Photographing in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park Linhof Technikardan 45s
My name is Jim Brick. This is me, photographing McWay creek and redwoods, in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park is about 25 miles south of Big Sur, on highway 1, which runs along the Pacific coast. I'm using a Linhof Technikardan 45s camera. This image of me was taken by a workshop participant.
I teach workshops along the Pacific coast and Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park is just one of the areas that my workshops visit. I teach from one-on-one, to groups of up to six photographers. I welcome both film and digital.
Film has been around for over a century and I know how to use it. My very first camera was a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. I got my first real camera, a Rolleicord III, a few years later. I took pictures for my High school yearbook and for my college newspaper and magazine. Upon finishing college (as an electrical engineer), I enrolled at Brooks Institute of Photography. I spent 1-1/2 years at Brooks and became a commercial and illustrative photographer.
For a couple of decades, I worked as a commercial photographer. I then had the opportunity of working as an embedded firmware engineer on various photographic products. Everything from silver recovery equipment for minilabs, to complete digital cameras, designed from scratch. During my time spent as an engineer, my photography turned to fine art, landscape, and teaching workshops.
I have taught workshops for Leica USA and Hasselblad USA. These were specialized workshops, centered around the manufacturer's camera systems. The workshops that I teach now are, basically, universal in that I teach both film (any format) and digital (any format). I have spent nearly fifty years behind large format cameras (4x5 and 8x10) and thoroughly understand swings, tilts, and shifts. I have also spent the same amount of time behind medium format and 35mm cameras. I currently use the very latest in digital cameras, a 50 megapixel Canon 5DS R DSLR. Besides regular lenses, I use tilt-shift lenses on this camera. My medium format and large format cameras have built-in lens shift & tilt. This allows me to teach all aspects of photography on all camera formats.
Recently I've been working on a project to photograph my alma mater, Brooks Institute of Photography. This is of the original campus in Santa Barbara CA. This original campus was a Montecito estate, a fantastically gorgeous building/facility. When I attended Brooks, this was Brooks Institute of Photography. There are now five campuses so this campus estate is being sold. This is like a death in the family for thousands of Brooks alumni. So I've decided to publish a book, 'In Memory of the Brooks Institute of Photography's Montecito Campus'. The following link shows a few of my campus photographs so that you can get an indication of what the campus is/was like.
Brooks Institute of Photography Montecito Campus
While photographing the campus, I was asked to give the commencement speech to the August 31 2008 graduating class. This was the second largest graduating class ever at Brooks. This was a great honor and a lot of fun. I also earned a great Brooks award:
Brooks Institute Award of Distinction
The view from Glacier Point
Photographing at Point Lobos Rollei SL66
Photographing at Glacier Point, Yosemite Canon 5D
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