Interview with:Karl S Mainprize [karlsmainprize]
PHOTOGRAPHY
 | Do you have an online gallery where one can view your photos? |
| For how long have you done photography? How did you begin? For many years I was a wildlife photographer specialising in birds and then insects. I began whilst at university when I recorded life as a student and then moved into birds (feathered variety). |
| What has been your education as a photographer? I am completely self taught but have a huge photo book library and spend a lot of time on the net studying others photos. |
| What is your favourite type of photography? Landscape photography, especially long exposures. |
| What do you try to express through your photography? I try to reflect the mood that I am in when I see the landscape. I movement in my images as the landscape is dynamic. |
| How do you choose your subjects? Most of my subject are taken on walks bot alone, with my wife or with the whole family. I do seem to spend a lot of time out before and araound dawn and often return just after sunrise as I have to fit my photography around a busy schedulae as a consultant surgeon. |
| What type of preparation do you do before undertaking the photo session? I prefer to go to areas I know and often plan shots in my mind, however the light is so important that many pictures develop whilst I am at a site. If I am going to a new site I study maps and other photographers' photos of the area. I also look in guidebooks etc. Many times I reccy the area before committing to a photo. |
| Do you normally photograph with a purpose already in mind, or do you let yourself go with the flow? Both. |
| Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Sigma, Olympus, Sony, Pentax...which do you place your bets on and why? I have Canon. I originally went with Canon for the image stabilisation when doing wildlife photography and have never found a reason to change, afterall it is not the equipment that makes the photo but the vision and artistic interpretation of the person pressing the shutter. This is more so in the digital age. |
| Describe your current equipment: cameras, lenses, computers, accessories... I have 2 Canon bodies (currently a 5D mark 2 and a 7D). I carry as little gear as possible now and so usually have 2 lenses - mostly 17-40L and 70-200f4LIS. I also have Canon 24TSE, 45TSE, 500f4LIS, 100-400LIS lenses with 1.4 and 2x teleconvertors. For macro I have a 100f2.8, a 180 macro lens and a 65MPE. These are supplemented with extension tubes. All the above gear is Canon.
I rarely use polarising filters but have one for the Lee system which most of my filters are. I use neutral density and graduated neutral density filters and B&W and Hoya 9 and 10x NDs.
I carry all my gear in various Lowepro bags, mainly a Vertex 200 or a Flipside 400AW. For mountain work and wet weather I have an allweather Rover. |
| What software and plug-ins do you use to retouch and manage your photos? I use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4. I have Nik, Neat Image, and Topaz Labs plugins, although I use these as little as possible. I prefer to get the image a near to perfect in camera but have no problem with manipulation and tweaking to achieve my vision. I do not add anything to an image and rarely remove anything apart from dust. |
| What measures do you take to protect your work against Internet piracy? I only put small images on-line and use a commercial website company to restrict the downloading of my images. However as the images on my website are small and low resolution, they not good enough to print and so if someone uses them it is free advertising. |
| Are you a good salesperson of your work? In what should you improve? I am good at promoting my work as I prefer to spend the time outside taking pictures and appreciating the world we live in. |
| Which past masters of photography do you most admire? Predictably Ansel Adams and Galen Rowell. I also admire Eric Hosking. |
| Are technology and digital retouching reducing the gap between professionals and amateurs? Absolutely. However I do not believe the gap will narrow completely and this is due to:
1. the fact that a professional is able to spend more time taking high quality images, with their availability to be out when the light is good being higher than a good amateur. So a professional is more consistent.
2. technology cannot replace vision and artistic creation. |
| Do you consider yourself more technical or more artistic? I hope I am more artistic. Certainly others tell me I am. Although I do believe that consistency requires a significant amount of technical knowledge now with Photoshop etc. and that this is important in producing the highest quality prints that art appreciators rightly expect. |
| What have you learned about the art of framing and composition? This is interesting. As a photographer there are rules and some are very difficult to break. Only if you are an internationally acclaimed photographer does it seem acceptable to break them regularly. I believe that if a photo is aesthetically pleasing to the creator it does not matter whether it breaks framing and composition rules.
Most of the time I obey the rules of framing and composition. When one visits art galleries one sees that 'the old masters' often broke the rules and certainly modern art seems to have none.
More and more I seem to be drawn to images that do not have the '3 layered' approach ie foreground, midground and background - one leading to the other. I think this is why I am becoming more and more minimalist with time. |
| How does one develop the instinct of knowing when to press the shutter release button? I think it develops with time, practice and study. As a style develops one becomes more instinctive. |
| When should one use film, and when should one use digital? I personally believe that one should look at what one's pictures are used for. Thos that produce massive prints may well need medium format film or 100MP cameras. As a fine-art photographer I produce prints to A2 size and have printed excellent quality images form cameras with far fewer than 21MPs. The drive for more megapixels in amateurs seems to me to be a western society need to 'beat the Joneses', rather than a good use of finances and I'd like to see more emphasis on good lenses, tripods and (dare I say it) Photoshop skills. |
| Does photography have the recognition that it should have in contemporary art museums? I suppose not. However for my tastes there are far too many photographers producing very similar images. |
| Which websites for photographers do you frequently visit? Photo.net, ephotozine and a select number of photographers who regularly inspire me. |
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653 visits Whohub
Karl S Mainprize
Filey, North Yorkshire, England
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95720 interviews created
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