[INTERVIEWS] Jerry Lee

Nickname: Jerry Lee none, no alias used, chinese name: 李中展

Real name: Jerry Lee

Age: 59

Website: none for peace of mind sake

Town/nation: born in Hongkong, now living in Udon Thani, N.E. Thailand. Nationality: Offshore British

Spoken languages: English, Chinese, Thai

Q. Tell us something about you and photography

A. started with a Kodak Brownie at age 16, i was also into chinese painting then with 3 ink paintings included in the permanent collection of Hongkong Art Museum , later i moved up to an Nikkormat when i studied art and design in U.K., i did a lot of BW photography during my post-graduate year at Brighton College of Art, Sussex, i used to then take on wedding assignments, still life/table top, including bromide printing for my lecturer who was a professional horse photographer, first year upon return to Hongkong, i taught photography at the H.K. University's evening classes and also had a partnership in a darkroom business serving the advertising agencies around town, all that didnt lasted longer than a year as i had to move on to graphic design for higher income.

I then produced corporate graphics, annual reports, garment catalogs, advertising collaterals, and worked with many professional photographers, usually trying to get others to produce the shot that i wanted to use, but i took sabbatical from photography all together when i joined the mass transit project of hongkong, which was more of an industrial design capacity, all this is before personal computers.

After the arrival of Macintosh, I packed up my graphic design practise and pioneered into Desktop Publishing, I became an expert in that subject and became product manager for Apple Computers International in Hongkong, we conducted media media presentations and DTP seminars across the S.E. Asia region, the earliest digital photography then was done on a 17" greyscale monitor running a software called Digital Darkroom and greyscale was necessary to impose a half-tone dot screen on images for plate-makings. It was also then i get to use early copies of adobe's photoshop.

... to cut a long story short, i couldnt be bothered to take photos seriously until the availability of affordable DSLRs with acceptable image resolutions. Theres on my stream now 140+ images, but in one book that i'm now preparing contains 1000+ images, and there's still an entire series yet to be released ...

Q. What are your preferred subjects and techniques?

A. I shoot old fashion style - meaning pre-computers - a lot
less auto, and a different understanding of the controls that other processes and variations are to follow, i pay attention to holding the camera still and using a light finger, i shoot low contrast and slightly under-expose.

Q. Are you a professional photographer?

A. rather than judging how much money is being made with photographs, i prefer to calculate by how much one is prepared to spend taking the photograph, and yes, i would take a 200 km journey and stay overnight in order to take a picture.

Q. What's your equipment?

A. Olympus E510 and a couple of other lens, dual core iMac with 2 gig RAM, Photoshop CS2 and lots of add ons.

Q. When and where you started sharing your shots?

A. I first starting visiting Webshots about 3 years ago, i used to use it for a lot of research work, the real point of entry is related to availability of low-priced decent digital DSLR which is no more than 18 months ago. Earlier mavicas, fujis and canons just didnt have the lens capabilities nor image quality until recent.

Q. Three preferred shots of yours?

A.

Q. The three preferred photographers or bloggers on Ipernity (so I can interview them: it isn't a contest ;-) )

A. I can give you 3 names in real life - Hedda Morrison, Felix Beato and
John Thomson, but restricted to this site alone, i'll have to reserve my comments untill a more appropriate time

Q. What are the features you'd like to see implemented/improved on Ipernity?

A. apparently "vanguard" is French and "avant-garde" is late Middle
English word ... i hope that Ipernity can take on the role of being avant-garde in the business of cyber-people platform, an avant-garde gourmet restaurant can also share vdos and music but not to imitate the middle-class american fast-food takeaways

Thank you very much, Jerry, for letting us know you better and for the wonderful shots and insights you share with us

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