A New Journey
It is now 2021 and nearly the end of May. I’ve just injured my back lifting a heavy air conditioner at work. I’m re-evaluating my life choices that led me to this point. I have hopes and dreams, none of which are being served by the daily activities of the past year. I’m turning over a new leaf and trying something new with something old. This is supposed to be about photography, right? It is about photography. It is about my journey with photography and where I want that journey to go next.
When I first picked up a digital camera and was no longer restrained by the exposure per roll of film, I immediately began photographing for compositing. I was, after all, more of a film person than a still frames person. I had only really taken photography classes to get a better understanding of lighting, exposure, and lens work for my film aspiration. I loved telling stories and believed film was my future. It was the late nineties. Making films was magic. It still is.
By the very early ’00s I was shooting digital photography with some of the tiniest, most grainy consumer cameras of that era, but it was still gold. I have some of those images in the archives still and love how absolutely terrible they are. I didn’t care about technique. I just wanted to capture the moment. The turning point came when I was finally working on a film in Poland and was shooting behind the scenes video with a digital camera that had a photo button. I suddenly realized I could not only capture the action, but occasionally capture the textures that surrounded me. It felt a little like running your hand along the fence during a baseball game, or dangling your feet in the water while fishing. I was shooting the action, but I could also capture the feeling and memory of my surroundings. I have a load of grainy texture shots from those days. I always figured there would be some use for them. They serve as a sense memory now.
That video camera was stolen one night in North Carolina while I was out on a date with the girl who eventually become my wife. I never got that camera back, but I did end up buying a DSLR with the intention of taking that next step into the photography world and shooting landscapes or street photography. I never had the passion for those photography styles like I did for the lighting and direction of filmic story telling. During that time I shot everything from landscapes and weddings to macros and food, but never felt like I hit my stride. I got into a bit of a groove shooting events, parades, concerts, and conventions. I made a lot of friends doing that style of photography, but it still wasn’t my passion.
I later jumped feet first into photographing portraits and headshots, but although it was good to work with models in that context it felt a bit stark and uninteresting to me. I liked the lighting, the control of the environment. I liked leaning the still imagery toward the filmic styles. I wanted the story back. I wanted the magic.
It’s 2021 and nearly the end of May. I’m about to try something new. I want to learn how to do photogrammetry with the intention of capturing the world around me and turning it into a virtual film. I don’t know how to do this, but I need to try. How cool would it be if we could create a full feature film and then walk around inside that film to follow or ignore the events of the story from any perspective imaginable! That’s what I want to try doing. I’m going to write a blog about it here. I’m going to make videos about it. I’m going to share my experience in the hopes that it will give me a record to look back on and have good memories. This is going to be hard.