When it comes to our cabin in New York’s Hudson Valley, my family and I have become fair-weather friends. Having wisely put illusions about learning winter sports behind us, in the long stretches of the year when temperatures hover close to freezing, we’re just as likely to remain in Brooklyn. In the summer, on the other hand, when the city begins to swelter, the geography pivots, with upstate becoming the happy default and steamy stretches in the metropolis reduced to necessary obligations.
Practically speaking, this means that by late May I begin to hatch photographic plans for the warmer season about to unfold. My longstanding intention to devote a summer to large format photography—4×5 or 5×7 (though I also have an antique Empire State 8×10 that I’ve been slowly restoring) has been repeatedly stymied in years past by an excess of family obligations. This year, however, I’ve finally put everything in place to allow the big cameras to dominate…though I can’t control the weather, which on our first full weekend here turned out to be cold, blustery, and wet.
So away went the case with the Deardorff 5×7, film holders, and lenses, and out came my dependable 6×6 options, the Rolleiflex 3.5F and a Bronica S2A I’ve more or less decided to part ways with, but haven’t yet listed. I reckoned that its long 300mm zoom might add an interesting perspective for photos glimpsed during drives.
As in the City, the Rolleiflex, loaded with Kodak Tri-X 400, accompanied me everywhere. This weekend it yielded what were probably the most interesting frames: several people shots, between raindrops, at a Farmers Market, along with items of local color—rural bric-à-brac at flea markets and on roadsides, and some compositions in my husband’s pottery studio. The Bronica earned its keep (and a further reprieve from being listed for sale, though I’ve included a “soft” listing at the close of this piece) with several long Tri-X perspectives of misty hills and barns, to say nothing of a querulous family of rain-soaked chickens.
People and Creatures
Objects and Vistas
In the Pottery Studio
Owing to their portability, both cameras allowed me the kind of spontaneity that I’m accustomed to in my ramblings around New York City, notwithstanding the moisture that fogged my spectacles and dampened the ground glass. It will be interesting to see how I adapt to the necessarily more complex and scripted approach to photography that the Deardorff (and perhaps the Empire State) will entail—dark cloth, tripod, Scheimpflug principle and all—once summer truly kicks into gear.
That is… if the rain stops.
Thanks for having a look.
FEATURED IMAGE: Roller Skates, 2026. Rolleiflex 3.5F.
Readers interested in a Bronica S2a with 4 lenses (Nikkor 80mm f2.8, Zenzanon MC 40 f4, Zenzanon 135 f3.5 and Zenzanon 300 f4.5) are welcome to email me at da*************@****ud.com. The camera has one mechanical quirk I can describe but otherwise has produced lovely images over the years for me. The optics, including the very rare 40mm Zenzanon MC, are superb. Alas, I own too many cameras…and would like to see this set find a nice home.
You can see more of my work at leica1933.com
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