Paige S. Wilson, Photographer

Photog­ra­pher Photographer Paige S. Wilson recently dropped by Mercury Photo Bureau for a facil­i­ties tour. We traded places behind the cam­era as I made her por­trait, and she made mine.

Wilson was in born Los Angeles and raised in Oklahoma City. After tak­ing a pho­tog­ra­phy class at Harding Charter Preparatory High School, she enrolled at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO), where she took a dark­room class. Unlike her dark­room time in high school, which she describes as spent goof­ing off, she ended up really lov­ing it this time — enough to minor in pho­tog­ra­phy. She began shoot­ing pro­fes­sion­ally dur­ing her junior year at UCO.

After grad­u­a­tion, Wilson com­pleted an intern­ship with Los Angeles fash­ion pho­tog­ra­pher and video­g­ra­pher Tamar Levine before return­ing to teach high school-level pho­tog­ra­phy at her alma mater. Outside the class­room, she is much in demand as a com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­pher, work­ing prin­ci­pally in Los Angeles and Oklahoma. To see her port­fo­lio or book a ses­sion, please visit Paige Wilson Photography.

Camera

Wista 45DX field cam­era (cher­ry­wood)

Lens

Unknown maker Petzval with inter­nal iris, rack & pin­ion focus, ca. 1870

Focal length

250mm

Aperture

ƒ/4.0

Shutter

Packard No. 6 pneu­matic shut­ter with flash sync for Paul C. Buff CyberSync Cyber Commander

Exposure

~¹⁄₂₅ sec­ond @ EI 25

Film

Carestream Half-Speed-Blue 8″×10″, trimmed to fit 4″×5″ — semi-stand devel­op­ment with day­light tank in Pyrocat-HD (1:1:200) for ~60 min­utes — 2 min­utes in TF-4 archival fix

Key Light

Paul C. Buff Einstein E640 with 22″ sil­ver beauty dish & 30° grid & Matthews C-stand with tur­tle base & grip arm

Fill

Impact 42″ 5-in-1 col­lapsi­ble cir­cu­lar reflec­tor (sil­ver side), Avenger reflec­tor holder with mini grip head, & Manfrotto stack­able air-cush­ioned light stand

Background light

Paul C. Buff Einstein E640 with 7″ reflec­tor, LiteMod™ Unit Mainframe, 15° grid, & Matthews back light stand

Background

Manfrotto back­ground sup­port with Interfit Italian Collection back­ground (grey)

Safety equip­ment

All stands weighted with Matthews Senior Boa Bags

Digitization & post-production

Epson per­fec­tion V850 scan­ner with VueScan scan­ning soft­ware & Adobe Lightroom