment is definitely that. I mean, it takes a heck of a long time to get to know a place. Even then you're just kind of scratching the surface. It's still a snapshot, but compared to a newspaper snapshot it's quite a bit different. It's a snapshot in Grand Canyon time. (laughs)

continued: river experiences >>

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