Allan Wiggins is a professional photographer based in Cumbria and has been working in Large Format photography for about 15 years. The images on this website were all taken with a view camera, a design of camera that has been around since the late 19th century.

The camera is made from Brazilian mahogany and is very heavy. These cameras use sheet film. The film is the same as you might use in a 35mm SLR, but comes in the form of a large sheet measuring 10x8 inches, that relates as 80 square inches of film per picture. Transparency film is preferred for its great colours and impact, which in turn marries up very nicely with Cibachrome, a fine printing paper still on the market after more than half a century. Put these two mediums together and you get images of startling colour fidelity, virtually non-existent grain and fine tonal gradation.

Flowers are a passion for Allan and when in his studio he likes nothing more than to capture their vivid colours and shapes. He uses Elinchrom flash equipment. Surprisingly, shooting small flowers on large-format requires huge amounts of light : 5000 watts in most cases : 4000 for front lighting, backed up by 1000 watts to rear and side light the flowers. So much light is needed because the camera's bellows extension, on Macro work, is often 30 inches : that means that the lens is 30 inches away from the film - exponential loss of light means that you need huge amounts of it to achieve very small F stops - F64 is the preferred aperture for flowers, to enable maximum depth of field to be obtained.

Mounting and framing is done in-house. He recommends, though, that customers are better served by buying a print only. This gives customers the freedom to mount and frame to their own preference.

Anyone keen to discuss the images on this website, or the processes used, are welcome to email Allan.