OrangeCrush
Freaked Out
I have been a browser of the forum for awhile, but I figured it was time to take a more active role on this website and the best way to start that off is to introduce myself in the introduction thread. Have been a member of StatueForum for a few years, but I figure it will be nice to use both StatueForum and Sideshow Freaks.
As for myself, I'm a 44 year old professional photographer. I mainly shoot architecture, but I also do some product and furniture photography here and there. I have my B.F.A. and M.F.A. with my focus in photography. I worked for an architectural photography firm for a few years after I graduated from college and then decided to leave and start my own photography business. I have been shooting on my own ever since and....well, all I can say is it was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made. I absolutely love my job and being your own boss is all is hyped up to be. One of the best aspects of architectural photography is you get to travel a lot (lots of frequent flyer miles) and I only work roughly 6 months a year. I start shooting in mid April and am pretty much all done by the end of September. If the weather stays nice, I might stretch my season into the first couple weeks of October. So I basically work from mid April to the end of September/first couple weeks in October and then have October/mid-October to mid-April off. I love all the time off as it affords me a ton of free time for my hobbies, including shooting pictures for myself.
In regards to photography, I am definitely a film based photographer at heart. I mainly shoot large format (4x5 & 8x10), but I occasionally shoot with my Mamiya 6 (6x6) and Mamiya 7 (6x7). I absolutely LOVE working in the darkroom. Its definitely my single favorite aspect to shooting with film. I am a big fan of alternative processes. Some of my favorites include lith printing, platinum & paladium printing, and cross processing with color film. I do own a basic digital camera (Canon G-10) that I use at family functions. Since I am the photpgrapher in the family, everyone expects me to take pictures and there is nothing worse than spending money on film for family function pictures and having to spend 20+ hours in the darkroom developing that film and making prints.
. I also finally purchased a digital back for one of my 4x5 camera's as more and more of my clients were wanting digital pictures. I still shoot with film the vast majority of the time as thankfully most of my clients still prefer 4x5 transparacies over digital files and prints. I am just not a fan of digital photography or the way it has changed the photography industry as a whole.
I also enjoy drawing (mostly charcoal), painting (mostly oil), and making wire tree's. Wire tree's is my newest art form. I just picked it up like 12 months back, but I am hooked big time. I am a HUGE fan of growing Bonsai tree's and wire tree's are like small bonsai tree's that are made from bare wire. If your unfamiliar with the process, I recommend doing a Google image search on wire tree's. They are really cool and can be incredibly beautiful if done properly. I'm starting to get pretty good at it, but it does take a lot of practice to get the various techniques down. The hardest part is visualizing what you want your final tree to look like and making the various design of the branches look natural and realistic. But again, I am hooked and absolutey love it.
I am married (13 years and counting) and have a 12 year old son. Were all big outdoors people. We love camping, hiking, backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, mountain biking, scuba diving, etc. These kinds of outdoor activities allow us to spend time together as a family and at the same time get away from all of the distractions of every day life. We even go storm chasing together every year (6 years running now). My son is becoming quite the navigator/weather tracker. Basically, if it involves being outdoors or travelling as a family, were all for it!! I am also a HUGE fan of road trips. Just taking off on the road, traveling to new states, cities, countries etc. and shooting pictures. There is really nothing I enjoy more. When I finally retire, I plan on buying an Airstream sport, setting it up as a portable darkroom, and just taking off for months at a time, traveling and shooting pictures. Fortunately, my wife is also a big fan of travelling and also into painting and drawing. So while I am shooting pictures, she is usually kicking back sketching and drawing.
