do you do portraits?
No, not commercially at this time. While I enjoy
creating portraits, I find dealing with paying portraiture clients
aggravating (to say the least). I will continue to do portraiture in
the future, but this will be strictly for personal, non-commercial
projects.
I reserve the right to change my mind at some later date.
But, I see there are portraits on your site?
The answer is still "no".
do you do weddings?
No, I'm taking a break from this as well.
can i buy prints of your work?
Yes, absolutely. Everything outside of the
Portraits and Candids sections is available for
purchase as prints. Please see our pricing
page for more information.
can i license your images for publication?
Certainly. Please contact
me about the image(s) you're interested in
using.
who are your influences?
what cameras did you use to create the photos on this site?
Owning the most expensive photography equipment on
the face of the planet won’t make you a better photographer. If
you don’t have the eye and your composition is anything
but, well, get used to hearing people snore whenever you show off your
work. Giving a $10,000 whizz-bang camera with a $5,000 lens to an
inexperienced photographer isn’t any more productive than handing
a Stradivarius to someone who can’t play the violin.
Conversely, a skilled artist can produce
breathtaking works of art using the simplest of cameras and the most
dated of techniques. Artists like Wanda Scott with her collection of pinhole cameras and Mary Dixon
who tends toward a 35 mm camera loaded with infrared film prove that
it’s not the camera that makes the difference, but the hand
holding it.
While expensive gear won’t make you a better
photographer, it can make you a more productive one. An autofocus lens
can be faster than a manual lens and will save you time. Using built-in
TTL metering is often faster than pulling out a hand-held light meter
and will save you time. Professional quality lenses will work better
and faster under adverse conditions making for less missed shots.
Hauling out a camera with an image stabilised telephoto lens and
shooting hand-held is faster than setting up a camera with a
non-stabilised lens on a tripod. Digital cameras allow one to shoot
more pictures in an outing without the worries of missing shots while
loading film bodies or the expense of wasted shots.
Time that is not spent fighting with equipment can
be spent making more images. Time not spent in a darkroom laboriously
perfecting a print is time that can be used behind a camera. Money
saved on film and processing can be invested in seeking out new images,
education, or upgrading gear.
Productivity is important to different people for
different reasons. Some artists just want to spend as much time behind
a camera making as many images as possible. Some are looking to keep
their costs down so they can translate those savings into productivity
in their non-photographic lives. Photographers who depend on their
cameras for a living need pro-quality gear that will take a fair amount
of abuse, is easily serviced, and that works under challenging
conditions as their income is tied to their production (missed shots
translate into missed income).
Whether or not you invest in higher-end gear
depends on how important productivity is to you. There are those who
forsake efficiency and newer technologies in order to fully pursue
their own artistic vision, and I salute them for it. There is
absolutely nothing wrong with this approach.
In my own case, I have made a significant
investment in my equipment — which I refuse to list in order to
satisfy the hardware fetishists — because I have decided to try
and earning a living from my art. The more productive my equipment
allows me to be, the more opportunities I have to create images across
a broader area, with as few missed shots as possible. This is the
rationale that underlies my own equipment purchases, which are mostly
focused on a purely digital workflow.
However, whatever works for me may not work for
you depending on your own motivations. If you are a hobbyist looking to
produce photographs with artistic merit, you can probably do so using
equipment much less expensive than mine be it film or digital (I feel
that both are valid mediums for artistic expression).
On any given day I can count on receiving at least
one or two e-mails asking me which camera/film/lens I used for a
specific photograph, as if owning the same piece of equipment will
allow others to produce identical images. I find this to be almost as
absurd as rushing out to purchase the same pots and pans that Wolfgang
Puck uses in the expectation of achieving the same results he does in
his kitchen.
What gear did I use to create a specific image?
Even if I chose to answer the question, the answer wouldn’t be
all that relevant to anyone who isn’t me. Those who are really interested in learning something are advised not to ask how I made a particular image, but to ask why instead. This is the more important question, and where learning about photography truly begins.
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