remember blogs read backwards... so scroll to the bottom to start!
Why Do We Photograph?
My First Car...
So yeah... that's me and my first car shortly before I wrecked it. I was passed out in the back seat and was hit by a drunk driver. But what memories I have of passing chicks in my 57' with my James Dean looks. (yes the puffiness in my pants is a cloth diaper) Well the reality is I barely remember this old car but yet I do have vague memories. But this blog is not about me or my old 57'... it is about restoring old negatives found in a shoe box!
Funny thing is when I started this website over two years ago, I had done so to advertise that I restore old photographs and negatives that someone might find in a shoe box or in a barn. Never thought it would happen to me, but I stumbled upon these negatives tucked away in a shoe box that my Mom had saved. And there I was... a photo I have never seen... a memory rekindled. So after wiping the tears from my eyes from yet another thoughtful thing my Mom had done before her passing... I started to do what I like to do... and that was to restore that old 57'.
The first thing I noticed was that the negative was extremely scratched and of course it would happen to be on the car!!! So what you see above is a very repaired image and some nice body work if I say so myself. I have more work to do on it because I want to make an 8 X 10... but I wanted to share the joy of finding this negative with people. The lesson here today... this is why we take photographs!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks Mom...
As Always... Cheers!
Young Guest Photographer
Recently I have been thinking of how to give back some education about photography to young students. Because of my mentor, and all he did for me, I felt compelled to do the same as he did for others. However, I am not a teacher in a school that has contact with many students (I have a damn day job in automotives that pays the bills but saps me of my creativity!). So I came up with the idea of having a monthly guest on my website called the Young Guest Photographer.
I placed an ad on Craigslist in Maine offering any young photographer the opportunity to post their work on my site in hopes of giving them exposure to other photographers and onlookers. I have booked 5 so far and the first one was a young lady by the name of Sam Kate. It was such a success for her that she sold four of her photographs and many people had commented to me about her work, so many that after her monthly show ended, people kept telling me it should have been put on YouTube.
So after contacting Sam and getting her approval I am happy to say that her slide-show is now on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMUOX-xrpCU and make sure your audio is on! I do believe after hours of learning how to upload a slide-show with music, that this is a pretty interesting concept. I am looking forward to making more of these. And as always... please comment as I need feedback on what is or is not working for you.
I look forward to working with more Young Guest Photographers in the future. The rules are simple.... I have none. Age requirements... that you are young!Photograph content... within reason. Music... with or without, your song, or my song... ummmm no cursing and demeaning coments about others (that will eliminate a lot of Rap and Hip Hop...sorry keep it a family show please!). To have enough photographs to cover an entire song it ranges from around 30-50 but if you have less that is ok too.
So I look forward to hearing from other young photographers that may be interested in exposing their work on this site. You can reach out and contact me john@jdperformancephotos.com for any more information or to sign up.
As Always... Cheers!
I'm back....
Wake up and smell the roses.... and that is what happened to me! As I had said I found my life to be in the automotive field. Working for a retailer by day (and night) and spending the rest of my waking hours involved in racing. Then because of my age I retired from racing. This left a huge void in my life. To fill it I had taken up gardening... and growing flowers. Hardly a manly thing compared to stock car racing! But there I was staring at beautiful flowers and smelling the sweet scent of nature's art... Wait did I just say ART? And then it hit me.... the mirror had shattered! I had woke up from my photography coma. To the store I went!
Times had changed in the photography world. No longer was the Pentax K1000 the standard camera... this thing they called "digital" was the buzz and I did not need to buy film and chemicals. Not sure that I wanted to spend a ton of money so I bought a Kodak digital that was not a typical point and shoot but also not an SLR. It was a Kodak Z710 that I had bought to see if digital was all that it was cracked up to be. And it was!!!!!
Regrets... I've made a few... but I did it my way. So what were my regrets??? It was never finishing the Art Institute of Boston schooling. I owed it Mr. Warner, I owed it to the scholarship I had robbed from another, I owed it to my Mom, I owed it to all the photographs and subjects I threw in the trash, and mostly I owed it to myself. But there was no local college here in Maine that really taught photography. So I enrolled in The New York Institute of Photography (NYIP) and life had quickly started to change again.
So now that I am back... what did I learn along the way??? Well the most important lesson I learned was back in 1972. And that was that photography is all about sharing... sharing images, knowledge, emotions, and helping one another. I have Mr. Warner to thank for that. Lesson learned Mr. W!!!!! So to thank those who shared with me along the way it is now my honor to share that knowledge with others. Within my website I have started to reach out to young photographers that want to learn... and that want to share. I have started the Young Guest Photographer section on my site to allow others to share their art. I also have reached out to others for donations of unwanted photography equipment so I can clean, refurbish, and give to young students. The Help Others Learn section will give you more information on this.
So what is in my future???... everything! I am once again obsessed with photographing everything and wanting to share it with others. Life is good when you wake up and smell the roses...
I've been told to blog...
Photography started for me in 1972 while in High School at Newfield in Long Island, New York. We had to choose a course like shop, art, nursing, etc, that was designed to give us a career possibility. I chose photography because I felt it was the easiest course to skip school and smoke pot with my friends, and never once thought of a career coming from it. I mean in the 70's we thought of photographers as people who worked in the Mall shooting pictures of screaming kids. Really... not a job for me. Back then photographers traveled to peoples homes to shoot portraits of happy families (said with tongue in cheek). Hmmmmm... I had long hair, dark glasses, and a not so happy family life. Hard to make people say "Cheese".
But what happened was a great man and teacher, by the name of Mr. Dennis Warner, showed me that I had an eye and a talent in photography and art. Hell I can't paint or draw, I thought as a child... I have no art skills! I can't even draw a good stick figure! ART????? Blah!
Boy what we don't know at that age... Mr. Warner would give me an assignment and send us out free to roam the school grounds during class. Of course this would normally mean a chance to smoke a "joint".... but yet somehow a photograph would emerge from the darkroom, and it was something born from my hands and eyes. It was praised, looked at, commented on, re-looked at, analyzed... and somehow I realized it was art. What Mr. Warner had done was to take many students under his wing and show them... the Art of Photography.
So from 1972-1976 I was an eager student (just in his class) and spent many hours in the darkroom. Photographing everything became an obsession. But I was a very shy (and still am) person. To overcome my fears of the public, Mr. Warner started to have me teach, and write assignments for others in small groups. I would stay in the darkroom for hours and work with other students teaching them the very things he had taught me. He gave me confidence! He took me to college photography classes at Stony Brook in New York and paid and transported me out of his pocket. Just before I graduated he had procured me a scholarship to the Art Institute of Boston. I had flown from under the wing of my mentor and landed in Boston!
THUD!!! (that was me crashing)... Boston... the night life, the action, the drugs, the booze, the women. I crashed, and I crashed hard. I had not made it through my second semester and quit school. I had wasted a scholarship that someone else deserved too, and I had blown a great opportunity, I had sold my camera, never to take another photograph again.
Until that one day when I woke up and smelled the roses.... and that really happened! My story will continue on my next blog...