Gallery News: The New Commercial Gallery has Dropped

The Commercial Work gallery is comprised of 29 photos that are a sampling of photography I did part time during the 1990s while working as a career electrical design engineer at local high tech manufacturing businesses, including some for whom I also did photography. I was a better engineer than I was a photographer, but I was conveniently accessible. I could do acceptable work, but was something of a one-trick-pony. The marketing people I worked with were talented and pleasant, while I have most of the more unappealing personality challenges associated with autism. The vast majority of my work was for TxPORT, a telecom manufacturer, and Phoenix Microsystems, a maker of telecom test equipment, both located in Huntsville, Alabama.. My company name was Krueger Photography and it was officially in business for 11 years and contracted with eight companies, several of which were affiliated with each other at some point.

During the time I operated the business, I had nothing to do a lot of the time and suddenly too much to do by a given deadline. That was mostly due to procrastination. Back then, everything was shot on film, color studio work was shot exclusively on Ektachrome EPP, most often 4 x 5 in. and some 6 x 7 cm, and 35mm on the few occasions I worked on location. B&W was most often 6×7 cm. I did the B&W darkroom work myself and used a local lab for the color. The transparency film originals were turned over to the customer, so the gallery pictures are almost all scans of small to medium sized halftone images in the few publications I kept as memorabilia of those days. The B&W images in the gallery are scans from 8×10 darkroom prints.

The world has changed since then. During those years of doing commercial work part time, I virtually never did any personal photography. That came back after I closed the business and planned trips specifically as photo expeditions. I also added a dedicated studio, frame shop, and darkroom to my house. I did some work for modeling schools and a local agency as well as head shots for local theater groups. I’ve exhibited in a few local venues and had work published in a national print magazine and online by Italy’s la Repubblica. I no longer do any work for hire, nor do I market any of my work. Finally realizing that digital photography is not just a passing fad like cell phones and the internet (haha!), I bought a D850 digital camera last year.

But, I still shoot film almost exclusively.

The Commercial gallery was an experiment to familiarize myself with embedded image metadata which none of my online B&W images have since they are scans of darkroom prints. My F6 Nikon film camera collects that exif data, but my other cameras do not. I plan to add XMP metadata for search engine optimization. I will be adding a gallery dedicated to work from my day-long local photo expeditions which I do a few times a year. Long distance traveling has become less appealing the older I get. Also, TSA airport scanners make film inconvenient.

Gallery News: New gallery coming soon.

In a previous incarnation of this site, I included a gallery showing some of my work from the 1990s when I did commercial photography part time.  I will be bringing that gallery back and have already scanned in the images at a higher resolution than the original JPGs.  Since most of my work back then was on color transparency film which was turned over to the client, most of these images will be scanned from half-tone illustrations in the final 30 year old print publications in which they appeared. Unlike scans from analog prints, they had to be descreened and defects, from their less than pristine condition, corrected. But, there are a few images from 4×5 Ektachrome transparencies and black and white darkroom prints. Since I virtually never do digital image editing, it was a time consuming learning curve and the results less than perfect, especially from the smaller original halftone illustrations. The gallery name will be labeled “Commercial” and all that remains is to add the image metadata (something else I’ve never done before). I hope to have it completed within a week, probably around January 13.