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About Me

History, licenses, awards and blog's

I started out in photography as a child artiest shooting photos of things that I wanted to draw and paint. Somtimes I just wanted to fram my photos :) I wished I had the time to sit and paint in the out doors. Most of the time I would get an idea for doing a painting from somthing I saw, I would take several different photos and put them together to make One painting. I would photograph a certain background or a cloud in the sky in one photo, a building or structure in another photo, and a person, animal or tree from another photo, and I would paint them all together into one painting, because finding all the elements together seemed next to impossible, and the feeling I was looking for wouldn't be the same. Many times the camera failed to capture what i saw, or what i felt, and what i was looking for. Colors of the weeds in the snow that I saw didnt look the same as in the photo. And so I would search for a better camera as i could afford them, as most of my money would be spent on paints, brushes, paper, frames, mattes. Sometimes the camera captured things that i didnt see at first. But I was always looking for that one photo that expresses that one feeling or emotion but if I blink an eye I missed it and its gone. I would go out canoeing and see beautiful wild life making the perfect pose but by the time i got my camera in my hands it would be gone. But I really enjoy paintings and photos of dark fall cloudy rainy days, wet streets, dark low hanging clouds with people holding their coats closed in the wind and trying to stay warm and dry, with warm glow of lighting in the windows. It sounds all kind of gloomy :) but to me its like singing the blues to make you happy :)

I started out drawing and painting as a child, and then went to a private art school, I had one man art shows and won ribbons from the Bismarck Art Association, I had year round displays at the Provident Life Buildings Beacon Coffee Shop in the early 1970's and had displays at the North Dakota Treasury's Office (by their request) As I got older and then got married and started raising a family I found I had less and less time for painting. But now that my 3 children are grown up adults, and I have 1 granddaughter. I thought I would try and find the time for my self, and get back into doing some creative art again.

As my kids were growing up and graduating high school, I had a friend of mine, who shoots wedding and graduation photography, shoot all my kids graduation photos for $250 per child and burned the photos to CD rom for me. He was like my self, He never went to school for photography, He shot a few photos for a Doctor, of different surgeries at the hostpial, All the Dortors like the photos he did so much he became the surgery & hospital photographer, and won a few awards.

As I wanted better cameras for photographing things for my art work I found I had bought cameras costing far more than the cameras my friend was using to shoot his graduation & wedding photography. My family started to think that I too should be shooting photography like my friend. But I really wasnt sure if photography is what I wanted to do, I didnt want to just shoot photographs, I wanted to do creative artistic things. Shooting a wedding is more than just shooting some photos, its alot of work, and stressful, dealing with all these different people. Everything is moving fast at a wedding, your limited to time, your working with bad light, and your trying to get everyone to pose just right. Drawing pictures and shooting photos that I liked wasn't going to be the same as what some one else likes, and trying to please the public. When I paint, I paint for me as an artist and I dont care what people think of it, I do it to express my oun feeling's, and to express a part of who I am as an artist. I wasnt sure if I could do the same thing with my photography, but Im finding out that yes there is a really big art side to ones photography, and thats what turned me to giving artistic photography a chance.

Then came friends and family asking me if I would shoot photos for this and shoot photos for that and I found my self shooting photos for graduation and weddings anyways, but i didnt take shooting the photos all that serious because lighting conditions were different and difficult every place I went, and sometimes next to impossible to get a nice photo. Seemed like a lot of the photos that I shot I felt i could have done it different or better, and then when I would do somthings really good 2 or 3 times in a roll and you feel you need to do it that good all the time, and because you feel thats what people are expecting of you, but for what ever reason it dosnt look as good as I was shooting for, I'm my oun worst critic. I wanted to better my self in getting the right shots, so I ending up buying and reading many books and DVDs from famous photographers on Shooting Wedding Photography, Portrait Photography, Technique Photography, Lighting Photography, even PhotoShop Technique and I bought a lots of different studio lighting, muslin cotton backdrops, digital backgrounds, Chroma-key software, and started to experiment with all the different types of lights and lighting technique's. Some photographers I know went to a few years of collage and got a degree in photography, and they use there degree to say Im good at what I Do. I thought of going to collage and getting a degree in photography, but I would have been reading a lot the books I already bought and read and learning all the things I already learned over the years, I felt I would be going backwards, I dont mind stepping back a few steps, and if i was in my 20's I could lose a few years of my life with out a problem, but when you get older time becomes more important to you then it was when you were 20, and at 52 years old every day is importent to me :) I figured I was just going to keep moving forward from where I am today.

