(...Yes, we're talking film)
A "Legacy Process" image - one made from film - and my first attempt at composition. Camera: Argus C3, Film: 35mm Anscochrome, Dinosaur Park, Rapid City, South Dakota around 19...something or other - I was about eight or nine years old.
Since 1983 and my first computer*, I'd dreamed of the power of digital imagery.
In the late 1990's, while working with Tommy Morgensen's Dallas Photo Imaging (DPI), I encountered my first "professional" digital camera. The 35mm styled Nikon F460, with which I'd tinkered, captured its images - with an integrated Kodak sensor, hard drive, a resolution of about 6Mb - and a heft of about 5 or 6+ pounds...without lens!
Despite myriad problems, its message was clear: major camera manufacturers - like Nikon - were telling us, "the digital revolution has arrived."
For imaging professionals, the message was "adapt or die". To survive meant learning - not only about the nuanced psychology of ad agency inhabitants, but also about color space, bit-depth, the differences between TIFF, GIF or JPG and raster versus vector - which do NOT reference a battle of dinosaurs...
That fluid and dynamic time produced fast evolving technology. Today, it continues to accelerate. Back then, direct investment in rapidly depreciating digital gear for photography - not to mention its infrastructure - was financially out of the question for me.
In 1997, as a video editor/producer and cinematic director for the Medical Television Center UT Southwestern Medical Center, I'd come to know digital processes - and the Internet. The time was not right for me and photography. Something else would need to put food on the table. But because I'd always had a passion for imaging with film, a sizable portion of my paychecks went to digitize my work with professional scans. That's why, after leaving UTSW, I'd been at DPI - and that's a lot of what you'll see here: images made with the legacy processes of film.
Mostly "non-Photoshopped", these images demonstrate my work methods that continue to seek problem solving when things are still in front of the camera. While I truly appreciate the digital realm, I eschew the all-too-popular mantra of "we'll fix it in post".
In Internet years, these "Legacy Process" images - many of which are now seen on the Pixure NewMedia site - are truly relics of the photography world, but it's my hope they will still inform you as they have me.
If you've read this far, I think you'll know how to listen with your eyes as my "dinosaurs" speak. Perhaps, with your help, these "pixures" won't be bound for extinction.
-30-
(First computer* - I'd learned on a borrowed Radio Shack Model 1, "Trash 80" and their Model IIs & IIIs, but the first computer I actually owned was a Morrow MD-11, CPM machine: 11MB hard drive, monochrome monitor and cost just under $4,000. Wowza.)