Mike Penney
When I was in High school in the 1960's I got interested in photography and got a job at a weekly newspaper about 50 miles north of Seattle. Learned a lot about getting film processed quick, and how to deal with trying to shoot sports in facilities where there wasn't enough light. Went off to college and got into journalism school but was still way more interested in pictures than writing. I ended up getting a couple scholarships and paid for about half of school with photography.
Then I went into jobs related to printing and information technology while keeping photography as a hobby. As the economy changed in the early 1980's I decided to quit working for corporations and started my own commercial photography business. Mostly I did advertising and public relations stuff. I got back into newspapering but the digital age was approaching in the 1990's and we were in for big changes. Many publications I worked for now no longer exist. In 1997 I went to the Maine Photographic workshop and met Lucien Clergue and several other really accomplished photographers. It was a whole new thing for me to be working on my own ideas and thinking about art instead of products or architecture.
Anyway, since 2000 I have been doing both commercial work and art. In 2014 it kind of switched to small amounts of commercial and mostly art. I am working on numerous books. Landscapes, abstracts, nudes, and interesting people are all of interest.
I held out switching from film to digital until 2007. I was mostly shooting 6cmx6cm or 4x5 inch film and digital wasn't even close to good enough quality. But I did get into scanning my own films and delivering digital product as early as 1998.
My current favorite architectural/landscape camera is a Canon 5Ds (50 million pixels) with a set of tilt shift lenses. I really miss 4x5 cameras with tilts, shifts, and swings. My current favorite camera for shooting people, portraits, nudes, or candids would still be the Canon 1Ds Mark 2 and 3. Perfect ergonomics, focuses in the dark, and fast. Built like a tank.
The Photographic Work
In the last few years I started paying a lot more attention to painters and sculptors... (Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani, and Dali) and have felt compelled to borrow ideas from them.
This multiple exposure (all the same model) is a rendition of Picasso's 1904 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon oil painting. I have a collection of Western African Masks and the model (aka Sienna Hayes) put this together in a studio near Portland Oregon. Amazingly it went together easier than I thought... Nothing like layers and masks in photoshop to get the results you want.
This might be my favorite of my own work...
The picture was made on film in 1997 just north of Santa Cruz, Calif. on a beach I can't find anymore. The film was 6x6cm and the lens was a Bronica SQAi 35mm full frame fisheye. I don't know the model's name, sorry. It was just a great moment.
This photo of Marian was on the back porch of Weston Carmel mansion. We were arranging different poses and Marian just moved her arm into that position parallel with the bottom my frame and I snapped away. It worked well.. This photo has won 15 contests.
Be Featured Next!
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3. Click on a blog post and leave a comment
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