I always enjoy watching other photographers and how they do things, And then I had the opportunity to work with the daughter of former "May's Camera and Model Shop" owner, and what a great photographer she is, she was very demanding and sort of pushy but she got the photo shots she was looking for. I figure this was going to be somthing I needed to work on since I am more a quiet shy type, not pushy or demanding at all. I asked her How do you know your getting the right shot, She told me, There is no perfect shot in weddings since its always live, its always moving, and its always in a bad light area, you just do the best you can do. I really enjoyed watching her work the people while she got the photos she was looking for.

I always want to experiment with different types of lights and lighting technique's and ideas that I get, but could never find anyone to sit or model for me, There was always some one around my house but there all so busy doing their oun thing. So I would experiment on my dogs and cats, shooting animal portraits, the dogs and cats didnt care for it at all, and I tried to be very pushy and very demanding to the dogs to get the right photo. I had noticed how much nicer these photos looked if you had the lighting set just right. But everyones skin tone and hair color is alittle different and so they take alittle different type of set up. Taking the time to learn each of these set ups is difficult when you cant find subjects with the skin tones that I wish to experiment with. But I can see how some subjects can make it difficult in getting the right shot and a person needs to learn to work with the people in getting the right pose, even if there cats & dogs, making them feel comfortable to get the shot that we are both looking for.

I really enjoy shooting with blue screen. I just started doing this going into the new year (2010) and its openned alot of new doors for me. I first started buying cotton muslin backgrounds. One good painted cotton muslin background can cost 3 to 4 hundred dollars, cheaper ones are around $50 each, and everyone wants somthing different in the background of their photos, and so a person can spend thousands of dollars in just cotton backgrounds trying to please about ten different people, plus alot of the back grounds they sold I really didnt like. I wanted somthing alittle more creative. And then I saw blue screen. Its what the weather man uses on TV when hes pointing at the clouds moving accross the screen behind him. He's standing in front of a blue screen. Blue and green colors are the furthest color from shin tone so the software used to do blue screen works great for portrait photography. This software come's in good and bad, Bad is really cheap and is more for home use, Good costs alot more money, more for the professional, more or less you get what you pay for, so expect to pay over 3 hundred dollars and up for your software if your doing this for business. You can also do green & blue screen using your adobe PhotoShop software but this is alot of work to use, expect to spend several hours on 1 photo. But with blue screen (I can key out the blue) and I can add hundreds of the same beautiful muslin backgrounds (keying in). I can also make it look like we did a beautiful photo shoot right on main street of Bismarck or Mandan, or anywhere, I can make the light look likes its all coming from the same direction, and you can add in real time shadows, even depth of feild. I can change the back ground to make a person look like they are standing or sitting any place, on a beach in Cancun, sitting on a desk in the governors office, or behind a desk in the white house, or hanging from the side of a 5 story building, or flying in the clouds like super man. I can scan old photos and add anyone to another photograph, posing you in old family photos, or an old 1876 photo making you look like your apart of history, its alot of fun and all in very high quality. The one nice thing I like about blue screen is my customers dont have to go out of town to shoot out of town photos, or to shoot photos on a dangerous train bridge over the river, or standing in then middle of a busy traffic street, only everyone was safe and ok in the studio :) and I can shoot portrait photos in middle of dark winter and make them look like they were shot in the middle of sunny summer, so summer lasts all winter long with blue screen :) sorta helps beat the winter blues :)

