JOANN VERBURG: When I began the series of swimming photographs, I was planning to use my eight by ten camera, but I was afraid that it would fall in the water. So, I decided to use a camera that I had that was more replaceable, and a format for that was five inch by seven inch film. One of the reasons I used the five by seven camera is that the big negative that I get makes it possible to make certain parts of an image very, very sharp. It's also possible to make things very soft focus. And I like the combination. It's maybe the equivalent of a lot of paintings where someone will do fine brush work and then, in another part of the painting, use broad brush strokes.
