John Smoak didn’t discover a passion for photography until he was a college art student; the low country of Charleston, South Carolina, lost a potential pottery maker but gained a professional photographer. John keeps busy doing all sorts of photography, including a lot of architectural work, and is in the process of building his own studio. He’s doing this at the same time he’s preparing to get married. Wow.

John gets the fact that technology has made all of us capable of taking a few decent photos, but he knows that there is such a thing as an artist’s eye, and he knows he needs to convey that to his clients. He also is concerned for the future of not just photography but all arts, when people devalue the experience, talent and effort that go into art creation merely because the art can be distributed digitally at little or no cost.

The background on the video is the view that John will have from his studio, the marshland of James Island in Charleston harbor. It was low tide, so the grass is tall. We were unable to film at high tide, due to a tremendous rainstorm. (You can see some photos of the resulting flooding of Charleston’s streets in my South Carolina video.)

The video also doesn’t reveal how humid it was; when I set up my camera, I couldn’t see a thing through it because of the moisture that formed on the lens. John, being a professional, knew not to panic, and convinced me not to as well. It turns out we just had to wait about ten minutes for the camera to acclimate to the humidity. It took me a bit longer to acclimate.

Follow each stop of my road trip across America here!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 29th, 2010 at 2:30 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators across america. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.