When ever i find the time to watch alittle TV , usually before bed, I occasionally check out "Fashion TV" on channel 374 on Dishnetwork satellite. They have 30 min. fashion shows, Most the shows are all on fashion, but some of the shows are on interviewing fashion models, some on photo sessions, some on interviewing fashion photographers. What I find interesting is what the photographers are doing. These are some of the most famous photographers in the world, for fashion magazines like VOGUE and many many others. I enjoy watching the photographers work. Some of these photographers have home made flash defusers. I find this interesting what they do to get the photos their looking for. Technology has come along way in the past 2 years, shows like this were never on TV where a person could sit and watch famous photographers work.

I noticed all photographers have a side inside them selves, its more than just shooting a photo and what they see, its how they see it and how they express it. All photographers need to find their side inside them selves. Everyone has a side inside, and they need to find it. And only then can they become a good photographer in expressing their side. Photography or Art. Some photographers who have been shooting for many years still dont have a side, and so their photography is just photo's and not an expression of them selfs as an artist.

I also noticed many famous photographers will spend many many hours in Photoshop with there staff when editing digital photography. They would show the before and after shots of there photo work and how the photo transformed into what they were looking for. They will use a GretagMacbeth color chart, that they shoot in with their photos. This color chart has sRGB colors on it. Different kinds of Lighting have a way of changing the colors in your photos, color and light temperature, there are hot lights (halogen) and cool lights (florescent). Just one kind of cool light is florescent light and it has many different color temperatures, with the most popular being 5600K for photography. Differnet color temperature can make photos have a blue tint or a red tint, or you can have to much light or not enough light that can change color. With the color chart shot as a test pattern in the photo, you can then use PhotoShop to click on and restore those same sRGB colors back to original, so that the light will not flood or wash out your original colors, returning them all to original. And in adjusting these colors with your computer, you must first adjust your computer monitor to the right sRGB colors, so that your seeing the colors on your computer as they truly are. If your monitor is not set right you could be editing and adjusting all the wrong colors with your PhotoShop software. Adjusting the adobe gamma colors on your computer is done rather easily, working with PhotoShop takes a little different skill and a keen eye for color.

The lowest resolution size that I use is 3888 x 2592. This is a good quality size. One small problem with viewing digital photos that are 3888 x 2592 in this size is that most home computer video display cards can not display this resolution on the monitor as it really is. Making these photos look bad on their computer. Cameras that have a low resolution will look much better on their computer, since the resolution of the camera matches that of the computers video card resolution. Most home computer video cards will only display around 1280 x 1024 in resolution or less, so they are only seeing less than half of the total photo, and so most of the photos resolution is cut out in order to display the photo on the computer, not to mention alot of normal home computers will have a difficult time opening photo files of this size. You will need to check your computers screen resolution to see how much of the photo that you are missing and unable to see or able to see. So if you have a normal home computer you need a normal home digital camera to view the photo's normally. Professional Cameras shooting in 3888 x 2592 are going to look cheap on your home computer because your computer is unable to display the total photo, but if you take these photo files in to a printing center and have them printed professionally, you will find that they will print sharp and clear compared to how you seen them on your home computer, and or how they compared to a lower resolution camera.

As a photographer I enjoy shooting any kind of photography, As an artist i enjoy being around other people who are open minded and creative. I have been some what inspired by other creative people, even though most of the people who I have been inspired by I really did not like, they drove me crazy with their Bull sh*t, but they would get me so up set that I would start working and doing things that tured out to be some of my better work, I found my self seeking out other creative people would I hated just to see if that hate would inspire me to do more, I wondered if they hated me the same, and if it also drove them into a creative mode like me, Would our twisted friendship bring out the creative side in us both. I enjoy being around people who show and express their creative side, in personality and day to day life style. When I'm in public with my camera I also enjoy shooting photos of people who set their oun fashion standards, people that normal everyday people would see as strange or manybe weird. People with strange and wild hair doos, piercings, tattoos, wild makeup and unusual dress code ethics, People who are happy being who they are. I see alot of this as art. If your a strange, weird, fashionable and or a creative person and dont mind being photographed drop me an e-mail or phone call. I may do a very nice photo session for you all for Free. I believe there is a fine line between creative genius and insanity. So when I see people who dress funny or look a little crazy, I stop and look and I try to see if theres some artistic creative genius hiding just out of view.

