Jim Mathis Photography

I have been getting good feedback from my black and white photos that have been at Scooter's Coffee at College and Antioch for a few weeks. Then last Sunday, we went to Waldo Pizza in Lees Summit and hung a number of large color photos with musical themes. They will be there for two months. Be sure to go in for some great pizza and see my photos. If you have a business or public space that would be available for an art display, let me know. We can talk about it.    My photo of the old "Texas Top Hands" Flexible bus that I made while in Austin a few years ago was on the cover of the March issue of Johnson County Lifestyle magazine. This was their "arts" issue, so there was a feature about me and various arts organization in the area. The article about the Shawnee Mission Strolling Strings also featured my photographs.    I have been planning to update my primary web site for sometime now. I finally got it up and running this week. I wi...

Marketing 101  Stanley Marcus of Nieman-Marcus once said, "Half of advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half." It turns out that a lot of advertising is not only wasted, but is very harmful as well. For example, I have owned about half a dozen Oldsmobiles including the gorgeous 1977 Ninety-eight above. GM came out with an ad campaigning declaring, "This is not your father's Oldsmobile," implying that the millions of Oldsmobile owners were all a bunch of old fogeys. They got the message and quit buying Oldsmobiles and a century old brand died, or more correctly, was killed by poor management and worse marketing. An even worse marketing technique is rewarding new customers while punishing your current customers. We are seeing several nationally known companies offering huge discounts to new customers while insisting that their long established loyal customers pay full price. They result is that the loyal customers are not coming ...

Nikon In the 1960’s and early ‘70s, Nikon ruled. Nikon claimed that 98% of all photographs in newspapers and magazines were made with Nikon cameras and few people contested that claim. Many camera repairmen only worked on Nikons, considering other makes not worth fixing. Additionally, Nikon encouraged people who shot more than 500 rolls of film per year to have their cameras cleaned and adjusted annually. It was against this background that a major consumer magazine decided to run a test of 35mm cameras. They surveyed camera repair shops and compared the types of cameras they serviced against production numbers and concluded that Nikons were extremely unreliable and therefore unacceptable. I first heard about this when a man came into the camera shop where I was working and said he didn’t care what kind of camera he bought as long as it wasn’t a Nikon because they were the worst. We all started laughing because we thought he was kidding. (We were the largest Nikon ...

Citroen DS-21 When I was in college, one of the professors had a French car called a Citroen DS. It was bright yellow and very distinctive looking. I became fascinated by the Citroen and found out that it was an extremely innovative car.  When it came out in 1955 it was years ahead of other makes in handling, braking, and styling. It was one of the few front-wheel drive luxury cars of the era. I test drove one at a Wichita dealer in 1970, but decided not to buy it simple because I needed a pickup more than a French luxury car. For about the same money I got a new Ford F-100. The DS series remained in production until 1975. It came in second in a vote among auto journalist as the most beautiful car of the 20 th century. When Louise and I visited Paris in 1983, the city was fogged in for the entire week we were there. We never saw the top of the Eifel tower, but we looked everyday just in case the weather cleared for minute and we could get a glimpse of the to...

Castel Enchante It was late afternoon when we drove into Nice. We still had plenty of time to find our hotel and go out for dinner. The directions we had turned out to be less than reliable as we drove around looking for something that sounded familiar. We were also confounded by the lack of street signs. Very few streets in Nice are marked, and when they are the system seems pretty random. We eventually stumbled across a sign that was on our map and by combining our wits we were reasonably convinced that we had found the street leading to our inn. The web-site said the small inn was close-in with great views of the city, so we knew we were looking for a hill. As the winding road started to climb our confidence soared. By now it was dark and we were all past hungry. But very soon the road narrowed to one lane and began to deteriorate. There was no place to turn around because the mountain was on one side a sheer drop was on the other. As the road got steeper I realized th...

When I was in college I bought a couple of old Leicas just for fun. One was from the 1930’s and the other was post-war. Not what you would call modern cameras. I started working for Kenny Young at Ben’s Camera Exchange in downtown Kansas City in 1971. Kenny was an avid camera collector and I got quite serious about learning about old camera and the history associated with them. I began by reading all the books I could find about the history of photography and cameras. I heard about a book called “Glass, Brass & Chrome, a History of American 35mm Cameras.” I mentioned it to a customer who worked at the Kansas City Library. The next day he brought me a copy of the book. When I asked him when it was due, he said not to worry about. I read the book and put it on my bookshelf. Years later, after I became a Christian, I saw the book and realized that it was stolen from the library. I took it back downtown and dropped it in the book return. I then tracked down another copy o...

Oldsmobile Toronado I have always loved cars. Not just for the freedom of movement and the ability to go wherever I want whenever I want, but for their beauty and engineering. However, whenever it came time to buy a new car, practicality always won out. In fifty years I have owned thirty-five cars, but none were really outrageous like a Corvette or a Porsche.   In the late seventies, I decided that I needed to buy a car just for fun, so we went to the Kruse Classic Car Auction and came home with a low mileage 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado. The Toronado came out in 1966 and was an engineering tour de force. It was a huge high-powered front-drive two-door luxury car. Later the Mercedes Benz chief said that Mercedes did not make front- drive cars because front-wheel drive would not hold up with high output engines. By this point GM had already sold 500,000 400 hp front-wheel drive Toronados and Cadillac Eldorados without a single drive train failure. I guess the Daimler ...