I sat down with Marc Sadowski for Episode 196 of the FujiLove Podcast to talk about Washington Wide — and about the accident that started all of this.

In 1998, I was shooting in the Skagit Valley tulip fields when I ran into a photographer standing on his camera case with an enormous Linhof Technorama 617 — Ken Duncan, the Australian landscape photographer, who was deep into a book documenting the entire United States. He needed an assistant. A few months and a resume later, I was in Montana and Idaho learning what it actually takes to do this for real: little sleep, long hikes, more gear than seems reasonable. That trip is where I understood that if I wanted to make photography a career, I had to get serious about it.

Marc and I talked through why I shoot panoramic — the Noblex 135U's 136-degree swing-lens view and the Hasselblad XPan II's 71 degrees both mimic how we actually see, and that's the point. I want a viewer to feel like they're standing next to me, not looking at a postcard.

We also got into what makes Washington worth thirty years of attention: the Cascades split the state into two entirely different climates, temperate rainforest on one side and high desert on the other, and most books of this state only show you the wet half. One of my favorite places in the book is the Salmo-Priest Wilderness, tucked into the state's northeast corner on the Canadian and Idaho borders — grizzly country, an eight-hour drive from Seattle, and about as far from the Rainier-and-Olympic postcard version of Washington as you can get.

Listen: FujiLove Podcast, Episode 196 — Interview with John Shephard
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Washington Wide is in preorder now — use code FUJILOVE for 10% off at washingtonwide.com. 

I sat down with Matt Payne for episode 497 of F-Stop Collaborate and Listen, and it's live now — released early and free for everyone, not just Patreon subscribers.

We covered a lot of ground: how I got into photography and teaching, what it was like assisting Ken Duncan in Australia early on, and what thirty years of photographing Washington State on panoramic film has actually taught me. We got into the real technical differences between shooting a Noblex swing-lens camera and a Hasselblad XPan II, why Velvia 50 is still the only film I trust for this work, and the specific problems a swing lens creates that a fixed-lens panoramic doesn't. Matt and I also traded notes on how we scout — maps, satellite imagery, boots on the ground — and why unpredictability in the field is something to work with, not against.

A good chunk of the conversation is about Washington Wide, the book: the foreword from Colville elder Randy Lewis, and why indigenous perspective on these landscapes matters to how the book tells its story.
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Listen: Episode 497 on Patreon

If you want your own copy of Washington Wide, use code FSTOP at checkout for 10% off and free continental U.S. shipping — preorder here.

I joined Scott Cowan on Exploring Washington State to talk about three decades photographing this state on film — and about the two cameras that made it possible, both of which are now out of production.

We got into the mechanics most people never ask about: how a swing-lens Noblex 135U differs from a Hasselblad XPan II, why I still trust only Velvia 50 after thirty years, and what it means to depend on a single repair technician — in his eighties — to keep aging camera bodies alive. I talked about apprenticing under Ken Duncan in Australia in the late '90s, processing images for America Wide, and how that shaped the way I see landscape now.

Scott and I also spent time on the places in this book that don't usually make the postcard rack — the Salmo-Priest Wilderness in fall, the camas fields at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in spring, the dunes near Hanford that almost nobody photographs. And we talked about Washington Wide itself: why I built it around the eastern half of the state as much as the western, and why I chose to self-publish and learn every step of production myself rather than hand it off.

Listen: Exploring Washington State — John Shephard, Washington Wide & Panoramic Photography

Washington Wide is available for preorder now at washingtonwide.com.