Any bio about me would be incomplete if I didnt mention collecting. I am a collector at heart and have more collecting hobbies than I care to admit. It seems like every year that passes, I have a new collecting hobby. My father was a big collector and he got me collecting at a very young age. He mainly collected coins, railroad & silver certificates, poured silver bars/bullion, and pin up art. He got me into collecting coins and stamps when I was around 10 years old and it just stuck. From there I moved on to Wacky Packages, baseball cards, and comics. Baseball cards were really my primary hobby during the early to late 80's and I was very fortunate to have sold my collection a few years before the market crashed. I had no idea the market was going to crash. My interest simply shifted from collecting and baseball cards to girls and dating so I sold all my baseball cards and bought a brand new Chevy Beretta. That I missed the big baseball card market crash was just pure luck.
From the years of 17 to roughly 22-23, I really stopped collecting. I got interested in photography as soon as I graduated high school and really focused on that with most of my free time. I actually enrolled in college to be an environmental engineer, but really didn't like the field at all (way too much math for my liking). I mainly stayed with it due to pressure from my family and girfriend at the time. I had stated that I wanted to switch majors to photography and my family and GF thought I was crazy. They talked me out of it time and time again. "Starving artist" and "making no money" was the most common critcism thrown at me. So I stuck with Environmental Engineering into the start of my senior year, but at the last minute decided to take a semester off. I wound up taking off with my best freind and we spent 8 weeks traveling/hiking the Grand Circle of National Parks which basically starts in southeastern Utah and includes Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Capital Reef, The Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, etc. It was a life changing trip as shooting pictures in such beautiful places, away from the negativity of my family and GF, gave me the time and space I needed to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. As soon as I got home, I switched majors and enrolled in a local private art college. My girlfriend actualy broke up with me over it and my family really thought I had lost my mind, especially since I was so close to graduating, but it was without question the smartest decision I ever made with my life and my family eventually came around and wound up supported my decision. I never did get back together with my girlfreind however.
Anyways, the art school I went to was a private college so it was much smaller than a public school. The average size of my classes was 15-20 students and because of the small size, you wound up becoming friends with a lot of people in different majors. Those were honestly 4 of the best years of my life. We had private 24 hour darkrooms and I absolutely loved what I was doing. It was such a stark difference from my previous major, which I really hated. I would spend all day shooting pictures and spend all night in my darkroom developing and printing. Anyways, during one of the school parties we were at, someone suggested that we should start a trading club for artwork. Photographers would bring photographs, painters would bring paintings, etc. Basically you would have photographs, paintings, drawings, etc and people could trade if they wanted too. It wound up being a huge hit and that was really the start of my love of collecting artwork. I started collecting limited edition prints soon after and still collect them to this day. Its been my longest running hobby (20+ years). And as soon as I started collecting prints, it reawakedned my passion for collecting altogether. One by one, I started picking up new collecting hobbies as the years went by.
I now collect limited edition prints, original comic art/commissions, comics (mostly silver age, bronze age, 1st appearances and some modern), art books, sketch books, statues (mostly Sideshow), figures (mostly Kotobukiya), replica weapons (mostly sci-fi), antique and vintage camera's and lenses, antqiue & vintage Kodak memorabilia, antique & vintage Orange Crush Memorabilia, Space/NASA memorabilia, coins, precious metal art bars, wildlife and space stamps, Vintage Barbour & Belstaff jackets, video game systems/games, Vampirella & Heavy Metal Magazines (8.0 grade or higher), anything/everything Michael Turner related, anything/everything Lucio Parillo related, Lord of the Ring books, etc. Given how many collecting hobbies I have, I am forced to jump back and forth between which one's I am actively collecting at any given time. It would just be too expensive to collect all of them at one time. I did just finish my Vampirella magazine collection but I think I'm going to continue on and add foreign issues to my collection now. My Michael Turner collection is like 95% complete, I just need like 10 more prints and just a few more signed comics. I have mainly been focusing on statues, replica weapons, comics, and limited edition prints lately, but I have advanced searches saved on eBay for all of my hobbies and am constantly checking for nice/must have pieces for all of my collections.
So there you have it! To sum this way too long post up, I am basically a 44 year old photographer that has a great family, loves the outdoors and outdoor activities, and is absolutely obsessed with collecting.
