jmantze's photostream  

As a teenager I built my first home darkroom where I had a small photo business. My first camera was a Yashica Mat twin-lens reflex 120 roll film camera, that was replaced with a Rolleiflex. Later while in the US military I bought a Nikon-F 35mm camera (and some lens) directly from Hong Kong. In the years since then I have owned a Hasselblad and a Mamiya 645. The only film camera I still have is a motorized Pentax LX 35mm with several lens.

A few years ago I made the move to all digital photo gear with a Nikon 990, later an 8400 and a Mac computer. Recently I added a Canon G9 and a Nikon D700. To share my photos online I have created a web site, DigitalArtandMore.com, and of coarse set up this account. Flickr sure is a great online service... a classy display medium to showcase our artistic visions.

Most people look at a place or objects and only see the surface appearance of things. The artist photographer looks at the same scene from a different point of view... with the eye of the artist. We see light and shadow, shape, form and texture - now we need to frame this scene in our viewfinder and digitally capture that moment. Next comes the transformation of the likeness through technology to produce our image of the scene... a representation of the world as we want to present it to others. Some may not like our captured visions, but that's to bad because the photographic medium is our chosen pursuit of artistic freedom.

On my site at DigitalArtandMore.com you'll find many resources, references and how-to articles - it's an ongoing effort to share knowledge and technical insights. Recently I’ve been shooting land/cityscapes and other subjects that are used as background images for compositing with 3D renderings. 3D image components like buildings, futuristic vehicles and spacecraft will be layered over the photo backgrounds. See the “MT Gallery” section of my site for some examples.

I also have photo galleries at ZENFOLIO