Well Bonded
POTN Refugee
With the closing POTN I was honored to be invited over here, when it comes to photography I am somewhat prehistoric having started in my teens after being giver a very ancient Rolleiflex TLR, if I remember it used 120 film, it didn't have a light meter and I couldn't afford to buy one so off to the library to figure out how to shoot pictures properly
I found a few books explaining how to work with light and what settings to use, one printed by Kodak was very helpful.
When I was 16 I got kicked out of the home for doing drugs and lived on the street for a few months, I gave my camera to my dad who stored it away so when the day came to clean up my act I would still have it.
At around 17 I got my act together and wanted to buy my own home but I was too young (19) to qualify for a mortgage, at the time the banks required a person to be a male and 21 to to get a mortgage, a friend of mine who worked for a bank basically fibbed about my age and I was qualified withn a week .
I purchased a run down two story home built in the late 40's, it had 4 bedrooms and a huge attic where I built a studio for photography and recording music, it was also where we partied on the weekends.
Eventually I moved to 35 mm using a Canon T50 then added a Canon T70 to my collection, the Rolleiflex became my primary studio camera.
Normally I shot black and white because I could develop it myself and lot of my work was nudes mostly males and having a way to process everything at home assured everything stayed where it belonged, back then producing nude male photographs was illegal, it was considered to be porn, now I'm not gay nor as far as I know neither where the guys I photographed, but that didn't matter to the men in blue.
The ratio was around 75% male 25% female with some sessions involving boyfriend girlfriend sessions..
I was making a little side money doing that but had no desire to go pro as it would ruin it as a hobby I enjoyed doing the work and the interactions when my clients saw the work I did.
Then DSLR's came out but they where expensive so I stayed with film for quite awhile until the price of DSLRs came down and the resolution went up to where it made sense to make the change.
My first one was a 5D it was easy to understand how to use it had a pretty good frame rate but it set me back a perch as I didn't do enough research to understand my FD lens's would not mount to it, oh well live and learn, then I bought another model, which I don't remember the model number, nice camera, but it and I went overboard out in the Atlantic doing a shoot, the lens survived the camera did not.
After i bought a 1D Mark IV, nice camera but i just didn't like it so I sold it off.
And now at the end of the line I am using two 60D's and love both of them, one has a 18 to 55 lens on it the other has someting to 200 on it, their light enough I can carry both and have a range from 18 to 200.
Then being a stringer I got involved in video, my first camcorder was a JVC GY-HD200 with a Anton Bauer battery power plus a DTE recorder mounted to it, that thing was a beast it weighed around 10 pounds but it was a very nice camcorder, a bit expensive though it was somewhere around $4K used from B&H, my son was taking a television production class at the time so I bought 2 of them, then add 3 batteries at $600 each, a used Anton Bauer charger $150, a used Manfrotto tripod with a fluid head, $350 and it all adds up. .
At the time I was still 50/50 between stills and video but slowly migrating to video, my son did real good with with video.
He shot a political based speech by a person running for Congress edited it and I put it up on my YouTube channel, the next morning it had 11,000 views, within two weeks it was almost at 2,000,000 views, this did two nice things, it became a magnet for political ads which at the time YouTube was paying us a decent amount amount of AdSence revenuer, it also brought in $2M in campaign money for the person running for Congress he beat the incumbent and was elected to te US Congress.
The money we received from YouTube paid me back for all the gear I purchased and I put it back into my savings.
I eventually sold off the JVC's and bought a Sony HXR-MC-2500, shoulder mounted camcorder much lighter with smaller batteries and direct to a SD card, at a thrift store I found a real nice reinforced bag for it so it stays in my truck most of the time, I never know when I might come across a newsworthy event and as a stringer that can put a little extra money in my pocket.
I found a few books explaining how to work with light and what settings to use, one printed by Kodak was very helpful.
When I was 16 I got kicked out of the home for doing drugs and lived on the street for a few months, I gave my camera to my dad who stored it away so when the day came to clean up my act I would still have it.
At around 17 I got my act together and wanted to buy my own home but I was too young (19) to qualify for a mortgage, at the time the banks required a person to be a male and 21 to to get a mortgage, a friend of mine who worked for a bank basically fibbed about my age and I was qualified withn a week .
I purchased a run down two story home built in the late 40's, it had 4 bedrooms and a huge attic where I built a studio for photography and recording music, it was also where we partied on the weekends.
Eventually I moved to 35 mm using a Canon T50 then added a Canon T70 to my collection, the Rolleiflex became my primary studio camera.
Normally I shot black and white because I could develop it myself and lot of my work was nudes mostly males and having a way to process everything at home assured everything stayed where it belonged, back then producing nude male photographs was illegal, it was considered to be porn, now I'm not gay nor as far as I know neither where the guys I photographed, but that didn't matter to the men in blue.
The ratio was around 75% male 25% female with some sessions involving boyfriend girlfriend sessions..
I was making a little side money doing that but had no desire to go pro as it would ruin it as a hobby I enjoyed doing the work and the interactions when my clients saw the work I did.
Then DSLR's came out but they where expensive so I stayed with film for quite awhile until the price of DSLRs came down and the resolution went up to where it made sense to make the change.
My first one was a 5D it was easy to understand how to use it had a pretty good frame rate but it set me back a perch as I didn't do enough research to understand my FD lens's would not mount to it, oh well live and learn, then I bought another model, which I don't remember the model number, nice camera, but it and I went overboard out in the Atlantic doing a shoot, the lens survived the camera did not.
After i bought a 1D Mark IV, nice camera but i just didn't like it so I sold it off.
And now at the end of the line I am using two 60D's and love both of them, one has a 18 to 55 lens on it the other has someting to 200 on it, their light enough I can carry both and have a range from 18 to 200.
Then being a stringer I got involved in video, my first camcorder was a JVC GY-HD200 with a Anton Bauer battery power plus a DTE recorder mounted to it, that thing was a beast it weighed around 10 pounds but it was a very nice camcorder, a bit expensive though it was somewhere around $4K used from B&H, my son was taking a television production class at the time so I bought 2 of them, then add 3 batteries at $600 each, a used Anton Bauer charger $150, a used Manfrotto tripod with a fluid head, $350 and it all adds up. .
At the time I was still 50/50 between stills and video but slowly migrating to video, my son did real good with with video.
He shot a political based speech by a person running for Congress edited it and I put it up on my YouTube channel, the next morning it had 11,000 views, within two weeks it was almost at 2,000,000 views, this did two nice things, it became a magnet for political ads which at the time YouTube was paying us a decent amount amount of AdSence revenuer, it also brought in $2M in campaign money for the person running for Congress he beat the incumbent and was elected to te US Congress.
The money we received from YouTube paid me back for all the gear I purchased and I put it back into my savings.
I eventually sold off the JVC's and bought a Sony HXR-MC-2500, shoulder mounted camcorder much lighter with smaller batteries and direct to a SD card, at a thrift store I found a real nice reinforced bag for it so it stays in my truck most of the time, I never know when I might come across a newsworthy event and as a stringer that can put a little extra money in my pocket.
