Reply To: Origin Stories

[JimC]

I always loved the art of capturing images. I remember at 8 years old I got a kodak 110 film camera. I had a blast photographing anything that moved.

At about 12 I teamed up with my brother and a couple of our friends, and we made our first film using dad’s old handycam. It was a vampire flick. (It was terrible.)

At 15 I had saved up for my own camcorder. I went to live with my aunt in Florida for the summer, and made many a films.

While in high school, I got an opportunity in the TV industry. A local program that was broadcast to a 5 state market needed someone to time tapes. It was a small job, but it got my foot in the door. I sat in a room during recording, and I logged the timecode as tapes were being recorded (this was in the day that tape to tape editing was still common).

Much like the Dread Pirate Roberts, I stuck to that job, learning anything I could from anyone who would teach me, and slowly worked my way up. A producer for the network the show was on took me under his wing, and gave me one-on-one training on just about every piece of studio gear out there. By the time I was ready to move on, I could run an entire control room of a TV studio, and had developed a pretty good eye for shot composition as well.

From there, I took an assortment of jobs in the audio/video world, gaining more experience and amassing my own stash of gear, until I was able to start up my own business. It was slow at first, but a good connection got me in doing a corporate promotional video. One thing led to the next, people started seeing my work, and I found myself producing videos for several large businesses. (I won’t name names, but if I were to, I’m certain that at least the Americans here would know them.)

Then came late 2008. With several of the people who used to hire me jumping off their buildings, saved only by their golden parachutes, my business took a bit of a downturn. I kept myself busy, but I was taking on a lot of projects that weren’t as fulfilling. I bought a basic DSLR at this time, and started exploring my first love, the still image.

Eventually I was offered a position doing something totally off the beaten path – helping kids by running a group home for troubled teens. I jumped on it, moved 400 miles away, and started my life teaching social skills to kids who have none. It’s intense work at times, so one of the requirements is that I can’t have a second job. This meant no more video production, but I was really getting into photography as a hobby.

Fast forward to today, and here I am. Still helping kids, and still doing photography as a hobby. Video and photo really are closely related, so it was easy to make the jump, but I will admit that I am still learning. I would very much like, once I leave this position someday, to shift into doing photography full time. I’m not ready for that yet, but I find something to shoot every day, I have read hundreds of books on the subject, and with luck, I will be eventually.

And that’s me in a nutshell. 🙂