Jim Mathis Photography

My mother often comments about how serious I was as a child. I think I just took some things seriously that others regarded as less than serious, things like photos and music. I always took music very seriously, and I always saw the value of photographs. I got my first camera in the fourth grade I knew right away that I was documenting my childhood and that the photographs would be important in fifty or sixty years. I knew this because I knew how important the fifty year-old photos of my parents and grandparents were. Since then I have made somewhere around a million photographs. Tens of thousands of them are in my file cabinets either as negatives, slides, prints, or digital files on CDs. The best ones are in the form of books. Some of them are just documentation while others are very significant, but all of them are important for one reason or another. I have always been concerned that many people haven’t given much respect to photographs. I have made quite a bit of money restoring o...

Somewhere around 1980, I did what I called my “Ultimate Film Test.” Actually it was more than film. I took about 8 or 10 camera and lens combinations, in different formats, and bought a dozen or so rolls each of a half a dozen different types of film. I set up a little still life in my backyard consisting of some flowers, a lawn chair, bird bath and so forth. I then photographed the same scene with every possible exposure and film combination with each camera. The next step was to make identical 8x10 prints from every exposure, carefully labeling each of the hundreds of prints as to the camera, lens, film type, and exposure. By sorting the prints in different ways, I could easily see what difference changing the exposure made, the differences in film types, and the differences in cameras and formats. By using this extensive testing method, I no longer had to rely on other people’s untested opinions, or hearsay. Since at the time I was working with a lot with professional photographers,...

That is perhaps the most frequently asked question I hear. My usual response is to buy the one you like. By that I mean get one that feels right in your hands and looks like something you will want to carry around. Second, buy the best camera you can afford or spend the most money you feel comfortable spending on a camera. You really do get what you pay for. Beyond that the main consideration, in my opinion, is the viewfinder. The viewfinder is what you will spend your time looking at or through while you are making those beautiful photographs. There are three general types of viewfinders. The best is a single-lens-reflex which means that you are looking through the actual lens that the sensor is looking through. In the digital world the term is DSLR for digital single lens reflex. DSLR cameras are generally the most expensive, but are far and away the most pleasure to use. You almost always see exactly what you are going to get, the original WYSIWYG design. Most have interchangeable l...

I have believed for some time that as we get older we need to be passing along the things we have learned over the years. I got my first camera in the fourth grade and have been making picture almost every day since. I believe that is 18,980 days and it is certainly millions of photographs. I have sold cameras, owned a custom photo lab, taught photo classes, and of course been a professional photographer. I have photographed people in every situation imaginable and all kinds of machines and scenery in about a dozen countries. It is now time to start doing what I can to teach others. With that in mind I am launching “The Jim Mathis School of Photography.” Most photo classes are introductory level or teach out-dated technology. The first phase of my school will focus on taking people from where they are in their photography skills and help then move to where they want to be. The format will be one-on-one coaching, one day it a time. I think I can help most people dramatically improve th...

We enjoyed watching the PBS Ken Burns special on the National Parks last week. Not surprising, there have been a number of photographers directly associated with the parks in various ways. William Henry Jackson’s photos were instrumental in the forming of the first National Park at Yellowstone. The Kolb Brothers had a studio at the Grand Canyon and helped promote it for many years. And of course Ansel Adams will always be associated with Yosemite. In many ways the National Parks grew up with photography and the rise in attendance at the parks paralleled the growth in amateur photography. We have not been to all of the National Parks, but we have been to a few, and making photos at The Grand Canyon or Yellowstone are some of my fondest memories. For many years our business was such that we took our annual vacation in the winter. For that reason we are among the privileged few who have been to Yellowstone, not once, but twice, in the winter when the park is covered with snow and the hord...

We had a good time at Art Westport last weekend. This was our first experience at this show, but hopefully not our last. Though the sales of framed photographs was not what we had hoped, we practically sold out of panoramic notecards. More importantly, we saw many old friends and made new acquaintances. The Westport art fair draws an eclectic mix of people which makes for wonderful people watching and good conversations. My panoramic photo of a London street scene attracted the attention of an older gentleman who said he had driven double-decker buses in London as well as cross-country buses through Europe. He told me about the old Routemasters with their crash-box transmissions and manual steering. The new buses have automatic transmissions and power steering even though they are still double-deckers. In the words of Yogi, “You can hear a lot just be listening.” We saw lots of dogs walking their owners, but no cats. I guess cats aren’t all that into art. I took a break from the art fa...

There is a lot of confusion concerning resolution in digital photography. In the days of film, we just tried to get as much resolution as possible, figuring the more the better. With digital imaging, the subject is a lot less subjective and a whole lot more specific. Cameras are sold based on the number of individual pixels, or picture elements, they can achieve. 35mm film, under ideal conditions, could possibly show the equivalent of about 10 million pixels. In reality, a five-meg, or 5 million pixel camera, is about equal to 35mm film in resolution. But the number of pixels is far from the whole story in digital photography. With virtually every camera outside of camera phones, producing images with more than five megapixels, other qualities become more important. The quality of the lens, the type, size, and quality of the sensor, and of course the skill of the photographer are all more important than the number of pixels. In practical use, the final use of the image determines the r...