Join the Midwest Large Format Asylum!

 Membership requirements-

1. An interest in photography
2. A willingness to carry heavy loads long distances in terrible weather in order to (maybe) make a single exposure
3. A large unwieldy camera
4. The disposition to hang out with others who are as crazy as you are

(We are willing to waive the first three requirements.)

If you attend the Asylum outings it is also a good idea to like food!

The Asylum does not charge any membership fees or dues.  All outings are completely optional (actually the whole thing is optional).  We now have two "official" means of communicating with other Asylum inmates.  The first is our mailing list and the second is our forum.  Both require a registration (absolutely free) but no other commitment from you!

If you are registered on the forum or the mailing list and  would like to have your website listed on the "Member Sites" page just and I'll add it.

Forum Information

Frank Pittel administers our online group forum.  There is a link to the forum from the home page of this website.  Visitors can view public areas of the forum including some of the gallery areas.  Feel free to visit and take a look!

For full access to all areas of the forum you must register.  Registration is completely free and is simply a precaution to prevent the forum from being spammed (which happened when we had an open forum).  You can register yourself but an administrator has to manually "activate" your registration.  Once that has been done you will have the ability to read and post to all categories within the forum.  (Activation usually happens within 24 hours.)

(Registration is required to read and post to all areas of the forum.  Registration is free, we don't share any personal info with anyone and you won't be spammed as a result of registering.)

Mailing List Information

Frank also has created and manages a mailing list for the group to use.  Actually the mailing list pre-dates the forum but most of the message traffic seems to have migrated to the forum these days.  A mailing list is basically an email reflector.  Any email you send to the list will be sent on to all members on the list, and any email sent to the list by any other member will be sent to you.

Traffic on the list is relatively light.  You inbox won't be inundated by email from the list.  Traffic does tend to pick up a bit a week or so before an outing and immediately following an outing.

How to Subscribe to the List

You can subscribe to our mailing list by sending an email to with the words "subscribe midwestlf" in the body of the message.

IMPORTANT:  Emails from the list will be sent to the address from which you sent the subscribing email.  If you send the subscribe email from your work account then that is the account to which the emails from the list will go.  Be sure to send the subscribing email from the account to which you want any list emails to be sent.