Literally Shane Davis: Recent Episodes
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Each episode I speak with fellow photographers about their craft, from their start in photography, the thoughts on the art, and experiences they have had in the pursuit of photography.
I really enjoy finding new photography channels on YouTube. They are kind of like hidden gems. One such channel I recently discovered is that of Reimann Pembroke. Reimann is based close to Kansas City and creates beautiful photographs on film.
Big thanks to Reimann for taking the time to discuss all things film photography, the film photography community and chatting with me about his path into the world of analogue.
You can find Reimann's here:
YouTube
Instagram
Shane: What got you started into photography?
Matt: Good question. It wasn't actually planned. I might be slightly older than I may appear on YouTube. Maybe not, depends on how the camera treats me. But I actually was using a film a child, but not knowingly. I was just using my parents' camera just to take snaps. And then through university we had disposable film cameras.
And then I think early two thousands, I bought my first digital camera. And even then, it wasn't for photography, it was just more as a tool, like you'd have a phone. I was going traveling, so, I thought “you should probably have a camera”. So I took a camera to India and that was a, Optio S4 I think. It was like a little compact. I still didn't really know if I liked photography or anything like that.
Then maybe some years later ex-girlfriend bought me a little Lumix TZ 20, maybe it was written somewhere, one of the blogs, again, not a hundred percent. And then this time around it really clicked and by the Easter, that was actually the Christmas, then by the Easter, I had already asked her nicely, if she minded if I upgraded, so then I bought another camera and bought the… one of the very first mirrorless cameras, which is the Lumix G1, which was one of the first bridge cameras, which means you could have the interchangeable lenses. That thing really kick-started the whole thing in terms of looking at lenses on eBay even back then. And kind of mounting vintage lenses onto the micro four thirds, but I'd never had any kind of formal training and I didn't study photography at school.
I did science at university. So, I had to teach myself, I didn't know what f-stops where, I didn't know what shutter speed was. I didn't know anything. So then, how to I say… painfully, but I enjoyed the learning process. I had to teach myself photography before I could get slightly better than what I was.
At the time Flickr was pretty popular back them. And so, I was posting my early kind of snapshots to Flickr and that worked, a really amazing learning platform where people were looking at my images and saying, “Oh, you probably need to change your white balance and things like that”.
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Please check out Matt's Blog and YouTube Channel. Here is also on Instagram.
As always, you can find me at my website, or and Instagram.
So it's a beautiful, bright gray sky outside. Seems like it's going to be raining all week and some I'm sat at my desk just updating my website and also reading some sort of photography, blogs, procrastinating away, any way my hand is a, a pack of let's see if I could pronounce this right. Hahnemuhle paper. Um, so recently I got into printing my photography as well, and I bought, a Canon 100 s, um, as a little bit of an extravagant, drunken purchase.
And what's going to, cancel the delivery but, anyway, it came and, uh, decided to keep it and give it a go. And so a day or so ago I printed my first photo, which is a picture of my sister Maryanne. And we got on a photography walk into Blackpool and after the initial setup and installation and all that kind of stuff, eventually it started to print out this photograph.
And it kind of took me away, really. I knew that it was going to be nice to see my photos printed. Um, but I don't think I could account for the experience actually holding it in my hand. It was, it was more than, than, then what you could expect, you know, the tacit nature of holding the high quality paper and looking at the photograph and then I did two more prints.
This was only a little sample pack which I got free with the printer from cannon. And so I did a picture of, uh, like a street portrait and a picture of my dog, Ava. And it's like for the rest of the night, I just kept walking past them on my, living room table. And, um, I couldn't help just keep picking them up and walking into the kitchen in a different light and walking to the window.
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Find me on Instagram, or my Website
My friend Lee messaged me on Facebook and a few weeks ago now. And he was just getting into photography and asking if I had any resources so that he could, he could learn about composition. And didn't really know what to say at the time. I didn't really, it was hard to pin down where I'd kind of learn composition from.
I think he most likely would have been YouTube videos. Like a lot of things I've picked up on photography. Erm but more than that, is that the things I've learned composition or, you know, the rules kind of been absorbed into the way that naturally approach the same approach, a composition. And then kind of not just absorbed them, but individuated them.
So look at, you know, how do I like to, to to apply certain rules. But I guess when I kind of reflect on, on what I do and this week I've been out shooting some photographs and thinking about competition and it's made me more aware of the things that I actually am following. Which are although they become more of an intuitive sort of response to the scene.
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You can follow my work on Instagram and my Website