So with that being said, hello to everyone on Sideshow Freaks.
As for myself, I'm a 44 year old professional photographer. I mainly shoot architecture, but I also do some product and furniture photography here and there. I have my B.F.A. and M.F.A. with my focus in photography. I worked for an architectural photography firm for a few years after I graduated from college and then decided to leave and start my own photography business. I have been shooting on my own ever since and....well, all I can say is it was one of the smartest decisions I have ever made. I absolutely love my job and being your own boss is all is hyped up to be. One of the best aspects of architectural photography is you get to travel a lot (lots of frequent flyer miles) and I only work roughly 6 months a year. I start shooting in mid April and am pretty much all done by the end of September. If the weather stays nice, I might stretch my season into the first couple weeks of October. So I basically work from mid April to the end of September/first couple weeks in October and then have October/mid-October to mid-April off. I love all the time off as it affords me a ton of free time for my hobbies, including shooting pictures for myself.
In regards to photography, I am definitely a film based photographer at heart. I mainly shoot large format (4x5 & 8x10), but I occasionally shoot with my Mamiya 6 (6x6) and Mamiya 7 (6x7). I absolutely LOVE working in the darkroom. Its definitely my single favorite aspect to shooting with film. I am a big fan of alternative processes. Some of my favorites include lith printing, platinum & paladium printing, and cross processing with color film. I do own a basic digital camera (Canon G-10) that I use at family functions. Since I am the photpgrapher in the family, everyone expects me to take pictures and there is nothing worse than spending money on film for family function pictures and having to spend 20+ hours in the darkroom developing that film and making prints.
. I also finally purchased a digital back for one of my 4x5 camera's as more and more of my clients were wanting digital pictures. I still shoot with film the vast majority of the time as thankfully most of my clients still prefer 4x5 transparacies over digital files and prints. I am just not a fan of digital photography or the way it has changed the photography industry as a whole. I also enjoy drawing (mostly charcoal), painting (mostly oil), and making wire tree's. Wire tree's is my newest art form. I just picked it up like 12 months back, but I am hooked big time. I am a HUGE fan of growing Bonsai tree's and wire tree's are like small bonsai tree's that are made from bare wire. If your unfamiliar with the process, I recommend doing a Google image search on wire tree's. They are really cool and can be incredibly beautiful if done properly. I'm starting to get pretty good at it, but it does take a lot of practice to get the various techniques down. The hardest part is visualizing what you want your final tree to look like and making the various design of the branches look natural and realistic. But again, I am hooked and absolutey love it.
I am married (13 years and counting) and have a 12 year old son. Were all big outdoors people. We love camping, hiking, backpacking, canoeing, kayaking, mountain biking, scuba diving, etc. These kinds of outdoor activities allow us to spend time together as a family and at the same time get away from all of the distractions of every day life. We even go storm chasing together every year (6 years running now). My son is becoming quite the navigator/weather tracker. Basically, if it involves being outdoors or travelling as a family, were all for it!! I am also a HUGE fan of road trips. Just taking off on the road, traveling to new states, cities, countries etc. and shooting pictures. There is really nothing I enjoy more. When I finally retire, I plan on buying an Airstream sport, setting it up as a portable darkroom, and just taking off for months at a time, traveling and shooting pictures. Fortunately, my wife is also a big fan of travelling and also into painting and drawing. So while I am shooting pictures, she is usually kicking back sketching and drawing.
Any bio about me would be incomplete if I didnt mention collecting. I am a collector at heart and have more collecting hobbies than I care to admit. It seems like every year that passes, I have a new collecting hobby. My father was a big collector and he got me collecting at a very young age. He mainly collected coins, railroad & silver certificates, poured silver bars/bullion, and pin up art. He got me into collecting coins and stamps when I was around 10 years old and it just stuck. From there I moved on to Wacky Packages, baseball cards, and comics. Baseball cards were really my primary hobby during the early to late 80's and I was very fortunate to have sold my collection a few years before the market crashed. I had no idea the market was going to crash. My interest simply shifted from collecting and baseball cards to girls and dating so I sold all my baseball cards and bought a brand new Chevy Beretta. That I missed the big baseball card market crash was just pure luck.
