Meet John
My interest in photography began in my late teens as a means to record backpacking trips on summer break from college. The only camera available at this time used 126 film, which produced small square (26x26mm) prints or slides. Back then if an image had acceptable exposure and focus I was happy. I graduated from college a few years later and began a career as a public school science teacher. With my very first paycheck I finally purchased a quality camera: the original Olympus OM-1 and a 50mm f1.4 lens. Now I was set, I thought this should be easy - nope! Soon I was asking why didn’t my images match what I had seen in nature. Why is there so much clutter in the foreground. I didn’t understand that what the camera sees is very different compared to what the human eye and brain connection perceives. Not one to give up, I slowly began to see the world photographically. I would find myself driving and taking mental pictures of scenes I liked and dismissing others as poorly lit or too cluttered. Gradually my images improved and I achieved some of my first credits in small publications. As my images improved my love of photography grew stronger. Sadly at the same time my frustration with teaching reached the boiling point. After about a decade I left teaching and began working at a camera store.
By this time I was beginning to feel limited by 35mm format. Frequently published photographers I admired (David Muench, Ray Atkeson) worked in medium and large formats which were highly preferred by publications over 35mm. Realizing this, I bought my first 4x5 view camera in 1990, a lightweight Calumet Wood Field XM with three lenses. I was set I thought - nope! Although my composition skills were much better than when I began with 35mm, now the image was upside down and left, right reversed on a ground glass. And I needed a silly darkcloth just to see the image. Eventually I realized the best way to learn my new format was to compose the image with a 35mm camera and try to roughly duplicate the borders of the image on 4x5. It probably took a couple of years to get really comfortable composing images with the view camera. Within a few years I upgraded my wooden 4x5 camera to the very sturdy Toyo 45A2. At this time I also used a Pentax 6x7 for backup. The struggle to learn the 4x5 was worthwhile as my publication credits began to increase, particularly for use in calendars. In 2010 I supplied all the images for the beautiful nature calendar "Thoughts from Walden Pond". I have also been published multiple times in prestigious calendars by Audubon, Sierra Club and Inner Reflections.
Few things remain the same for long in this world including the demand for stock photography. As the internet and digital sharing of images have grown the last 20 years, the number of print publishers decreased dramatically along with pay rates for published photos. This has led to a change of focus (pun) on my part towards fine art prints. Fortunately the images in my 4x5 library make outstanding large prints. I resisted the change to digital capture for a long time. Why shoot with a 13 or 20 megapixel camera when scanning 4x5 film produced a much better image? Finally in 2014, Nikon released the 36mp D800e. About the same time some of my favorite local labs that processed 4x5 film were closing and those that continued began to charge $5 or more per sheet (on top of the $2 for the unprocessed film). The handwriting was on the wall and I finally went to all digital capture with the Nikon D800e. Fortunately, this switch lightened the load for my aging back and after a decade of digital capture I would not go back to film. Today I work with a mirrorless Nikon Z8 system and often stitch multiple shots into one frame creating an image file that exceeds 4x5 quality. In 20 years I’ve gone from carrying bulky sheet film holders to a one ounce memory card that can hold thousands of images. I now primarily capture images that have potential for fine art use and my prints appear in hotels, hospitals and private collections.