Hello! Please introduce yourself.
I’m Jing Wen from Singapore. I’ve been shooting since 2010, and I have a strong
interest in urban landscapes.
How did you find yourself in the realm of photography, and eventually large
and medium-format film?
I first started taking photos innocuously as a way to document my travels,
and this developed into a deeper interest in photography. Naturally, this led to
becoming more serious about it and going beyond just taking photos for fun;
thus seeking to improve myself and learn more about the masters of photography.
My first point of inspiration was Ansel Adams. I immersed myself into his
well-known trilogy of the Camera, the Negative and the Print. Through
those books, I learned about large and medium-format film photography, so
I decided to give them a try and never looked back since.
In this day and age wherein digital photography has become more and more
technologically convenient, why did you choose to work with large and
medium-format film?
As cliché as it sounds, shooting with large and medium-format film
really does slow you down and make you focus on one shot at a time.
The look is another factor; the organic nature of film grain does render the
urban scenes in a less sterile manner than how digital captures it. This,
coupled with the wider tonality of large and medium-format film, renders the
scene subtly but definitely different from digital cameras. It’s one of those
things you can’t quite put your finger on, but you just know it when you see it.
43