Not that I have anything against digital. When time is money, your best choice
is a digital rig. Digital offers instant proofing, images can be easily
manipulated, and you don't need a darkroom to make prints. There are no
surprises.
But I like surprises. Yeah it sucks when the twelve rolls of film you shot on
your once in a lifetime trip are lost to a lab accident, or a faulty light
meter, or forgetting your flash was set to quarter power, or any of the million
other things that can go wrong when you are shooting film. However, more often
then not, all your worries go away when you put your loupe to your contact sheet
and you think to yourself, just maybe I've got the hang of this after all.
I'm not a professional photographer. They say you should find your passion and
build your career around it; unfortunately, the surest way to kill your passion
is to turn it into a job. When I got out of college I did some assisting,
participated in some shows, and did everything I could to get paid to take
pictures. When money becomes your sole motivation for taking pictures, I
learned, it's time to put away your camera.
So I did. I got a regular job and became a respectable member of the middle
class. And here I am today, taking pictures because I enjoy it.
- Joseph Flores
April 2008
About the Artist
I was born in 1967 in San Jose, California and grew up in various locations in
Northern California before settling in Sacramento. I studied art at both UC
Davis and CSU Sacramento where I had the privilege of learning from Wayne
Thiebuad, Robert Arneson, Peter Vandenberge, and Ralph Johnson among others.
When not taking pictures, you can find me out walking my dog, in the garden
trying to figure out what is eating my tomato plants, or hunched over my
keyboard, trying to figure out why this HTML isn't doing what I want it to do.
