About My Photographic Style and Images
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| 1. I can't say I really have a strong style that I can call my own, yet I have been influenced by the old masters, such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogene Cunningham, Paul Strand and many others and a few modern ones, like Brett Weston, Annie Leibovitz and some I have met, even worked with, like San Francisco's photo journalist Deanne Fitzmaurice who has a wonderful web site. For the most part, I don't care much for the "equipment wars", it's the final image that count. Imagine this, Edward Weston, who has been described as a slight man, who's camera probably weighed more then he did. He spent months climbing all over the hills and sand dunes of Carmel California with a box of 8X10 photo plates over one shoulder and his tripod and camera over the other. His darkroom consisted of nothing more then a sink, light-bulb and table, using his hands to dodge and burn his contact prints. Weston was a master, who understood every nuance of a camera, chemistry, lighting, exposure, composition, darkroom magic and the most important, imagination. In every sense of the word he was a photo pioneer, creating and inventing new ways to produce his timeless images. |
2. My first camera my grandfather gave me when I was about 6 was a Kodak Brownie, which I promptly took apart, along with my Mickey Mouse watch and most anything that had mechanisms hidden away. It wasn't till I was about 14 when he gave me a used 35mm Kodak Pony adjustable camera and a broken down Wesson light meter that under exposed everything by about 3 stops. It took me a while to figure that out. By 14 or 15, my friend, Ken Salisbury and I built a closet size darkroom in his garage using an old beat up Omega enlarger, an enlarging lens of dubious origin, no running water and an extension cord to power the whole thing. I delved into every book and magazine that I could get my hands on, dreaming about owning a Nikon F with a state of the art Photomic TTL metering prism, a 100 foot film magazine and every lens I could imagine, from fisheye to a Godzilla telephoto along with enough money to power my insatiable habit. But as it was, I settle on a very used Maranda D with a 50mm lens because it was all my $80 could afford. So there I was, an arrogant high school nerd with a camera tied around my neck marching off to my drummer thinking I was some pretty hot shit. I bought every gadget I could afford to make me a better photographer. But over a period of time reality hit like a slow moving train. |
| 3. There was a boy in my photo class that sometimes I made fun of because he had an old Exacta camera which, for some ungodly reason, the engineers decided to flip the camera from left to right. That is, the shutter button was on the left hand side, not the right like a normal camera, the film advance lever was also on the opposite side too and film loaded in reverse, etc. If I recall correctly, they even made up their own shutter speeds and F-stops that was outside of industry norms. To me, it would be like forcing a righty, like myself, to throw and bat left handed. He had no fancy gadgets, I don't even think he had a light meter, yet he took wonderful photos that continually beat me up in photo contests. I slowly came to realize, it's not the equipment, it's the person behind the lens. That is, even if there is a lens involved as one photo, that was entered into a photo contest had won top prize, yet it was taken by a freshman with pinhole camera made from a shoe box. I was humbled, so much so that I even considered giving it all up. While my photos had graced the pages of the high school newspaper and yearbook, even getting one in the local newspaper, yet I could not figure out why those people, with far less then perfect camera's were beating me up to a pulp. What it really boiled down to is this, I was more concerned with what other people thought, rather then what I thought myself. But it took me a long time, way past high school photography, to figure that out. |
4. Today, with all the over photographed grand vista's of China, the Great Wall, the bright lights of Hong Kong, to the beauty of the Three Gourges rivers, I find myself drawn to the real China, not the one we see in tourist fliers, but rather the ones that we don't. That is the China I live in, with all its beauty, contrasts, lifestyles, culture, friendliness, and even its ugliness. That is what I'm trying to capture, not just skimming the surface through a ten day tour that most of us are locked into, because that's all the time most of us have. For those of you who care, I use a Nikon D90, an 18-35mm Nikkor lens and sometimes a 35-70mm Nikkor. I wish I had the 18-200mm Nikkor as I hate to change lenses because of dust problems. Other then a spare battery and a handful of SD cards from 1-8 GB, that is all I carry. My tripod usually consists of a tree, bench, wall, fence or just being steady on my feet with a soft shutter finger. Software, the greatest imaging software on the planet, Photoshops CS4 which, if you are a serious photographer, it's a must have. Since I like to shoot HDR (High Dynamic Range), I found that Photoshops HDR built in ability has its limitations. I recently bought Photomatix Pro of which some of the images here have been rendered in combination with Photoshop. But don't take my word for it, use what works for you. A Wal-Mart point and shoot, a $20,000 digital back for a view camera, or even a pinhole camera. It's the final image that counts. Not so much how we got there.
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