John D. Clark
John started making photographs in 1974 in the Maryland and Washington D.C. area. He developed a love for landscape photography through study of the work of Fred Picker and Ansel Adams. John has followed a career in chemistry for the past 15 years while making photographs using 35mm and medium format cameras. Favorite subjects have been primarily landscapes, but also include portraits and photos of historic aircraft, go ahead.
He concluded that a larger negative was necessary to obtain the intense detail and crispness that marks the kind of landscape photography he wanted to pursue. In 1999, he built his first large format camera from a build-it-yourself kit. With this camera, John totally immersed himself in large format photography. Several of the early photos on this web site were taken with this first, hand-built camera. Using the home made camera for about a year allowed John to determine that large format photography gave him the right tool for expressing his photographic vision; he then obtained 4x5 and 8x10 field cameras, the 8x10 camera shown in the photo on this page. He has used these two cameras almost exclusively since. With these cameras and the large negatives that result, the full detail in the western landscape can be captured on film, and subsequently expressed in John's prints.
Each print is made by hand using traditional black and white darkroom techniques. John uses his own synthesis of techniques taught by Ansel Adams, John Sexton, and Fred Picker for both creating the photographs and producing traditional black and white silver gelatin prints. Long hours in his darkroom have honed John's development and printing techniques. Favorite locales for dramatic photographs have included Owens Valley and the Mammoth Mountain area, Joshua Tree, Death Valley and Yosemite National Parks, in addition to the San Diego coastal areas.