About
I am an Associate Professor of Writing Arts at Rowan University in southern New Jersey, where I teach courses on visual rhetoric, new media, and the history and technologies of writing. I was named a 2013 Delaware Division of the Arts Fellow in the category of Visual Arts—Photography. My photographs appeared in juried shows in Delaware, New Jersey, Utah, and Texas.
I have been an avid photographer since taking an evening Intro to Photography course in Austin, TX, in 2001. In order to take the course I purchased on eBay my first SLR: a Canon AE-1 with two lenses. We learned about f-stops, shutter speeds, and lighting. We shot with slide film and projected our images to the class. In my next evening course, I learned darkroom techniques and began my love affair with the Holga.
I take great pleasure in the tactile technologies of photography: loading film, adjusting f-stops, reading contact sheets. (The next step is learning how to develop film on my own.) I prefer film to digital, toy camera to professional, and my collection of plastic and antique film cameras continues to grow. Toy and antique cameras provide unexpected mystery, and because I teach, work with, and conduct research on new media technologies, a welcome detachment from the digital. They, like many of my subjects, suggest in their structures and technologies the presence of history.
All photos, including those without prices, are for sale. A portion of all sales will be donated to various social and environmental organizations chosen based on the photograph’s subject or the theme of show the photograph appeared in.
I live in Bear, Delaware, with my beautiful wife, Wendy, our sons, Hydan and Seeger, cat, Ellie, dog, Mila, and on good mornings, a yard full of birds and maybe a deer or two.
Please let me know if you have any comments or questions.
Thanks for visiting!
Bill–you really, really must get into at home developing. Doing the negatives at home is really quite easy and saves you a bunch of money. I found it was hugely helpful in terms of seeing what I had done on a shoot shortly after the shoot had been completed. [Otherwise put, when I'd send film out, I'd forget what I did by the time the developed film arrived.]
Admittedly, I'm not a huge, huge fan of digital these days, but I will say that the immediate screen feedback afforded by digital cams helps a lot in the early stages of photo-experimentation.
I used these instructions (see below) when I first started doing b/w at home. I had assumed that I would need to take a class, be incredible precise with everything, buy tons of equipment–bottom line, I assumed it would take years before I could start developing my negatives at home. After I read this, I sent for the start-up stuff and was developing within a week or two. A month later, I think, I was doing color at home.
http://chromogenic.net/develop
Thanks, for the link, Jody!
I know, I know. I have to get over my big hangup about getting the film on the rolls–something I have tried to do in the past and failed at miserably. Really, it's the only thing keeping me from developing. I just have to suck it up, I guess.
Okay, I'll get myself some rollers and I'll add practice rolling with expired film to a list that also includes practicing rerolling 120 film on to 620 spools. 🙂
Bill
Very interested in your article re Bill Cliff camera.
I have a camera made by him although in poor condition it is on display in my gallery. I think it could be older than yours and less polished in finish but what attracted my interest was the slide holders using glass plates(5.5 x3.5 inches. A ratchet system allows the holder to move sideways to record 3 separate images on my he same plate. It has his name stamped on the holders but the identity plaque had disappeared.
Regards Dennis Kendrick