About
I loved photography my whole life. I admit, as I write this, I’m pretty new to professional photography, but I’ve been pressing the shutter button since I was a kid. I’ve been framing shots in my head my whole life. Every day I look around and see the beauty in what is and what could be. A good eye, a good vision, a good sense of lighting, and over twenty years of professional experience in creative industry makes my vision valuable. In my humble opinion.
I started my professional life after graduating from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 1994. That’s when I started working for an independent-production-company in Atlanta. That’s where I started to seriously study all levels of producing high-quality video-productions from pre-production, the creation stage of production, and the finishing stage of post-production.
That company was named “Atlanta On Video” or AOV. It was a small company owned by two partners and with two full-time employees, of which I was one. As is common practice, freelance contractors were used as needed. My role as a full time employee was to manage the duplication of video tapes. At that time digital-video was only a dream outside of some lab somewhere. Everything was done on some format of video tape. Consumers typically used VHS tape. Some of you may remember VHS. VHS tape duplication was the bulk of my job for AOVs various clients. There were other types of duplication from film-to-video and format-to-format. There used to be several different formats of video tape, and different clients and situations often called for different formats.
When opportunity would arise, I’d operated as a freelancer for AOV. I would do the work separate from, as extra hours, my duplication responsibilities. I would also receive a higher rate-of-pay, This arrangement made my employment at AOV a viable job, albeit still quite modest.
I started freelance work at AOV as a production assistant, where I mostly lugged around and set up equipment for other people to use. I eventually learned how to use, and graduated to operating video cameras and lighting equipment along with the related rules and principles. Cameras, lights, and production was the primary love of one of the owners, who did most of that work, especially the big projects. When it came to production work, I got small jobs the boss didn’t want to bother with, which usually wasn’t very challenging but good learning experiences. The production I did at that time often involved setting up a camera and sound and taping a speaker addressing a small group, or capturing dance recitals. I filmed and engineered many dance recitals, so we could sell VHS copies to parents.
I spent most of my days in the duplication room/facility of AOV’s business suite. Duplication was connected with the main edit suite where the other partner spent most of his time. The rooms were connected by an access passage and many runs of cable connecting them. There was all manner of professional equipment in both areas, often working in conjunction. That is where I learned video-engineering. My education did not involve a degree, it involved doing and learning under the guidance of my boss. At that time all video-editing was done tape to tape, which I also learned from my boss and through practice.
Back then AOV had a suite in the mid-town area of Atlanta. About half of the suite was permanently occupied by AOV. There were other business interests that rented office space as well as a good size studio. One of my fond memories of that time, a Hollywood production company rented the suite next door to AOV, and rented the AOV studio for some shots used in a film released as, “Fluke.”
I didn’t have anything to do with that production other than taking a peek after their crew wrapped for the day or talking to a couple production assistants. For me, though, it was memorable and made a lasting impression.
During my time at AOV, technology was advancing quickly. The digital revolution was upon us and change was the order of the day. When I started my career everything was entirely analog at least for AOV, even the largest producers of television content were mostly analog. Digital video technology didn’t exist for most production companies, but soon starting becoming a real factor in the industry. AOV along with everyone else were very interested in digital video technology. It was clearly the future.
Soon, AOV made a huge investment in an entirely digital video editing system from a company called AVID. It was revolutionary. It was also rudimentary compared to what we have today. It would take analog-video-tape and digitize it into workable digital-files. Initially the quality was nowhere near broadcast worthy, or even worthy of distribution on the lowly VHS format. What it did do was revolutionize the way editing process was done.
Prior to digital-video, editing had to be linear for the most part. A project had to be created from start to finish with very little ability to go back and change things after the fact. Making an edit to the middle of a program looked less than perfect, sometimes even bad, and was destructive to the surrounding elements. Sometimes to make a change, the program had to be edited over from the beginning. Starting over was very expensive and time consuming, and avoided as much as possible.
The new digital AVID editing-system was non-linear. Despite it’s poor video resolution, the ability to move things around in a non-destructive process was very valuable. A client/producer could look at many variations before finalizing an edit. The AVID non-linear editing-system was considerably less expensive to use than old-fashioned linear-tape-systems with their limitations, and which required a lot of expensive equipment and tape. When an edit was finalized using the AVID system, an edit-decision-list (EDL) was created and handed over to the tape based linear edit suite where the editor was able to recreate the final-edit following the frame-precise EDL.
It was the AVID editing suite where I found my niche at AOV. I was fascinated with the entire process and possibilities. The partners already both had their specialties, one in production the other in tape-based-editing, so I was able to work with producers in the AVID suite quite often. The technology was constantly evolving. My knowledge and skills were keeping pace, and I became more proficient using the AVID system than either of the partners. At least until the AVID system developed to the point it was capable of producing broadcast quality productions. At which point the entire focus of the business moved to using non-linear-video-editing AVID editing instead of linear-tape-based-editing system The partner who was chief editor largely shifted his focus from tape to AVID editing and my editing work declined.
I still got some work. The company invested in a second system that was slightly less robust, but could produce video productions with a good quality fit for non-broadcast distribution. Occasionally I got to work with a producer that needed broadcast-quality, because my boss was booked on something in the tape suite. But there wasn’t enough work for me to make editing a full-time job, so I continued my duties as the duplication manager, which was a consistent and modest profit center for the business. However, I wanted to better myself. I felt I had the knowledge, skills, and experience to make a change, so I did.
At that time AVID was the dominant player in the field. They were very protective of their intellectual property. However other companies were making strides to catch up and challenge the supremacy AVID maintained as the leader in digital video editing technology. If you lived through the digital revolution you know how fast things advanced, are still advancing. Every year saw new miracles of technology. Competition was fierce. I spent several years learning and working with AVID technology and started looking for more lucrative opportunities.
I found a producer interested in non-linear editing. He owned a company that worked with the March of Dimes organization. Together they produced video programs for new parents. His company sold these programs to hospitals all over the United States, who would then provide them to new families as a video guide. There were multiple different program options a hospital could buy. Sometimes they would buy a generic version. The company tried to sell more personalized versions of the program. Most commonly hospitals would buy a personalized introduction and closing using local staff and some beauty shots of the facility thus giving new parents a more local feeling product. Occasionally some hospitals would want to add entire new sections or make changes to existing content. Non-linear-video-editing was a game changer for this company, and I helped them set up their own AVID editing suite. Then I worked for them as a freelance editor and technology guy for a while.
If I took any photos of any of this I seem to have misplaced them. Archiving these achievements didn’t seem important at the time. Any photos I did take during this time period were on film and of a more general interest. My skills at film photography at that time were fuzzy as are my memories.
More to come…