C. Owen Johnson (USA)

I’m a professional photographer who divides my time between San Francisco and the Sierras, which may account for my eclectic tastes and lack of a well-defined style. Born of photographer parents, I of course all but ignored the medium in my youth, and came to appreciate it fully only later in life. So after 20 years as a physicist and engineer, I chucked it all in 2000 to pursue a new career in photography. I have no formal training in photography, but consider myself a life-long artist to whom engineering was a hobby that paid the bills. Indeed, you could say I “backed in” to photography through my art, as I first picked up a camera to record material to paint from, only to discover that photography seemed a better medium to express myself than charcoal or oil paint. My tastes in photography are eclectic; I can’t say if I prefer color or B&W; I like stark grainy high-contrast photos as well as muted soft-focus ones. I like weird angles and odd distortions and carefully composed set pieces; I like movement and stillness. So far I’ve consciously tried to avoid cultivating a particular look of style in my work; for me the fun is in the experiment – the diversity. I prefer digital photography to film because of the flexibility it affords me, both while shooting and in post-processing.