In the late ’90s and early ’00s — before digital photography was really much of a thing — I was a professional portrait photographer. That’s right… these images were taken on film and that film was processed with chemicals and printed with large machines. Anybody here know what fixer smells like?
See this gigantic boat anchor of a camera? That’s a Camerz ZII. It’s a large format (70mm), long roll (100′) film camera.
Sound heavy and unwieldy? It was. And every one of these images was created using one.
I specialized in Senior Portraits. I loved it. I was good at it. And it’s something that I hope one day to get back into.
Here are some examples of my work. There are a couple National Portrait Excellence Award winners thrown in the the mix. And yes, that is real fire. I became somewhat well known for lighting kids’ props on fire. Parents used to come into my studio and ask me to light their kids on fire. Okay, they didn’t *exactly* ask me to light their kids on fire, but they did ask me to put fire precariously close to their teenagers. That’s weird, right?!?
For the record, I never burned anyone. I still sincerely can’t believe no one ever made me stop doing that.
