I had the pleasure of interviewing photographer Rick Pearson earlier this year for the Dayton Creative Syndicate. Rick’s profile is up on the DCS website — read the whole thing here.
For those who don’t know, DCS offers networking and continuing education for creative professionals, some of it process-oriented, some of it highly technical. Rick’s profile is part of DCS’s Creative Crux, an ongoing series profiling local creative companies and individuals.
Rick is a great photographer and a genuinely nice guy — a perfect combo. He’s going to be presenting to DCS later in August or September — setting up a mock photo shoot and walking us through how he puts a shoot together. The date is TBD, so check the DCS calendar to see when it’s scheduled.
In the meantime, here are a couple excerpts from Rick’s interview.
SE: So, are you a photographer who got into video, or a video guy who got into photography?
RP: Actually, neither! Originally, I was a performance art student, but I kept noticing the camera work being done on the student films around me — what shooters were doing with the camera, how they were choosing to move it, and how they were augmenting the actors’ performances. It got to the point that when I was rehearsing, my mind would begin working out coverage as if I were going to shoot the scene in my head. I guess that’s when I knew that motion photography was for me.
SE: What’s the relationship between still and motion photography? Does what you know about one play into how you approach the other?
RP: Many aspects of the mediums transfer to one another, but each is distinct. With still photography, you are capturing a single frame – that that allows you to get every detail exactly as you want it, an opportunity you don’t generally have with video. On the flip side, I think it’s far easier to tell a story using motion photography. And you still have pretty precise control over the actions, lighting, colors, and composition.