My name is Jeff Warren, and I started South Lake Photography as an outlet for a life-long pursuit based on the belief that a picture is a single and unique moment, frozen in time.
As early as I can remember, I had a camera in my hands – my first being my parent’s Kodak 110 cartridge film camera. I would shoot anything of interest to me, much to the chagrin of my mother who didn’t appreciate photos of trucks on the highway as much as I did since she paid to develop the pictures.
Years later, my father let me use his Pentax MV, which was a fully manual, 35mm SLR camera comparable to the camera bodies of today with a tall body and twist-lock lens mount out front. With that camera I began to explore a more professional approach and gained an understanding of f-stop and shutter speed.
It wasn’t until college when I received by first formal photography training through an elective course. I was pursuing a communications degree to become a journalist when I joined the campus newspaper as a writer/photographer and became editor my sophomore year.
The campus newspaper was printed at a local weekly community newspaper’s printing facility. Through that connection I was able to secure a summer internship at the newspaper where I had the good fortune to work with some extremely talented professionals. That real-world experience was essential to hone my writing and photography skills. It wasn’t the New York Times, but I covered sporting and community events, municipal meetings and business activities for a newspaper circulation of about 15,000 in its heyday.
At the newspaper, in the mid ‘90s, everything was shot in black & white with my Canon A2e on 35mm film developed onsite in a darkroom. Frames were selected from negatives to make black & white (usually 5” by 7”) prints which would be pasted onto a large sheet of paper with the article text and headlines using hot wax. The full-page paste-ups were then shot by the printing plate camera to create full-page negatives. The full-page negatives were then used to burn the full-page images onto the printing plates. Few digital photographers today truly appreciate the art of dodging (lightening) and burning (darkening) sections of an image by hand or counting dots per inch on paper.
After graduating from college, I accepted a staff writer/photographer position at the same weekly newspaper. Several years later, I was promoted to assistant editor and then editor. That was an extraordinary time in the media industry. The rise of the Internet, referred to as “new media,” brought about massive changes. By the early 2000s, that newspaper shifted from manual paste-up style processes used for decades to straight-to-negative technology. The full-page layouts created by computer included the text and photographs. The computer printed directly to a full-page negative which was then used to create the printing plates. This may seem primitive by today’s standard but was revolutionary at the time.
As print processes changed, so did photography. Within 1-2 years we went from black and white darkroom photography, to scanning 35mm negatives to digital photography. While that newspaper, like many others, is no longer in print, I am grateful for the opportunity to capture and share the stories of thousands of people in my coverage area.
Although the technology has changed drastically, I maintain a passion for photography which I hope comes across in my work. As you will see, my approach employs classical photographic methods to highlight subjects without them appearing altered, artificial, or overworked.
Thank you for taking the time to visit the site. I hope you enjoy the photos and I’m able to work with you to capture your special moments.