NYT Photographer Ángel Franco

New York Times photojournalist, Angel Franco (left) and Times columnist Dan Barry in The Journal newsroom today.

I had the pleasure of meeting New York Times photojournalist, Ángel Franco who works with Times columnist Dan Barry on a regular Times feature, This Land.

They stopped by The Providence Journal newsroom this afternoon. Dan worked as a reporter here for many years.

Franco's pictures are hard to miss. His eye-arresting images illustrate the quirky people and places that Barry writes about, and usually appear as very wide horizontal images in the Times.

Franco is among the few newspaper photographers left who still use real film. His wide pictures are taken with a Hasselblad Xpan panoramic camera, with a 30mm lens. This unique camera uses 35mm film and creates a full-frame panorama. Franco also uses a traditional Hasselblad with 120mm film. He told me he's got a full darkroom in his basement at Connecticut home, as well as a digital editing station upstairs.

Like The Journal, The New York Times no longer has darkroom facilities. So in New York, Franco said he has his film processed by an outside lab. The negatives are then scanned.

He did have a digital Leica around his neck today. He was on deadline today so digital was the way to go.