How are all y’all doing out there? It’s been a long time and a lot has changed. I no longer work with Full Package Media but now work at NTT Data. I left FPM because we moved out of Oak Cliff and was going to try and find a full-time job in the Frisco/Plano area. Well, it just happened to work out that the old company I used to work for Dell Services, was bought by NTT years ago and my old co-worker happened to mention they were looking. Within a week of moving, I had a job! It’s the 3rd time I’m working for the same company. If I would have been able to stay with the original company, Perot Systems, I would be celebrating 16 years in just a month. But I’m happy that things went the way they did. I’ve been able to work elsewhere and continue to evolve as a person and learn new tricks. I’m sad that I won’t be able to ride my bike down the block and be in the heart of the city(Dallas) but it is a whole lot quieter and we’re closer to more bike trails. I’ve been missing my bike as well and can’t wait till I can put some more miles down.
2018 was a year of a lot of changes. I had several big clients and then I had the opportunity to work with some existing clients. I changed cameras and started shooting more old school. I sold the Canon 60D that I had since 2012 to purchase a friend’s Canon 5d MK I. So I’ve had to learn how to shoot full frame as well as learning manual focus lenses. I have several lenses that my Dad’s Mom used on her Olympus OM-1 back in the 70s. My Dad kept all the lenses and filters from when she passed and he used the gear all through my childhood. I’ve found that the almost 50-year-old Olympus lenses have more character and are cleaner glass than the 16-35mm L glass I have. So I’ve slowed down while shooting and started focusing on the complete picture. I even used the lenses on a commercial shoot and the images came out amazing. It is a change that I hope will take my photography to the next level. And I hope from the news that I’m reading in the camera/photography world that this might be the renaissance of bringing life and character in images again. I have a 21mm 3.5, 50mm 1.4 and 1.8 and they are amazing. Since mating these lenses with the original 5D, I’ve found others doing the same. A new inspirational character that I found on YouTube is Jamie Windsor that had a great post about the amazing film-like quality of the Canon 5D MKI. So it’s awesome to see that others are finding a renewed life in the old systems.
Recently I announced that I was going to put my professional Instagram post on hold and possibly just shoot what I want. I did this in frustration because I’ve found that anyone with the camera these days can take great pictures. I feel that the reason for this is that the new technology today puts the Artist on Auto and not the Artist learning how to work a camera, lights or metering. I’ve photographed all sorts of styles over the years and it’s nice to see all these new gadgets assisting us with creating our vision. But I feel as if some of the programmable world drains the life out of what we’re creating. So often we have a happy accident that is the greatest image we’ve ever created and forget how simplicity is overrun with the whiz-bang gadgets, that we miss out on some great art.
There is a great magazine that came out over a year ago, Wheel Hub. It is the Automotive Photographer’s equivalent of Playboy. The imagery created by these Editors and Photographers is the reason why most of us get into photography. I want to create art with my imagery. Just as the guy in a garage creates amazingly built rides. While drooling over the images I can see the time spent creating a photo. Getting the timing right…the lighting correct…the exposure perfect but also exposing the craftsmanship of what they are photographing without making it look like every other picture on the market. That is why we do our best work and why we keep the life of our art alive. And I think that’s where this new technology has erased that love of what we do. I’ve been on so many shoots where something isn’t working right or I’m not getting the results I want but I figure out a way to get it done. If you have technology do that for you…then why not just hand the camera over to the new technology and let the robot take the photos for you. Too much cookie-cutter stuff going on.
Here are some of the images I’ve captured over the past several months with the Canon 5D and Olympus lenses.
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