From the years of 17 to roughly 22-23, I really stopped collecting. I got interested in photography as soon as I graduated high school and really focused on that with most of my free time. I actually enrolled in college to be an environmental engineer, but really didn't like the field at all (way too much math for my liking). I mainly stayed with it due to pressure from my family and girfriend at the time. I had stated that I wanted to switch majors to photography and my family and GF thought I was crazy. They talked me out of it time and time again. "Starving artist" and "making no money" was the most common critcism thrown at me. So I stuck with Environmental Engineering into the start of my senior year, but at the last minute decided to take a semester off. I wound up taking off with my best freind and we spent 8 weeks traveling/hiking the Grand Circle of National Parks which basically starts in southeastern Utah and includes Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Capital Reef, The Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, etc. It was a life changing trip as shooting pictures in such beautiful places, away from the negativity of my family and GF, gave me the time and space I needed to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. As soon as I got home, I switched majors and enrolled in a local private art college. My girlfriend actualy broke up with me over it and my family really thought I had lost my mind, especially since I was so close to graduating, but it was without question the smartest decision I ever made with my life and my family eventually came around and wound up supported my decision. I never did get back together with my girlfreind however.
Anyways, the art school I went to was a private college so it was much smaller than a public school. The average size of my classes was 15-20 students and because of the small size, you wound up becoming friends with a lot of people in different majors. Those were honestly 4 of the best years of my life. We had private 24 hour darkrooms and I absolutely loved what I was doing. It was such a stark difference from my previous major, which I really hated. I would spend all day shooting pictures and spend all night in my darkroom developing and printing. Anyways, during one of the school parties we were at, someone suggested that we should start a trading club for artwork. Photographers would bring photographs, painters would bring paintings, etc. Basically you would have photographs, paintings, drawings, etc and people could trade if they wanted too. It wound up being a huge hit and that was really the start of my love of collecting artwork. I started collecting limited edition prints soon after and still collect them to this day. Its been my longest running hobby (20+ years). And as soon as I started collecting prints, it reawakedned my passion for collecting altogether. One by one, I started picking up new collecting hobbies as the years went by.
I now collect limited edition prints, original comic art/commissions, comics (mostly silver age, bronze age, 1st appearances and some modern), art books, sketch books, statues (mostly Sideshow), figures (mostly Kotobukiya), replica weapons (mostly sci-fi), antique and vintage camera's and lenses, antqiue & vintage Kodak memorabilia, antique & vintage Orange Crush Memorabilia, Space/NASA memorabilia, coins, precious metal art bars, wildlife and space stamps, Vintage Barbour & Belstaff jackets, video game systems/games, Vampirella & Heavy Metal Magazines (8.0 grade or higher), anything/everything Michael Turner related, anything/everything Lucio Parillo related, Lord of the Ring books, etc. Given how many collecting hobbies I have, I am forced to jump back and forth between which one's I am actively collecting at any given time. It would just be too expensive to collect all of them at one time. I did just finish my Vampirella magazine collection but I think I'm going to continue on and add foreign issues to my collection now. My Michael Turner collection is like 95% complete, I just need like 10 more prints and just a few more signed comics. I have mainly been focusing on statues, replica weapons, comics, and limited edition prints lately, but I have advanced searches saved on eBay for all of my hobbies and am constantly checking for nice/must have pieces for all of my collections.
So there you have it! To sum this way too long post up, I am basically a 44 year old photographer that has a great family, loves the outdoors and outdoor activities, and is absolutely obsessed with collecting.
So with that being said, hello to everyone on Sideshow Freaks.
to the forum!
