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Right where we are right now, looking out over a very bleak landscape with fog in the background and
raining hard. To me, this is a really intriguing place to photograph. I don't know that we'll really do it today,
but when we stopped here, it just caught my eye. A lot of things go through my mind.
One of the first things is that if I'm doing landscape photography, I'm thinking,
and I find a shot that I really like. I think God has been so good to put me in a place where I can see this
creation there. I think about that a lot. As a scientist, how am I going to say this?
I understand the natural processes that went into making a particular landscape. I don't discount those,
but to me, it's God's hand that really allowed that all to happen. It's a bit of a religious experience
often for me that I see this and think, how fortunate I am to be here.
Well, I'm Dave Camperman, and for now, I'm a professional photographer. Retired from being a chemist
about five years ago, and that's what I did until this time. I also did some part-time professional photography
while I had a real job.
Every time I go out on a photo trip and get ready to do my first image, I think about the last time
I was out doing this and telling myself, next time I go out, I'm going to bring my digital camera
so I can have a date and time stamp and also record the image digitally in case I need to use it on my website
or somebody else wants to use it. It's a lot easier to have it right there instead of getting film scanned.
It takes time and it's expensive. But I just haven't been able to gear my mind to do that because
for me, digital photography doesn't seem like real photography. So that's just me.
The process in making a frame starts with looking at the image and deciding what kind of wood would look best with that particular image.
Once that decision is made, then I need to decide what the width of that frame is going to be.
And once that's decided, then I go to the hardwood store and pick out a piece of rough cut lumber,
whether it's jitoba or cherry or mahogany, probably those are the three kinds I use the most.
I'll look for the grain structure and the color of the wood and the straightness of it.
I started photography when my first daughter was born. I had myself a little Kodak instamatic camera
and probably took pictures of her every day of her life for the first four or five years.
Pretty soon, the quality of those images didn't satisfy me very much and so then I moved to my first SLR,
which was a Canon, big improvement. And that's when I really got interested in landscape photography.
I did a lot of landscapes as well as photographing my kids, probably 50-50,
at that point in my development of my photography career.
I think the future of photography is in the digital realm, although I'm not a digital shooter,
I still shoot film because I think at least at this time it's better quality, sharper images,
better color saturation, and so I really like that part of it,
but I think the future is in the digital realm and it gets better every year and it won't be long
until probably you won't even be able to buy film.
What I do is important, at least to me, because I really enjoy it.
I have a passion for photography. I love to be out in nature and landscape photography is what I really enjoy doing.
I just feel that when I'm out there I can, in God's creation, that it is just a great place to be.
We live in a wonderful spot for that. Oregon has a lot of diversity.
At least that's why it's important to me because I enjoy it a lot.
I think also it's important because things change pretty rapidly
and so it's important to document the way things are now.
I really enjoy looking at old photographs, things that are not there anymore,
seeing things the way they used to be, not that I want them to be back that way,
but it's very interesting for me to understand and look at what people looked at 100 years ago.
So I think it's important to document the way life is now and the landscape that we have.
Thank you.