Some photographers shoot wedding and graduatuion photography on location only, and do not have a studio. And since they have no studio they do not have backdrops (backgrounds) or are limited to lighting and back-drops since they work out of a car and not a studio. If your shooting weddings you dont need alot of portable lighting since the church alter's are normally light well. Studios are nice but costly, both in rent of the building and all the lights and backgrounds needed to fill the studio. Some photographers will work out of there homes, push the living room furniture back, set up some back-drops and lights. This is somtimes difficult to geting good shots since your limited to space (not that you cant get good photos). Having a large empty building with high ceilings is nice, gives you plenty to room to work and to be creative, but it doesnt have that warm coziness of the small room, stuffed full of equipment. If your shooting just portraits all you really need is a little room, but if your shooting a model sitting on a car with a paper background you will need an airplane hanger to get all the lighting right.

Some photographers belong to Photographer Associations. These Associations are not bad and are a really good thing for most photoraphers. These Associations give out awards to there members, and some times yearly just for being members, and members will use these awards to show that they are upstanding with the Associations (that the dues are all paid).But Most Photographer Associations have certain code's of ethics that feel nudity is morally wrong. I do have a code of ethics. I do beleave there is a difference between nudity and artistic nudity. As an artist I grew up painting the human form nude, and I see no problem in photographing artistic nudes. As an artist I do not want an association tell me what I can and can not do, or to limit my self to what I can photograph and what I can not photograph, I want to leave my self open to do creative artistic photography, even if it may include nudity and only if its done in an artistic manner. And for this reason I chose at this time not to belong to any photography assocation, and because I will not fit into there mold, and I'm put on the other side of their line, I chose to open my door to such artistic photography as I go into the new year (2010).

I started this web site last year, and I had Adorama phototography company anaylse my web site. I had color in it, and They said that is bad, They told me photography web sites should be black or white or gray, some colors turn people off. I had sound and music :) and They said no music, that not everyone likes the same style of music and it turns people off, lose the music. Am I selling music or photography? I didnt list my prices, I wanted them to call for a price, They said List your prices because people dont like negotiating price's, they want to see right up front what there looking at for a price. Also there is no need to put your company logo or watermarks on my photos as a copy protection, since I shot them and they are already copy right, Watermarks and logos annoy customers and draw your attention away from the photos. So if anyone is wonding why my site is not colorful with music, I was told by the Big Boys that these things are someones personal annoyances :) They told me a bunch more, I'm working on the rest :) so stop back in :) I hope to get things fixed :)

This web site started out as a site for Perry's Art work & Sandcarving http://DakotaSandCarving.com , It has slowly truned into a site for Perrys photography. Perry holds a current North Dakota Sales and Use Tax Permit since 2004, and a State of North Dakota Secretary of State Certificate of Registration since 2004.

Perry was a Director of the Mandan Jaycees from 1976 to 1988 , was Chairman of many projects and events. Received may Awards and dedicated service awards. Perry was the Mandan Jaycee Rodio Arena Sign maker for all the sponsors and gate shoots. Perry is and has been a member of the American Managemant Association since 1994. And has gone through a complete course on Facilities Managment though the Rockhurst University, his instructor was the facilities manager of several Fortune 500 Companies. Perry has created sandcarving art works for many business's. "5 Nations Art of Mandan", Color Works Painting of Bismarck, University of Utah, Colorado University, Shiloh Christian School, Night Life Limousine of Bismarck, just to name a few.