The Story Behind…

“Fly”

Photographed in Houston, texas, march 1994

photography Takes me higher

By 1994, my camera and I were inseparable. I took it everywhere with me. In addition to photography quickly becoming my favorite hobby and activity, my camera was also becoming my security blanket and my all-access pass.
I discovered I could get close to any action when I had my camera with me. I was beginning to study where I could and couldn’t stand to take pictures and learned that I could legally stand on any public sidewalk or public grounds and take all the pictures I wanted of people who were also in public.
I was photographing so much, and film was expensive, so I learned about bulk loading film. Bulk loading involves buying a special bulk loader, not expensive, and buying black and white film in 100-foot lengths. You put that big roll of film in the bulk loader, and then put an empty 35-millimeter film canister in the bulk loader. Tape the leading edge of the film onto the spool. Put the cap on the film canister. Close the lid of the bulk loader. Then wind up as many frames as I wanted into the film cannister.
I could load 10, 20, 30 frames, whatever I wanted. While film was sold in 12, 24 and 36 exposures, I discovered I could squeeze about 42 frames into the cannister.
Besides my camera always being by my side, my friendship with Tim and Arlen was growing stronger.
Arlen, being four years older than us, had already graduated from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and had moved to Houston. During Tim and my senior year at UNK, we took a trip to Houston to visit Arlen on our spring break.
We had a great week, including going to a street festival, to Fajita Flats, home of the world’s best margaritas and fajitas, and to a tattoo parlor for my first tattoo, a Joshua tree on my right ankle as a tribute to my favorite band in the world, Ireland’s U2.
It was on this trip that I created picture I titled “Fly.”
We had spent the afternoon at a street festival near where Arlen lived. All three of us had our cameras, and we were having another great day of photographing people and activities and the life we saw happening around us.
A skateboarding demonstration team was performing, and with my camera in hand, I got as close as I could to the action.
I didn’t record the camera settings, however, I have a pretty good idea that I was using a shutter speed around 1/500th of a second. My film ISO was 400, and, because it was a sunny day, I’m sure I used f16 (the sunny 16 rule*).
By this time, I was becoming quite comfortable and confident with what I could do with my camera. Being able to isolate this skateboarder from all the other activity happening in the street fair was deliberate and I was very happy when, after developing the film and making a black and white print, it looked just like I remembered the moment I saw him flying through the air.
A black and white print? This picture is in color. Yes! I photographed this on black and white film and make a black and white print. And then I used color tint, similar to a watercolor paint set, to hand-color the print.
It took hours, and I loved doing it. Again, this was in 1994, This was years before Adobe Photoshop became the primary tool for me and other photographers.
When Photoshop did come along, I was blown away by the ability to do things to my images using a computer to bring my vision to life. As an early adopter of Photoshop, I can remember using the program and pushing the limits of my computer’s processing power.
I would often click my mouse and wait several seconds, sometimes twenty or thirty seconds, to see the results. However, after the painstaking and time-consuming process of hand painting my prints, this was a massive improvement.
In 1999, while attending the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale studying commercial photography, I had access to cutting edge computers and the newest version of Photoshop and I would spend hours in the computer lab.
This picture of the skateboarder flying was one of the first images I colored using Photoshop, and I used it in my Senior Portfolio.
As I look at this and remember all the technical aspects of how I captured and created this photograph over a five-year time span, what I remember most of all is the feelings of joy and brotherhood I experienced with Tim and Arlen during that Spring Break trip.
In fact, it was during this trip that the three of us laid the plans for our future, and AT&T Photography was conceived.

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