page_title: Morley Baer
section_title: Equipment
hierarchical_section_title: Morley Baer / Photographic philosophies and techniques / Equipment
caption_attribution_description: English: MB Portrait
context_page_description: Morley Baer, an American photographer and teacher, was born in Toledo, Ohio. Baer was head of the photography department at the San Francisco Art Institute, and known for his photographs of San Francisco's "Painted Ladies" Victorian houses, California buildings, landscape and seascapes.
  Baer learned basic commercial photography in Chicago and honed his skills as a World War II United States Navy combat photographer. Returning to civilian life, over the next few years he developed into "one of the foremost architectural photographers in the world," receiving important commissions from premier architects in post-war Central California. In the early 1970s, influenced by a friendship with Edward Weston, Baer began to concentrate on his personal landscape art photography. During the last decades of the 20th century, he also became a sought-after instructor in various colleges and workshops teaching the art of landscape photography.
context_section_description: Motivated by a strong sense of simplicity in equipment and technique learned from Edward Weston, and reinforced by his readings of Robinson Jeffers' sparse poetry for which he had sincere admiration, Baer reduced his photographic equipment to a compact minimum. With time and experience, he acquired the equipment and techniques that completely suited his photographic style.  Once he had settled on a particular technique he rarely changed it. Baer used the same Ansco 8x10S view camera on an apparently flimsy but really very sturdy wood tripod for virtually all his serious photography. After fifty years of usage the Ansco had become almost an extension of his mind and eye; he could adjust its settings by feel alone while under his darkcloth and concentrating on his subject in the ground glass viewer. Eloquently, almost lovingly, he expresses his feelings towards the ancient Ansco in his Photographers Notes in The Wilder Shore.
  Baer designed a special metal carrying case, with a sturdy leather-strap handle, constructed for him by a Monterey metal worker.  He replaced it only once during his career.  The case held his camera, several lenses, film holders and other paraphernalia he needed in the field. With his camera on one shoulder, and the carrying case in the opposite hand, he was perfectly laterally balanced as he strode towards the subject of his photograph.
  Precise in his lens selection and use, Baer used a wide range of lens focal lengths from a 120 mm wide angle to a 19" (480 mm), what he called his 'long lens'. As his favorite lens he claimed that  "It sees how I see the material."  Having a lens for almost every occasion was important since Baer did mostly contact prints of his 8x10 negatives where, besides being esthetically displeasing to him, cropping was not an option.  Although owning a Navy surplus Saltzman 8x10 enlarger,  he rarely used it since contact prints were his preferred medium of expression – it's now a prized possession of one of his last assistants.  He standardized his procedures to the extent possible, based on thorough testing for film exposure and development characteristics, changing  them only when necessary.
caption: Morley Baer with his Ansco Camera, early 80s
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