I am an imagemaker, I enjoy looking at the way light shapes our world. Watching the way it wraps around something giving shape, depth and even evoking emotion. It is not always the bright light that tells the story but often the shadows. They pull you in and remind you of the unknown. Forcing your brain to interpret what might or might not actually be there. The camera fascinates me, it has only one eye. It can show us a viewpoint we cannot see with our eyes alone. It may be the frozen moment in time at a sporting event, so fast your mind can’t even decipher what actually happened or the soft blurry muted colors behind the familiar face of your child. That magic combination of light and depth of field can bring to life a mundane subject or hammer home the significance of an event in time.
I don’t know where I would be without a camera. I remember my first. A Kodak Instamatic 120 with the cube flash bulbs that rotated on each shot. I took that thing everywhere and fondly recall trips to the drag strip in Fremont and the Sonoma County Fair, even a John Denver concert at the Cow Palace. We sat way in the back and I shot a whole roll with those flash cubes. I remember getting the prints back and being disappointed because he was so small. I still have it, hey I should shoot a job with it! Mother’s Minolta SRT101 was the next step and it really all started there. Shooting snap shots of the world around me. I attended school in Mexico during College and fell in love with the markets. The stalls of everything from bugs to rugs. The food enamored me most, I just couldn’t get enough of it. With that said, no more of this talk of shutters, lenses, ISO settings, color profiles, sensors and image processors they are all quite deep and important but that is not what I want to talk about. I won’t bore you much with how to make the images, what I want to talk about the subject matter. For me it is Food and Wine. Sure, I take pictures of other things and I will show those to you from time to time, but consider them a visual table setting to where we are going.
Whether I am making it, hunting, fishing or preparing it, I find the colors, textures and shapes stimulating. The parts I can’t bring to you are the smell and the taste. However, we all taste with our eyes first so I will try to provide you with a visual menu of the things I like to do. I am excited about the outdoors, gardening, growing, canning, hunting, fishing, gathering, brining, curing, fermenting, pickling, poaching, smoking meats, oh yeah, Pork is a good thing. I love it in all shapes and forms. Food should satisfy all the senses. I just happened to pick the visual one to exploit. I am new to this and will no doubt make many mistakes so stick with me as failure is my greatest teacher. I am not a trained writer so if you see the occasional typo or grammatical error I apologize in advance. I look forward to sharing the world through my lens and fingertips. Thanks…Alan