© William Reeder 2018
WilliamReederPhotography
About
Southern Born, Southern Raised.
I was born in 1957 in Birmingham, Alabama. We were a working class family. Daddy was a union plumber and mother was a part time waitress and she made clothes not only for us but for others to make extra money. By the time of my birth, my older brother and sister were out of the house. That left one older brother and two older sisters and me. Since I was the youngest by seven years, I spent a fair amount of time playing alone or with my friends. I can remember getting a cheap plastic camera as a gift for Christmas when I was 5 or 6. It use 120 film and had very simple controls. I took pictures with it and some turned out and some didn’t. I had a aunt that worked in a drug store downtown. She would put the film in for processing and bring the pictures to me after a few days. I think the fact that I could freeze time and preserve memories is what I remember most about that camera.Kodak enters my life!
The next camera I got as a child was a Kodak Disc camera. Instead of a roll of film it had a disc shaped cartridge that loaded into the back of the camera and could take 15 shots per disc. The negatives were 110 film size. It had a electronic flash instead of flash bulbs.Motion pictures!
In the Seventies, I developed a serious interest in how films were made. Star Wars and Star Trek movies were magic to me and I had to know how they were made. I got several books that showed behind the scenes at Industrial Light & Magic and read them many times. A family friend gave me a old Super 8 camera and a editor setup which allowed me to experiment. As soon as camcorders became available, I had to have one. It was a big shoulder mounted JVC shooting VHS tapes. Next I got a VCR with flying erase heads so I could edit my footage.Enter the Amiga!
The Eighties saw the arrival of the Amiga Computer and the Desktop Video Revolution. Before this to do anything beyond simple cut edits you needed a lot of expensive equipment. Switchers, time base correctors, effect generators and genlocks were required in the editing suite of even a small production company. An Amiga 2500 with a Video Toaster card gave me the same amount of power for far less money. I added a Digital Animation Recorder so that I could render 3D animations and play them back in real time.Digital sets me free!
I never caught the photography bug with film cameras. It was too expensive for a working class boy to have rolls of film developed. Cameras were for recording special events. But digital freed me of that limitation. My first digital camera was the Sony Mavica CD1000 which recorded photos to a mini CD. Now I could shoot hundreds of shots. The lighthouse was shot with that camera in September 2001. I used Sony cameras until 2015 when I went looking for a bridge camera with raw output. I found the Panasonic Lumix FZ70 and the Lumix FZ1000. These were the cameras I took on the Australia trip and they did a great job. Since the trip Panasonic released the FZ-2500 as a replacement for the FZ-1000. The FZ-2500 has a slightly longer zoom lens and adds many of the video features of the GH5. I plan to use it to get back into video production.
© 2018 William Reeder
WilliamReederPhotography
About
Southern Born,
Southern
Raised.
I was born in 1957 in Birmingham, Alabama. We were a working class family. Daddy was a union plumber and mother was a part time waitress and she made clothes not only for us but for others to make extra money. By the time of my birth, my older brother and sister were out of the house. That left one older brother and two older sisters and me. Since I was the youngest by seven years, I spent a fair amount of time playing alone or with my friends. I can remember getting a cheap plastic camera as a gift for Christmas when I was 5 or 6. It use 120 film and had very simple controls. I took pictures with it and some turned out and some didn’t. I had a aunt that worked in a drug store downtown. She would put the film in for processing and bring the pictures to me after a few days. I think the fact that I could freeze time and preserve memories is what I remember most about that camera.Kodak enters my life!
The next camera I got as a child was a Kodak Disc camera. Instead of a roll of film it had a disc shaped cartridge that loaded into the back of the camera and could take 15 shots per disc. The negatives were 110 film size. It had a electronic flash instead of flash bulbs.Motion pictures!
In the Seventies, I developed a serious interest in how films were made. Star Wars and Star Trek movies were magic to me and I had to know how they were made. I got several books that showed behind the scenes at Industrial Light & Magic and read them many times. A family friend gave me a old Super 8 camera and a editor setup which allowed me to experiment. As soon as camcorders became available, I had to have one. It was a big shoulder mounted JVC shooting VHS tapes. Next I got a VCR with flying erase heads so I could edit my footage.Enter the Amiga!
The Eighties saw the arrival of the Amiga Computer and the Desktop Video Revolution. Before this to do anything beyond simple cut edits you needed a lot of expensive equipment. Switchers, time base correctors, effect generators and genlocks were required in the editing suite of even a small production company. An Amiga 2500 with a Video Toaster card gave me the same amount of power for far less money. I added a Digital Animation Recorder so that I could render 3D animations and play them back in real time.Digital sets me free!
I never caught the photography bug with film cameras. It was too expensive for a working class boy to have rolls of film developed. Cameras were for recording special events. But digital freed me of that limitation. My first digital camera was the Sony Mavica CD1000 which recorded photos to a mini CD. Now I could shoot hundreds of shots. The lighthouse was shot with that camera in September 2001. I used Sony cameras until 2015 when I went looking for a bridge camera with raw output. I found the Panasonic Lumix FZ70 and the Lumix FZ1000. These were the cameras I took on the Australia trip and they did a great job. Since the trip Panasonic released the FZ-2500 as a replacement for the FZ- 1000. The FZ-2500 has a slightly longer zoom lens and adds many of the video features of the GH5. I plan to use it to get back into video production.
