“Art Star”: Guy Reynolds, Photojournalist, Sharing His Insight and Work

We have been fans of Guy Reynolds for quite awhile now. He is a Photojournalist at the Dallas Morning News, and his personal work has been shown at the Bath House Cultural Center and Kettle Art this past year. The results of his left of center techniques, such as digital pinhole and through the viewfinder, demonstrate rich colors and a surreal quality that builds curiosity around his subjects. We asked Guy a few questions and he shared with us some of his behind the scenes philosophies:

When did you know you wanted to be a Photographer?

Honestly? I knew I wanted to go into photojournalism when I went to college (University of Texas at Austin) at the age of 23 and realized there was no way I could handle the foreign language requirement for a liberal arts degree.

My love for photography started when I was 13 or 14. I tried to take pictures of birds with an Instamatic and realized I wasn’t going to get stuff like Elliot Porter did in his incredible Birds of North America book. I decided to save money to buy a real camera. I had a DMN paper route and coming up with the cash was not a problem. I remember riding my bike to K-Mart and buying a Minolta SRT 101 and a 50mm lens. At some point I bought an off-brand 300mm ( f/5.6 or f/8 ) lens but still couldn’t take bird pictures.

Before my sophomore year in high school I went to a week-long workshop at SMU in the summer. I remember learning to develop film and then watching a print materialize, like magic, in a tray of Dektol hooked me for good. I shot for the newspaper and year book for two years. I bought a cheap Patterson enlarger, set it up in the attic at home and developed prints in the adjacent bathroom.

For five years after high school I didn’t do much with photography and sold the Minolta to a friend (who also did photojournalism at UT and got into the profession too). Going back to college was the smartest thing I ever did.

How many cameras do you own?

Not many really. The three papers I worked for in North Carolina, Louisiana and Indiana provided the gear so I never had to buy any until I came to work here. I owned a Nikon F3 in college. I have a Canon EOS in the closet (who shoots film anymore for newspapers?) and a Canon 5D. A 24-105 is the only lens I own. I do use lenses from the newspaper pool for other things.

I have a Polaroid OneStep Flash I bought last year at a thrift stores for under $5. I’d never shot a Polaroid before and love it but the film is ridiculously expensive if I can even find it.

I have a 8 or 9 vintage twin-lens models I use to shoot through-the-viewfinder images. I have an old 4 X 5 Crown Graphic that Bill Weisner (Bill’s Records and Tapes) gave me and I have a Polaroid back for it. I also have several older folding cameras and box cameras and I’ve shot some film with them just to see what I could get.

What are your opinions on film versus digital processing? What techniques do you commonly use?

Digital is the greatest advancement yet in photography for photojournalists because of the time factor. It allows for filing images from the field which eliminates the time we used to spend driving back to the office to process and print (or scan) from negatives. We now get images from an event within minutes of them being shot if needed for use on the web. It also makes staying at events a possibility we never before had.

In general, digital technology has turned photography into an Everyman proposition. That’s all well and good but it’s also dumbed-down the craft. In fact, it’s no longer a craft that needs any training or skill whatsoever. One can take a camera out of the box and do nothing more than put batteries in to get nice pictures. PHD cameras (push here dummy) require no skill or understanding of how to make effective images and that’s fine for the masses.

Ok, you are headed to West Texas and you can only bring one camera, and one lens if it’s your DSLR. What’s it gonna be?

It’s not gonna be a DSLR; it’ll be a Widelux. And lots of film. West Texas to me is first and foremost wide-open spaces. A DSLR is primarily a snapshot camera and I don’t need any more snapshots so I’d try to do images that challenge me. It would also be a long trip and I’d have to go alone because I’d really only shoot when the light is right and that pretty much means two or three scenes a day.

I’d definitely load up the changer with Terry Allen, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely discs before heading out.

Can you tell us about the 365 at home series we’ve noticed on your flickr?

Flickr is a great example of how an online community can start small and explode into a phenomenon in no time. Seeing different things that people around the world are doing is a creative impetus. I saw a bunch of 365 projects and about 90% of them were women doing self-portraits (some men too). Flickr is full or narcissists having fun and showing their wares, some more creative and well done than others. The 365 group http://www.flickr.com/groups/365days/ has over 700,000 photos in it. By year’s end it’ll be well over a million (yawn). I’ve never done self-portraits. I know what I look like and figure others couldn’t care less. And I don’t do conceptual.

One day near the end of the year I just thought I’d like to do something just to challenge myself and came up with the at-home idea. That’s easy enough to do and gives me a chance to show things the way I want them seen. Using extension tubes allows me to do very close-up images. If I didn’t tag them with what the subject is, most of them wouldn’t be recognized.

So it’s really nothing more than a way for me to have fun. It’s not fine art. And I need to go do one now!

Samples from Guy Reynold’s 365 At Home Project:

pizza pan holes