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Let’s start with a question: This is one photographer’s website. What’s with all this “we” and “us” stuff all over it?
Fair question. This is my site, I’m the photographer for all the pictures on it, and I don’t have a leprechaun in my pocket. So perhaps “I” would be a better term. Except . . .
Model photography is a team sport. At a minimum the team on a shoot is me and the model, but there often will be several other professionals involved: makeup artists, hair stylists,
wardrobe stylists and assistants are all common. For a fashion shoot it is rare not to have at least one supporting team member, and for location shoots I prefer to have an assistant most of the time.
Although the members of the team can change, on any project others may have to be consulted before we decide what we are going to do. Hence “us”.
OK, then another question. What's with "TXPhotog" when you aren't even in Texas?
Ah . . . that requires a little history . . . .
So how about a little history. How did I end up here, doing what I’m doing?
It’s a long story that really gets started in 1969 when I bought my first good camera: a Minolta SRT-101. I suddenly discovered that there was more to photography than pointing and clicking,
and that choices I made mattered. It was a whole new world, full of technology and techniques to be learned and creativity to be explored. I was enthralled!
The fun times:
In those days, being an amateur photographer meant spending countless hours in the darkroom. You had to, if only because trying to print rotten negatives forced you to
try to make better negatives the next time. The very first roll of film I developed I knew that temperature was important, but I didn’t have a thermometer. So I stuck my thumb in the developer and
judged: Yup, feels like about 68 degrees to me! Those were some beefy negatives, let me tell you! A few thousand rolls later I had made pretty much every shooting and developing mistake that could be made
often enough that I was starting to remember not to make them, and had produced enough pictures I could show to people that I was beginning to feel good about calling myself a photographer.
Profit:
Eventually every photographer asks himself “I wonder if I could make any money doing this?” It seems like a good question. Being paid for doing what you love to do.
What could be better than that? And in about 1974 I asked myself that question and decided to give it a go.
Wonder of wonders, it worked! In short order I was shooting newspaper and magazine editorials, commercial assignments, even television spots. Along the way I got a degree in photography, and accumulated
hundreds of journalistic and commercial publications. I spent three years as a technical photographer for the United States government, based in Japan, and got to travel all over the Pacific rim helping photographers
in other countries. In 1980 I moved to Texas, continued doing commercial and editorial work, and also started shooting for model agencies.
The Black Period:
So life in photography was good, right? Well, yes, sort of. Professional success feels good; cashing the checks feels good and provides a kind of validation for what you are doing, and
it’s nice to see your name in print all those times. But there was this little, niggling problem that grew bigger with time: photography had become about money, not about fun. And I started to realize
that I’d lost sight of the very reason I had gotten into photography in the first place. Well, I didn’t need the money, it wasn’t fun and I had other interests to pursue . . . so why do it any more?
That, as it turned out, was another fair question. So I quit. From the mid 1980s I put down the camera and didn’t use it hardly at all for the next ten years.
Renaissance:
“Other interests” have a way of getting tiresome too, and about the time that mine were the Internet came along. By the mid 1990s there were photography and modeling forums.
It was a time when there were relatively few of us on the web, and I found some kindred souls. Most of them were more active in photography and modeling than I was; I was just toying with the idea of getting back
into photography, wondering if I could find a way to do it that would be fulfilling.
I found Jacque King, or rather he found me. Jacque (founder of the Fashion Only Forum, which was and remained vibrant for several years after he passed away some years ago) was at the time the most
interesting, accomplished and charismatic member of the Internet photographic community, and he took an interest in me. You had to know Jacque to understand this, but it was almost a psychological
kidnapping. I became one of many of his disciples, took pilgrimages to Billings, Montana, and came away from it all with, if not his vision, at least a rebirth of some of his passion for photography.
It was fun again.
My revived interest caused me to move to New York City in 2000, where spent my time with model agencies, test photography and an occasional commercial and journalistic assignment - but not enough of them
to get burned out again.
New York is a wonderful place, and every photographer should spend some time there. But it’s not the only place, nor even necessarily the best place. And so for a while I moved to Houston, Texas -
and acquired the "TXPhotog" site. It became so widely known that it's hard to give up, even though I'm no longer in Texas, although now I have a new site for my new home. And now I'm in Las Vegas, Nevada,
to continue to have fun with a camera.
Roger
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