Jim McCann
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As a teenager my girlfriend and I developed some interest in photography and she got us a chance to visit a local guy who just happened to be a photographer...for LIFE magazine! Then the Vietnam war and this thing called the draft. Met a fellow in the Army who convinced me to buy a camera, take some photos, and he'd help me develop them in the darkroom. Two year Army stint done with, found myself living in Alaska. Enrolled at the University and took all the photography classes they offered to satisfy my humanities credit requirements. Had one professor tell me I'd never ever publish a photo with National Geographic. I took that as a challenge. She was wrong. Started selling photos to the local newspaper. Met some of the finest mentors (view camera guys, mostly) a photographer could ever want and I'm still learning from them. Started selling photos to magazines, had a portrait studio for a short time, shot a pile of weddings, convinced a NY agent to accept my images and they sell them all over the world. I now have two agents, write and photograph for many magazines, wrote one book, other books in the works, and a bunch of other stuff. I spent 30 years as the senior criminal investigator with the Alaska State Troopers and did a pile of photography in my own cases. I came late to digital and I'm now paying the price for doing so. I'm a photographer, not a computer geek. I photographed action packed wildlife stuff here in Alaska for decades with manual focus, manual aperture cameras. Motor drives? Sure! But everything else was me. I could change apertures and manually focus in the heat of battle without removing my face from the camera and most often get it right. Now I have to learn all about AF settings for different subjects and situations, and noise reduction and Lightroom and a lot of other foreign things. My many thousands of slides, 6x7 and 6x17 transparencies are said to be worthless and at 63 I'm retracing my footsteps of the past, although, climbing up into the clouds after Dall sheep and sleeping in a tent are somewhat problematic with a bad knee and such these days. But I'm also tough and I'll get 'er done all right! I live in a target rich environment for an outdoor photographer, but I'm also a frustrated part time wannabe cowboy with ranching connections in Idaho and used to love to photograph while in the mountains gathering cows and back at the ranch around the corrals and such. Don't get to do that any longer and I hope to change that, too. I photograph those things I love the best; fly fishing, wildlife, bird dogs, hunting, Alaska landscapes, Alaskans, cowboys, horses...and other stuff. A big part of my enjoyment in photography is shooting images of those things I love. I've had to spend a lot of money on new gear, but with all the old, obsolete big white lenses and related gear now piled in a corner in my office, I've enjoyed opening up all of the B&H boxes with the 7Ds, a 5D III, and all the pretty lenses - especially the recently arrived 500! I've put away the Boghen pan/tilt heads and have installed the RRS BH-55, and I'm planning on getting a Wimberly soon.
Having rambled on with all that...it's not just the gear that makes the photographer. I have always been the consumate student. My library is full of books, some of them personally signed by some of the greats of the past. I read a lot online. I talk with as many other photographers as I can, and I'm always looking at photos taken by others. I am the student. I always will be.
Get out and shoot photographs of all sorts of subjects, even those you don't feel so comfortable with. Be bold. Create your own rules.
Welcome aboard! Enjoy the journey and the adventure. Remain the student.
Jim
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