In 2012, everyone's a photographer, right? Me included. You're iPhone is shooting at almost 10 megapixels and you've got Instagram (seriously, I'm talking about myself here - so don't be offended).
What if I told you that every image on my blog, every image of mine you've ever seen, was shot on film. On a camera that doesn't have an LCD screen, just a viewfinder. What if I told you all the settings I used to create those exposures were achieved through manually flicking switches and that the only time I saw the photo was through my viewfinder, when my eyeball was pressed to it? What if I told you that every image was developed at a film lab and that I never did any post processing on my images?
You see, I'm writing this post not to shoot myself and my business in the foot but to encourage doing things differently. For me, it started with family photography. Almost all of it was being done the same way - in a studio with lights and I felt like it wasn't real. My family and your family don't look like they do in those photos. So I started doing family photography, differently.
All those 'what if' questions are true about Jon and his business. And he's one of the most successful photographers in the world.
Just because everyone is doing something one way, doesn't mean you have to. In actuality, it probably means that you shouldn't be.
I shoot digital, like most other professional photographers and I love it. I want to shoot more film though and Jon is the kind of guy who instills the belief in people that they can do it. And he does it all over the world through his FIND (Film Is Not Dead) workshops.
Last month, Keshy and me, we road-tripped it down to Canberra to model for Jon and his FIND family. 'Model' is a lame word and I don't like it at all. So let's just say that I hung out in beautiful places with Kesh (and the baby) and there were other people there...with cameras...and they took photos of us.
Jon is a ball of happiness, energy and passion. He will tell you that he's overrated but that's just humility. He really is that good. These images are his and I'm really grateful for them. They are the only images Kesh and I will have with me in them, while she's pregnant.
If you're interested in film, Jon runs his workshops all over the world, all the time. Book yourself in.
