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| Mark Carpenter is a photographer living in Rochester, NY who finds talking about himself in the third person to be rather creepy. Okay, we know that people just write these things themselves.
I've enjoyed photography since an early age and was given a Polaroid instant camera when I was a kid. Being a kid, it was more of a toy, but there was also the bud of what might be considered art. Even then, I was bothered by the lack of control I had over the image. It's blurry. I want to be able to do close ups. Why does everything look so... blah? Even so, I had fun. While attending Penfield High School, I took a photography class taught by Reid Doe, and at the same time, was given the family 35mm SLR by my dad. This started things rolling again. I enjoyed the experience a great deal, but also learned that the darkroom was not the place for me. I did enjoy seeing an image develop as I worked on it, but only the first time. For me, it was all about the creative experience. I did not take notes detailing how long the print was exposed for, or what aperture the enlarger was set at. I wasn't thinking about keeping records; my mind was all on the process. So each time I went to make a print, even if it was one I had done before, I had to experiment a lot. Fun the first time, but not the second, or fifth, or tenth. Plus I did not enjoy spending my time locked in a small dark room that smelled funny. There had to be a better way. I continued to take pictures on and off, and had them developed at local labs, but it wasn't until '97 or '98 that I started to get a bit more serious about it. Feeling a bit limited by the slow zoom lens on my Fujica AX-3, I decided to go shopping. Knowing that I couldn't go wrong with either a Nikon or Canon, I headed off to the yearly camera swap meet and brought home a Canon Elan. I was still dealing with a zoom lens, but it had a larger aperture and... the camera had auto-focus. A lot of people hate auto-focus, but for those of us with crappy eyesight, it can be a real boon. So I began to spend more and more time taking pictures. I read books. I took more pictures. And then I read "Learning to See Creatively" by Bryan Peterson. This wasn't just a book on technical aspects, or on fluffy concepts of composition; it was a book that showed very clearly how the choices you make affect the image you end up with. They are very basic concepts, but done in such a way, and with such good examples, that I "got it". It was about this time that I took "Moving On". I was still doing all landscapes, as they don't move about on you. I still had to go through the mental checklist of "what shutter speed", "what aperture", "check the corners", etc. very methodically. None of it was rote yet. People get bored during all that and tend to wander off. At least I knew the trees weren't going anywhere. So, yes, the geese were a happy accident. Then one Christmas at my brothers house, I was taking some holiday snapshots when my on-camera flash broke. Now what? Wait, I just bought that 85mm f1.8 lens to try out. If I open it up full wide, I should be able to get by with just available light. In amongst the shots I took was "Gameboy". Hey, I'm onto something here. More and more my photography became about people, especially children. Eventually I upgraded to an EOS 5, bought more lenses, sold some, bought several other cameras - including medium format, and then discovered Piezography. Finally! I could step away from y reliance on labs for prints. I bought a film scanner and began doing all of my printing myself. This also meant I fully shifted to B&W, which I was already in the process of doing. Inkjet printers at the time were still mostly dye-based and had severe fading problems, including those that were supposedly archival. The output from a quad-tone B&W setup is amazing and blows away anything from a color or just black output. Then Canon came out with the 10D, a digital camera that I felt handled low light situations well enough to suit me and was something I could afford. I've been pure digital since, with occasional forays into film when the situation demanded it, or I just felt like it. It's hard to beat roll film for wedding formals, and a Koni-Omega Rapid is just plain fun to use (though you probably should be careful when advancing the film while in an airport or the like). Most of my work has been in a photojournalistic style. I try to disappear and watch, taking images when the moment feels right. I'm most comfortable when shooting like this, and I think that's why I'm able to work with children so well. It seems that trying to force them to sit still and pose gives the resulting image a forced looked. I'd much rather just follow them around while they do what they do. Then all I have to do it watch, and the moments make themselves. In May of 2004, I had the luck to work with Tanya, a beautiful young woman who had some modeling experience. It was my first time working in this manner, where the model required no direction from me. It wasn't until we were well into the session before I realized that I was still trying to do all the work. I was so used to having to move around, wait, watch, and then snap, that I didn't realize that she was doing so much of the work for me. She knew what looked good, and would move from pose to pose. It was up to me to make sure the lighting, background, etc. was all right, but I didn't have to worry about getting her just at the right time. She just kept giving me moment after moment. Sure, they are posed moments, but that's what the session was all about. I learned a lot that day. I still prefer working in the photojournalistic mode, but I would like to do more that combines the two, choosing the area to work in, the mood, etc., but allowing the subject to just be themselves while there, which is how "Breath" and "Fair Maiden" came about. The latter currently being one of my favorite images. In December of '99, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. As a result, I had to stop working in August of 2004. I had assisted at a couple of weddings for Jay Palmer and was starting to ramp up to do a few more on my own, but the MS didn't allow for that. Luckily the cognitive issues that prevented me from continuing to work as a programmer didn't affect the artistic nature of photography, and I can still do limited sessions that don't involve extended periods of standing. I've had an extended break from photography due to dealing with leaving work, applying for Social Security disability (an adventure in itself), moving, and the MS itself, but the urge has become too much to ignore. It's time to pick up the camera again. Recently I've been able to bring a lot more of my choices to the conscious level, so my goal now is to refine that. The best way I can explain that is to say that I want to create images that evoke a similar kind of feel that Neil Gaiman's writing does. Basically having some sort of unreal element amid the everyday; like it's been there all along, but unnoticed. |