About the Large Format Photography Info site

What is this site about ?

largeformatphotography.info is a primary resource and community of large format photographers on the internet (including photographers working with MF view cameras) . It might be a small section of photography, but the dedication, knowledge, and skill of its practitioners is usually very high, and you'll find here one of the most remarkable open photographic communities anywhere, populated by many experts, but welcoming to beginners as well. The site consists of several hundred article pages with comments, and a discussion forum with several tens of thousands messages.

Our mission is to provide a place where large format enthusiasts can come and exchange freely ideas and help. It is independent, non-profit, entirely free of advertising and commercial activity, and while we consider that its contents belongs as a whole to the LF community, technically each contributor retains the exclusive copyrights to his postings and the option to have them removed on request, as we do not clain any rights on them. No financial contribution is required, or even invited, because we consider that the most valuable contribution is the time spent by members to contribute contents and maintain the site.

largeformatphotography.info is operated on a volunteer basis by QT Luong and Tom Westbrook, using server space generously donated by Brian Reid, refered to us by Tim Atherton. The forum is moderated by Ralph Barker, Kirk Gittings, Ken Lee, Neil Poulsen, and Tom Westbrook.

Credits

Q.-Tuan Luong started large format photography in 1993. There were a lot of things which were mysterious back then. After shooting thousands of sheets of film, some of them are still mysterious, but in the while, he has beneficiated from advice of really knowledgeable persons on the net. This site started in 1995 as an attempt to give back to the community by detailing a few things he had learned, and displaying in an organized form the information that he had gathered from the net.

Among the people from whom he has learned the most in the early years, and whose Usenet postings have been reused to begin this site are Jean-David Beyer, Paul Butzi, Richard Knoppow, Barry Sherman, John Sparks, Kerry Thalmann.

As the site evolved, many people contributed directly articles written specifically for the site. These include:

(sorry, I might have missed a few). And everyone who contributes a point of view by leaving a comment on a web page deserves thanks.

A few photographers have also authorized this site to reproduce some of their previously published writings. Those include:

After he started putting up this site, readers began to email him questions, many of them beyond what he knew.

The forum started in 1997, using server, bandwidth, and forum software (Lusenet) provided generously for free by Philip Greenspun to the internet community. This software, more carefully though of, in its simplcity, than many more recent ones, is one of the main factors who made this forum a success. It has grown to become an outstanding resource thanks to readers, including more than 60000 postings by mid-2002. Besides providing the essential community tools used by the first incarnation of this site, Philip Greenspun has also been a constant source of inspiration through his own site, especially in its former non-commercial incarnation.

In June 2002, service on Philip Greenspun's Lusenet system was abruptly discontinued for the LF Forum. The QA Forum software on largeformatphotography.info replicates the Lusenet system, a testimony to its design excellence. It is the product of the work of several volunteers. The idea of rewriting Lusenet using the more widely available PHP/Mysql platform was due to Josh Wand who developed a first prototype. The effort was subsequently taken over by Bjorn Nilsson. After Bjorn suffered a severe accident, the work was finished by Tom Westbrook, who also transfered the original postings from Lusenet based on data graciouly provided to us by Philip Greenspun. All volunteered their time and talent to make this happen. Some history is available in old polls, and Why not at photo.net ?.

Terms and Conditions of Use

Intellectual Property Rights

By submitting materials to this site, you you are representing that are you are the owner, or are authorized by the owner to do so. As a consequence, all the material posted in this site is assumed copyrighted by their respective authors, and shouldn't be reproduced without permission and proper credit by any means, including framing. The site doesn't claim copyright to any material submitted by readers. However, by submitting materials to this site, you grant a revokable royalty-free licence to the maintainers of this site to publish that material on the largeformatphotography.info site. No other rights are granted, and this licence might be terminated at any time by written request of the owner. The site will not use your materials without proper attribution to you, nor will it edit them in a way that would misrepresent your intent.

No contractual relation

By accessing the site, you agree not to hold responsible the site maintainers for anything which happens as a consequence of your use of the site. In particular, the site maintainers do not endorse or make any statement about the content posted by readers. They might not be even be aware of some material posted by readers. They reserve the right to edit or remove entirely your submitted materials from the site without reasons.

Prohibited behavior

By accessing this site, you agree not to abuse other site users, neither by posting offensive comments (like personal attacks or insulting language) nor by sending them unsollicitated bulk email or commercial sollicitations.

How you can help

Like the people listed before, consider contributing an article to the static page. For a discussion of areas where contributions are particularly sought, see
this Forum message. Material about the techniques and experience (for instance trip reports) is particularly welcome. The preferred format is HTML, but you can also send me MS Word files or plain text, and I will do the formatting. As previously mentioned, you retain full copyright for all your contributions, which will become visible to a large audience. You are welcome to say a few words and place links about yourself, your work, or your website, in a footer area of a contributed article.